Fred D. Thompson died Sunday at 73 after a recurrence of lymphoma. If you're interested in his life and unusual Hollywood-Washington hybrid of a career, click HERE. The reason I mention his passing is that for a hot minute, for lack of a better term, it really seemed like he was going to swoop in and rescue the Republican Party in the 2008 presidential election -- and it dawned on me that if he had been successful, and re-elected, he would have been the first president since John F. Kennedy Jr. to die in office. Since Bill Clinton, we're grown accustomed to younger presidents. But for the first time since George H.W. Bush, it's beginning to look like we're going to have an older president again. Hillary Clinton just turned 68 and if she serves two terms, she'd be 76. I'm not suggesting that older people shouldn't run -- things can happen at any age, and fortunately, life expectancy for American females is 81.2 years and 76.4 years for men. But since I wasn't alive when JFK was assassinated -- and how close President Reagan was to death was hidden from us -- Thompson's not-so-close call was a bit sobering. Just cannot imagine what a nation would feel like in that situation -- that episode of "Mad Men" is as close as I ever want to come.
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