Forget Youth; We Need 'Old and August' Leaders

You know what the world's problem is? All these darn kids running countries, writes Peggy Noonan. People "miss old and august," she writes at the Wall Street Journal, ticking off the list of leaders in their 40s and 50s in this country and others. "They miss wise and weathered. They miss the presence of bruised and battered veterans of life who've absorbed its facts and lived to tell the tale."

The problem in the US is that we stopped letting old wise men counsel us when they steered us wrong in Vietnam. "But we learned the wrong lesson. We should have learned, 'Wise men can be wrong, listen close and weigh all data.' Instead we learned, 'Never listen to wise men,' and 'Only the young and sparkling, not enthralled by the past, can lead us.'" Which is too bad, because "this is a nation—a world—badly in need of adult supervision." (More elder statesman stories.)