Gerontocracy

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.

Although I write at high summer, by the time you read this another school year will be upon us. I wonder: do students still read T.S. Eliot? They should. A lot of what he wrote continues to reverberate with significance. Consider, to take just one example, these lines from his poem “Gerontion.” History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving.Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or if still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion.Gives too soonInto weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed withTill the refusal propagates a fear.

There has been no shortage of reminders of the gerontocracy in which we live lately. Last week brought two in the Senate.  One was Mitch McConnell’s worrying freeze-up at a press conference when he had to be helped away from reporters. The second came courtesy of Dianne Feinstein, who had to be prompted several times when asked to cast her vote on the Defense Appropriations Bill. “Say aye,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington told her ninety-year-old colleague from California. There are presumably other examples courtesy of the octogenarian commander-in-chief, but they are so frequent these days that it can be hard to keep track.  Feinstein’s age-related shortcomings have made news again.