If Hillary Clinton wins in 2016, who will dare use ‘old woman’ as an insult?

The whole area is replete with double standards. Older men are allowed on TV, while older women are all but invisible. (Unexpectedly, the US has a better record on this than Britain, where there is no equivalent of Barbara Walters or Andrea Mitchell.) Men who age are “distinguished”, the years deemed to confer wisdom; signs of ageing in a woman are considered unsightly, a defect to be remedied by surgery. Except surgery is condemned too.

More important, the older woman is considered somehow incapable: reflexively, we speak of helping an “old lady”, or even “a biddy”, across the road, choosing a woman to illustrate the point rather than a man. If Cuomo was right that voters harbour an almost primeval yearning for a warrior’s protective strength in a leader, then towards an old woman is the last place they are programmed to look.

This is what Clinton will have to overcome. But it also means a great prize is at stake. If she starts running in the coming weeks, fights a better campaign than last time, and wins, she will not only shatter the obvious glass ceiling of gender. By winning the most powerful office in the world for an older woman, she would upend a prejudice embedded deep in the human psyche, a shift whose impact would be felt far beyond America’s shores.