Former presidential candidate Bob Dole, 85, has cut off communication with John McCain, 71, so that McCain cannot be accused of taking advice from someone older than himself.

“I feel like I can’t even talk to McCain because it’ll be an issue,” Dole told The Examiner in an interview. “You know how the press would be. They’ll say this is a guy who lost because of his age and now he’s out there trying to tell McCain what to do."

“They’re already playing the age card,” the Republican added. “So what do you do? You have a friend running, but you can’t communicate.”

In 1996, Dole became the oldest person to secure a major party’s presidential nomination for the first time. If elected, he would have been 73, or a year older than McCain will be on Inauguration Day next January.

This story continues below
Advertisement

The age issue has prompted mockery from comics and criticism from pundits.

“I don’t want to say McCain is running a lackluster campaign, but his Secret Service code name is ‘Bob Dole,’” Jay Leno cracked last week. “That’s not good.”

The sentiment was echoed by Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

“It looks like incumbent President Obama running against challenger Bob Dole,” he said. “That’s exactly what it looks like, the future versus the past.”

Dole told The Examiner: “I don’t mind Jay Leno taking a shot at my age, but Sabato ought to know better than that.”

Still, Dole acknowledged there are parallels between himself and McCain.

“We had the same age thing,” he said. “It’s sort of the same thing I went through. I’m a different generation than Bill Clinton, and McCain’s a different generation than Barack Obama.

“And we weren’t articulate enough for the media,” he added. “Let’s face it. I wasn’t the speaker that Clinton was and McCain’s not the speaker that Obama is. But are we going to elect a speech or we going to elect a president?”

Dole predicted the election would come down to a question of experience, giving McCain the edge.

“People are living longer — 71 used to mean you were already dead for 10 years,” he said. “You look at all these men and women who are still living now at 71, they don’t look at John McCain as some old geezer.”

Dole, who celebrated his 85th birthday on Tuesday, noted that in 1996, pundits warned that he might not live long enough to serve two terms in the White House.

“They were wrong about that,” he said with a chuckle, “like they were about everything else.”

bsammon@dcexaminer.com