Grays on The Go

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In time, through sheer force of gravity, the products themselves, and not just the ads, will be shaped for an older consumer. "We have designed America to fit the size, shape and style of a country we used to be," says Gerontologist Dychtwald, "and what we used to be is young." Books and newspapers, with their tiny print, are designed for wide young eyes, as is the lighting in public places. Buttons, jars and doorknobs are obstacles to those with arthritis. Traffic lights are timed for a youthful pace. "In years to come," predicts Dychtwald, "huge industries will emerge as America changes its shape and form."

One huge industry has already emerged, based in Washington but reaching across the country: an industry of influence. Politicians for years viewed the aged as a uniform group -- physically and often mentally feeble, politically compliant, socially inert. The candidate who does so now risks being trampled by what one Congressman sweetly calls the 800-lb. gorilla. The American Association of Retired Persons, with 28 million members, is bigger than most countries. The Gray Panthers, with 80,000 members, pressures Congress on everything from health insurance to housing costs. This year the formidable gray lobby is moving full force into grass-roots presidential politics. And when it moves, the ground shakes.

In New Hampshire, leading up to primary night, the AARP mailed out 250,000 pieces of literature detailing the candidates' positions on Social Security, long-term health care and other incendiary issues. One booklet was called You Can Select the President -- a brash enough claim, until you consider that in 1984 a total of 101,000 Democrats voted in the primary and that the AARP has 145,000 members in New Hampshire alone. A $250,000 television ad campaign aims to get out the gray vote. "The old folks," says Political Consultant Thomas Kiley, "are showing more political muscle in this election than ever before."

The candidates have been quick to respond. Most have produced either a touching story of an aged parent or, in the case of Michael Dukakis, the real thing. Jesse Jackson, invoking Social Security's creator, tells voters that he "would rather have Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Ronald Reagan on a horse." Virtually all have come out in support of the long-term health- care bill now stalled in Congress, which, if it ever passed, would cost the Government tens of billions of dollars over the next five years. Only Republican Pete du Pont has proposed radically restructuring Social Security, a notion that George Bush boldly dismissed as a "nutty idea."

The fervor with which the elderly lobby to protect their benefits seems incongruous -- and unforgivably selfish -- to younger people who see only the silvery life-style of the old rich. But the AARP campaign is born of stark realities: the persistence of nasty pockets of poverty among the aged, the threat of catastrophic illness that faces every old man and woman and, above all, the prospect of cutbacks in benefits as Washington struggles to balance its budget.