Lesson Three: Make sure there’s no viable successor

Once you’re in power, you’ve got to make sure you can hold on to it. Mahathir mobilized a movement by allying with the unlikeliest of partners: Anwar Ibrahim, a man his government had convicted 20 years earlier on a charge of sodomy. (It’s illegal in Malaysia—a relic of British colonialism.) Anwar had once been the prime minister’s handpicked political heir, but the pair fell out in 1998. The next year, Anwar began a five-year prison sentence. He eventually reassumed leadership of the opposition, but in 2015 he found himself again imprisoned on sodomy charges. Anwar—by the time of his release, already 70 himself—then joined his old tormenter to bring down the far-more-scandal-ravaged Najib.

Dr. M.’s advanced age was supposed to guarantee Anwar’s speedy succession; after all, how long could a nonagenarian be expected to last? But Mahathir shows few signs of leaving the stage, and his closest aides are reportedly trying hard to kick Anwar to the curb. The effort took a hit, however, when a putative replacement heir was himself accused of sodomy—with a videotape to back up the charges.

When asked why they support Mahathir so strongly, many Malaysians I asked responded with a question of their own: Who else is there?

Lesson Four: It’s the issues, stupid

To the extent that Mahathir’s age is a factor in people’s minds, it may even play to his advantage. “Perhaps it has to do with Asian culture,” James Chin, a Malaysia scholar at the University of Tasmania, told me. “Age and experience are deeply respected.” This difference between Asian and Western values—whether or not such a broad generalization is indeed valid—is precisely the contrast that the prime minister has championed throughout his career. And the issues confronting Malaysia certainly deserve a steady hand at the wheel: recovery of public trust after 1MDB, questions on how to deal with a rising China, and—perhaps most important—the long-term challenges of a multiethnic, multi-religious society.

During his earlier stint in office, Dr. M. released “Vision 2020”—a plan to transform Malaysia from a society in which the bumiputra (ethnic Malays) were granted special privileges, but other communities (such as ethnic Chinese and Indians) enjoyed a disproportionate share of the economic and educational benefits. The plan made sense: Offer a big, bold agenda—and place its implementation safely three decades in the future. When he unrolled Vision 2020 back in 1991, he assumed that the thorny question of how to implement it would fall into somebody else’s lap. Perhaps the greatest challenge for Mahathir 2.0 is how to fulfill the promises made by Mahathir 1.0.

Malaysians are divided about the economy, the rise of China, Vision 2020, and everything else. These questions seem more important than how many years their prime minister has been on the planet. “His challenge isn’t that he’s old,” said Lemiere, who watched voters interact with him over the course of half a year. “It’s that he’s old-fashioned.”

In the U.S. presidential election, the incumbent and his three top challengers are, combined, half a century older than the nation itself. Will that matter? Should it? Malaysian citizens have plenty of legitimate reasons, quite apart from age, to either adore or detest Mahathir. Will the American people be willing to support a, um, mature candidate? One way or another, they probably will. Maybe give them credit for having a bit of maturity themselves.