Commentary: Age alone shouldn't determine who runs for political office

It was Robert Neil Butler, a psychiatrist and the first director of the National Institute on Aging, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, who first coined the term “ageism” in 1968. Butler, who was one of the pioneers in American geriatrics and gerontology, used the term to describe prejudice by one age group toward other age groups, most notably toward older age groups. He considered it a form of bigotry comparable to racism and social class discrimination. While ageism is a construct that