WASHINGTON: Her campaign barely three weeks old, Hillary Clinton already has been attacked by Republicans on everything from donations to her family’s charitable foundation, to her tenure as secretary of state and her ties to Wall Street. But her rivals, and the political action committees that support them, are treading more carefully on one incendiary subject: Her age.

If elected in November 2016, Clinton would be, at 69, the second-oldest person to take the presidential oath for the first time, behind only Ronald Reagan, who turned 70 weeks after being sworn into office in 1981.

Questions of health and fitness for the presidency dogged two former candidates of a similar age, Bob Dole in the 1996 election and John McCain in 2008, each of whom was 71 at this point in the race. Time magazine featured Dole on the cover asking whether he was “too old” for the job. McCain was so determined to show that he was healthy that he often put in back-breaking campaign days.

“I do think age is an issue in a presidential campaign,” said Steve Schmidt, who was McCain’s campaign manager. “There is a thin line between seasoned and decrepit.”

But several Republican campaigns that seem best positioned to exploit it don’t want to touch the issue — at least directly. That’s a shift from just a few months ago, when presidential hopefuls Senator Rand Paul, 52, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, 47, explicitly referenced Clinton’s age as a possible disqualifier, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell likened her to a cast member of the hit TV show “The Golden Girls,” which featured four older women living together.

“It’s a rigorous physical ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency,” Paul said in November, referring to Clinton’s age. Now, however, Paul’s presidential campaign doesn’t want to talk about the issue. It declined further comment. As did Walker’s political action committee, even though last fall, he, too, noted that he could run for president “20 years from now” and be the same age Clinton is today.

Campaign aides to Paul, Walker and Senator Marco Rubio, 43, as well as Republican strategists, told Reuters there was little appetite in the party at the moment for a direct assault on Clinton on the issues of her age and fitness for office, even after a 2012 fall that gave her a concussion and caused a potentially life-threatening blood clot.