Age and Politics
This is an Old Problem, and it IS a Problem
I’m getting older. I turn 50 this month. When I work out, it takes me longer to recover. My knees, back and neck all crack when I stand up after working at my desk too long. When I watch Jeopardy!1 or play trivia, my recall isn’t as sharp as it once was. Sadly, I keep getting AARP mailers and invitations to join seniors groups emailed to me, but I’m fine with it. I’m at the age in my career where I’m closer to retirement than I am to when I graduated law school. All this just goes with getting older. Can’t stop Father Time and at some point the mortality rate always reaches 100%.
There is a certain wisdom in it too. I’m much more “practically smart” than I was when I was in my 20s.2 By that I mean the intellect is not just restricted to facts and figures, dates and places, and regurgitating what famous people said and wrote. What I mean is, I’m better at seeing the way all those things weave into one another and have a deeper understanding of those things than I did when first learning them. Sure, it results in less absolute answers, more nuance and less vibrance, but that’s what experience does. T.S. Eliot has one of my most favorite quotes:
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
That’s what aging is all about—seeing the same world as you did your entire life in a different way, based on everything you’ve accumulated in knowledge to that point, from a completely different perspective than you had experienced it before.
All of that is to set up something I know many people feel but to some it may be hard to hear. Many of our elected leaders, particularly those later in age, should not still be in office. You’d think popularity contests like elections would favor youth over old age, but there are some systemic reasons they keep sending elderly lawmakers out to D.C..
Hypocrisy; Most Love their Representative and Hate Everyone Else’s
Mitch McConnell is one of the most reviled Senators there is. He should be. He’s the Leader of one of the Parties and a lightning rod for hatred from the other side. It goes with the turf. He’s done a good job of being that leader so much that the Republican Senators keep re-electing him leader.
But Democrats LOATHE him. They have no control over getting rid of him either; only voters in Kentucky can do that, or Republican Senators who have no incentive to do so (other than their own ambition). So Democrats can point at McConnell and say “He’s Too Old!” and add it to the list of other complaints.
California is the same way. They’ve re-elected Dianne Fieinstein since the ‘80s. California is a safe Dem state (much like KY is safe Republican) so getting rid of her would be a lost cause for Republicans, despite how much they despise her. Republicans point and say her age is an issue to Democrats’ deaf ears.
Nonetheless, their states keep sending them back, regardless of age or physical/mental capacity. Part of it is that voters still appreciate the persons they were, not the people they are. It’s hard to pull a beloved icon like Cal Ripken3 out of a game late in his career despite how the numbers declined. Eventually, it had to be Cal who made that decision (and he did.)
Constiutents Love Their Representatives; They Should Love Them Less
The single biggest indicator of whether a candidate will get elected is whether or not they have been elected previously. Incumbency is a huge advantage. With seniority in Legislatures come advantages for the districts too; Chairmanships, political leverage, fundraising. All of it only encourages Representatives to stay and aim for re-election and also their districts to keep voting for them. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
And for the most part, it’s true. But it also leads to complacency, laziness and outright taking up space. A trained dog could push a button “Yea” or “Nay” if you tell him which one to push, and as legislators get older, that’s what they become; someone warming a seat, being told to push a button because its what the party wants. When it gets to that point they are no longer an effective Committee Chair, no longer exort any kind of leverage over others, and you can be sure they aren’t making many fundraising calls or getting things for their districts anymore. They’re propped up by aides who do all the work. There’s no reason for that legislator to remain there, anyone could fill that role.
As such, it’s important for candidates to start contesting these seats earlier. Nobody wants to be the one showing a beloved local hero a door, but that’s what needs to be done. We should normalize more contested elections, particularly intraparty ones, when age and declining health starts to become an issue, and we as voters should strongly consider it when pulling a lever for a candidate.
Gerrymandering
This one piggy backs on the previous one. Legislators create districts which makes it harder to get rid of them. Both sides do it, both sides love it. In some sense, job security is a good thing too; they can do more for their constituents if they don’t have to worry about constant competition and the need to fundraise.
But as candidates get older, we should see more primaries in districts represented by older candidates. An injection of youth in this regard would be a good thing, and competition is always good to keep legislators on their toes. If age prevents them from relating to the younger generations of their district, they shouldn’t be there and should get voted out. Problem is nobody wants to be the young person fighting an uphill campaign against a legend, being the one trying to show him the door.
The Stakes
In the heat of contentious elections, there is security in re-electing someone who’s been there (forever). When the majority of the Senate or the House are in doubt, who are you going to choose? The one who wins by 20 pt margins every cycle or the young neophyte who has never run before and may be in a dogfight? It’s an easy choice.
But yet, you can say this about any election cycle. In addition, this mentality prevents the creation of any quality bench of up and coming legislators as well, as they have no chance of advancement.
This is the big reason Joe Biden is running again. He’s probably the only candidate the whole of the Democratic party can rally behind because so much of it is fragmented. The Democrats could have picked an heir apparent and start rallying to their side, but it carries risks. It just seems safer going with the one everyone likes in what is sure to be a close election, than to take a chance and lose.
