Ageism in government

Have you noticed that ageism has been creeping into the news lately? I suppose the most notable example is Nikki Haley’s recent challenge, calling on all presidential candidates over the age of 75 to take a competency test. I like Nikki, but I think she’s way off on that call.

It’s an effective sound byte because she’s poking both front-runners with one slogan. With Biden at 80 years of age and Trump following closely at 77, we can admire her for efficient political messaging. Still, I don’t recall reading anything in the Constitution about qualifications for people running for office other than three simple tests. A presidential candidate must be at least 35 years old, a “natural born” citizen of the United States, and must have been a resident of the United States for 14 years. That’s it. There are no other requirements.

Presidential disability is only considered after the fact. The 25th Amendment outlines the process of removing a President, simply saying that the Vice President, with the blessings of cabinet and Congress, may remove the president from office with a “written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Nikki’s proposal is a non-starter on constitutional grounds alone, but she’s not the only one flinging mud at our aging leaders.

Right-leaning media have been scrutinizing every one of Mr. Biden’s gaffs and stumbles in a way that we haven’t seen since left-leaning press did the same to Gerald Ford for his pratfalls and Bush-41 for his jumbled sentence structures. Both were younger men, beginning their brief terms at the ages of 61 and 65, respectively.

Rumors of Biden’s infirmities have been circulating for years, and at least one very independent pundit I like to follow thinks he will pull out before the convention. I’m not sure if I buy that, but cracks in public confidence have recently started showing on the left as well. My guess is that those numbers are more driven by the economy than any age-related issues, and that’s how it should be.

While we can easily dismiss all of that as political opportunism, we are seeing an increasing number of octogenarians in public office, and critics of all stripes have taken notice. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi was born in 1940, making her 83. Still, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is only 81 and seems to be struggling. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is still active at 81, and Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is 89. Dianne Feinstein of California is currently the most senior of seniors at 90 years old, and she is reportedly ailing but is still in the saddle.

The record-holder, of course, was Senator Strom Thurmond. In 2003, he was still serving in the Senate at age 100. Thurmond had a long and successful career, but his health and acuity were as enfeebled as his views on racial equality, making him the poster child for people who don’t know when to quit.

During my brief bout with the property and casualty insurance business, I learned two important lessons. First, I learned West 5th and J streets and the Walmart parking lot were the most frequent locations for accident claims in town. Sooner or later, we’ll need a traffic light at that intersection, and well, Walmart is just Walmart.

The second, more valuable lesson I learned is that there are people approaching their 90s who couldn’t be sharper, and there are people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who don’t belong behind the wheel. I’m sure some actuaries can use the law of large numbers to justify generalizations about older drivers, but they are just that. They are generalizations. Individuals are as unique as fingerprints on a pair of bifocals.

Personally, I like my leaders to have a bit of gray hair–particularly in the Senate. The Senate is supposed to be a steady, rational, and thoughtful body where longer terms served make elected officials less susceptible to the whims of the populist mob. The founders wrote as much into the Constitution when they set the minimum age to serve in the House at 25 years of age but required Senators to have reached the ripe old age of 30. That was in 1789, when the average life expectancy for a male was 57 years. Today, in 2023, the average age of members of the House of Representatives is 57.9 years, the average for Senators is 65.3 years, and we all begin receiving mail from AARP at 40.