Alzheimer’s

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell froze in place and was unable to answer questions for an agonizing period. The incident raised concerns about both his age (eighty-one) and health. But it should spark a larger debate about the gerontocracy that sits atop America's government. In January, the Pew Research Center reported that the Senate's median age is now 65.3 years old. That's up from 62.4 years old as recently as 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency. More senators have been eligible for Social Security than not for years. Just this Monday, an Associated Press poll found 77 percent of Americans think eighty-year-old President Biden is too old to effectively govern in a second term. That included 69 percent of all Democrats.

There are few ironclad rules in American politics. But here is one: if you are a Republican, no tactic is too disreputable to be deployed against you. I think for example, of the disgusting campaign waged to keep Judge Robert Bork from the Supreme Court in the 1980s. 'Lion of the Senate' Ted Kennedy led that charge ('in Robert Bork’s America...'), though he was aided by a young senator named Joe Biden. Journalists went through Bork’s trash and reviewed the movies he rented for incriminating evidence. Other campaigns of vilification against Republican Supreme Court nominees include the one conducted against Clarence Thomas and, most recently, the extraordinary full-court press against Brett Kavanaugh. But the calumny is directed not just against judicial nominees.