Wisdom and Power.
Yeah, with experience comes wisdom. People who have been there longer have seen it all. They know how to get things done. They’ve witnessed almost everything that can be done in office, repeatedly. They’ve watched as others lose elections, are slowly forced from office or shown the door, or just retire to become a regular person without any of that intoxicating power. It’s a potent power too. They know once they leave, there’s nothing left for them. Once you have power, it’s very hard to willingly turn from it.
Why Suggestions on Removing Old Officials Won’t Work
There are a few suggestions as to what would be appropriate for a mandatory retirement of elected officials.
Some say that there should a mandatory retirement age, say 80. But with that you get rid of the most experienced and most influential members of Congress. These are often the best at working out compromises and working out issues. Kicking them out in favor of younger firebrands only ensures more headbutting and partisan stagnation. In addition, using a hard number like age is not necessarily appropriate, since I have met some 80 year olds sharper and smarter than some 50 year olds. I’m old enough to remember when people thought Reagan’s4 775 at the END of his term was bad; this next election is shaping up to feature the representative candidates in both parties being OLDER than that at the START of the next term.
Term Limits. For many of the same reasons (removing the most knowedgeable and experienced by default, the promotion of younger firebrands more frequently, encouraging more uncompromising partisanship), this won’t work really well either. People tend to want it too only because they don’t like other certain members of Congress; yet when it comes to their own, they don’t care how old they are.
Some say there should be a congition test of some kind. Really? First, who creates and administers it? If you are a Democrat, do you really trust a GOP administration to administer it fairly, or accurately? And what happens when one old person from one party passes and another from the other fails? The screams of unfairness in the test or its application would be hard to ignore.
We may eventually get to a point where age and cognitive function are not as important and people can stay neurologically fit well into their 100s. We’re not there yet. Hopefully, whoever wins the White House in 2024 doesn’t mistake the “button” for Netflix on the Remote Control. But just because they’re old doesn’t make them bad legislators.
And this gets into the real problem nobody talks about. The fact is that a lot of people elected to office are not actually the ones running the country. Of course, they are the ones pushing the buttons for votes, appearing in front of cameras on television, and meeting with the friendly constituents back home. They do have some latitude and ability to do what they want, but not really all that much. No, the ones really running things are the staffs; Party staff, Committee Staff, Staff from the state and congressional offices. They’re the ones actually doing all the work that needs to get done. And when you get right down to it, it doesn’t matter if the Member is 38 or 80; when the person getting the call from the party whip is a 45 year old Chief of Staff and the one calling the constiuent about their social security check is 24 and right out of undergrad, what difference does it really make how old the member is? They’re just the front for the real machinery behind government.
PurpleAmerica Recommended Stories
Two things prompted me to write this piece. The first was Mitch McConnell’s “freeze moment” captured on cameras this past week. Many Democrats rejoiced claiming this should demonstrate why he shouldn’t be in the Senate anymore; they did so without any irony that Dianne Feinstein has been regularly doing things like this for a year and the biggest issue Joe Biden faces to his re-election s not Donald Trump but the appearance he may be too old to do the job effectively.
I had a different view of the McConnell freeze and that was of the staffer helping him. She clearly understood this had happened before and managed the situation quite well. She probably does more for the GOP and the State of Kentucky on a regular basis than they will ever know.
The other is this extremely excellent podcast between Charlie Sykes and Republican Pollster and Campaign Advisor Mike Murphy. You really should listen to it, because it is EXTREMELY on point about how we view age in politics and how it is portrayed.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
Strom Thurmond is the oldest elected legislator in U.S. History and served in the Senate until he turned 100. I’m REALLY not a fan of Thurmond for a number of reasons, so we’ll just leave it at that.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
I was once considered for the Jeopardy College Tournament back in the day, and have passed the online test on 3 separate occassions, being invited to try out twice. I was not chosen (timing the buzzer is harder than it seems) and it seems the odds of me appearing are only decreasing.
There used to be an acknowledgement and deferment to elders as wiser as well, that they knew more of what they were doing. However, the Internet and social media has made youthful arrogance all the more prevalent. In a sense, I can’t blame them, it has also given crotchety, old windbags nobody would ever listen to otherwise a soapbox to spread stupidity. Still I wish younger people would spend more time listening, than pushing out more ridiculously stupid things to say. It’s just not in their nature these days.
I use Cal Ripken here as he was the MLB’s ironman, breaking Lou Gehrig’s record and playing in an amazing 2,632 straight games. That’s almost 16 1/2 straight YEARS without taking a game off. Just try and tell a guy like that he’s not playing.
Unknown at the time was that Reagan was already starting to experience the early effects of Alzheimers, which was diagnosed and which he publicly acknowledged five years later.
Comedian Dennis Miller had a good quip about this back in the 80s. “Reagan is going to be 77 at then end of his term and he’ll have his finger on ‘the button.’ You know my grandfather is 77 and we don’t let him use the remote control.”