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Sometimes Bermuda seems like a bizarre Christmas wonderland, where kids never grow up, and the old guy with the glasses stays in charge forever.

When Jonathan Smith stepped down after five years as the island’s Police Commissioner, some people were talking about him as though he was a dribbling little schoolboy.

“A bit young,” muttered Public Safety Minister Wayne Perinchief.

“Juvenile”, grumbled Police Superintendent Larry Smith, who retires as head of the narcotics division early next year.

“Sometimes it’s extremely difficult when your leader is so much younger than you, not only in age but in experience,” Superintendent Smith told The Royal Gazette.

Incoming Commissioner George Jackson (53) was in the same kind of age bracket, the narcotics chief grumbled, “so you don’t correct the problem: You are correcting a youngster with a youngster.”

The little boy these men were talking about is 46. He worked 25 years as a policeman and his hair is turning grey. He may have arthritis, high blood pressure and bifocals, for all I know.

I can’t judge whether he was the best police commissioner Bermuda ever had, or the worse.

I do know, though, that he was plenty old enough.

Way too often in Bermuda, we hold young people back, insisting they ‘serve their time’ or ‘pay their dues’.

The years drag by, and the young person gets old and fat and stuck in his or her ways. The energy, and the urge to innovate, wither away.

Maybe it’s natural — in a small place like Bermuda.

In a larger country, senior executives can move from company to company (or police force to police force) as they work their way up the ladder.

In Bermuda, a man or woman who reaches a senior position often has no other place to go.

So they hang on to their job for dear life, jamming up everybody else’s prospects for promotion and movement, while their own route forward is blocked by someone even older.

By the time the old man finally shuffles off, the ‘new generation’ has become old and jaded.

Their years of energy, innovation and risk-taking have faded while they waited for their turn. They aren’t convinced anymore that they can change the world.

In fact, they have been doing the same thing, the same way, for so long that they probably wouldn’t even want to change the world if they could.

Experts call it ‘habitual ossification’, and it happens to all of us, eventually.

But it’s worse than that: When the old ways become an unchangeable habit, defensiveness is inevitable. Any suggestion for change is bound to seem like a criticism of your leadership, and a belittling of your accomplishments.

I am not the only one, I am sure, who has detected these very phenomena in the interviews with disgruntled senior or retired police officers that have been published in the last few weeks.

Of course, we badly need the wisdom and experience that comes only with the passage of time.

But we cannot grow and thrive unless our leaders — or at least a good portion of them — are young and dynamic, willing to take risks and look at things in a new way.

And we cannot afford to dismiss people who are 36 or 43 or 46 as being too young.

John F. Kennedy became a U.S. Senator when he was 36 years old. He was elected president at 43. He was assassinated when he was 46.

Theodore Roosevelt became president at 42. He was Police Commissioner of New York City at 36.

Bill Clinton was elected Attorney General of Arkansas at 30, and Governor at 32. Was elected president at 46.

Stanislav Gross was elected Prime Minister of the Czech Republic last year, at the age of 34.

Joe Clarke became Prime Minister of Canada at 39. Tony Blair became leader of the British Labour Party at 40 and British Prime Minister at 43.

Winston Churchill was Home Secretary at 35 and First Lord of the Admiralty at 36.

John Swan became Home Affairs Minister at 43 and Premier of Bermuda at 47.

The list of ‘juvenile’ leaders goes on and on - and includes some of the world’s worst tyrants. Hitler became German Chancellor at 43; Stalin was 43 when he became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

So the ‘young’ clearly have their faults.

But so do the old.

We need the young and the old, sharing their strengths and compensating for each other’s weaknesses.

Unless we want a future of stagnation, though, we’d best not dismiss anyone just because they’re only in their 40s.

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