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"I don't think it's much of an issue," Charles Black, senior adviser to the Republican senator, told MSNBC.
"If you talk to the reporters who cover McCain, who go out with him on 14- and 15-hour days, sometimes seven-day weeks, they see the energy level that tells them that age is not an issue," Black said.
He spoke a day after Democratic lawmaker John Murtha, 75, a Vietnam war veteran and supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton's White House candidacy, said McCain was too old to be president.
"This one guy running is about as old as me. Let me tell you something, it's no old man's job," Murtha said.
Black disagreed, saying former president Ronald Reagan achieved success in his second term when he was in his seventies.
"But, you know, think about it. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War during his second term when he was a lot older than McCain is now," Black said.
Reagan was 69 when he took office in January 1981 and 78 at the end of his second term.
McCain himself shrugged off the question of his age.
"All I can tell you is that I admire and respect Jack Murtha. Speak for yourself, Jack. I'm doing fine. Thanks," McCain said.
Clinton's campaign said McCain's age was not a relevant issue.
"It's not his age she has a problem with, it's his ideas for the future," Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said.
The former first lady is 60 years old, and her Democratic rival, Barack Obama, is 46, the youngest of the candidates. |
If elected to the White House John McCain would be the oldest man to become president at age 72, but his top adviser said on Thursday the Republican candidate's age posed no problem. 
