Let me answer Nicholas Goldberg’s question from his LA Times piece via Yahoo: are Biden And Feinstein too old to do their jobs?
But Feinstein, who turned 89 last week, has kicked off a heated national debate by refusing to step down from her job even as people begin to clamor about her age and competence.
And she is hardly alone among her peers in clinging to power as she ages. Famously, Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat unbudgingly on the Supreme Court until she died at age 87. (Remember how she fell asleep during the State of the Union address in 2015?)
There’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who is 82 and apparently going strong. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is 80, and he’s waiting to become senate majority leader again if Republicans win control in November.
Incumbency turns out to be a very pleasant place, and power an aphrodisiac that is difficult to give up — to the point that the word “gerontocracy†has suddenly become common.
Is this a problem? I think it is.
I disagree with his remarks about Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell. They’re too old, too. So are Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Patrick Leahy, and Bernie Sanders. Before you say “Damn Boomers” none of them are Baby Boomers—they’re Silent Generation and they’re displaying the insecurities common to that cohort.
The preferred thing would be for them to retire gracefully but failing that they should be voted out of office and failing that House and Senate rules should be changed to require annual cognitive fitness tests of all members over age 70 with the results to be made public.
What happens inevitably in these circumstances is that the nature of their jobs change to accommodate them with their staffs picking up the slack. That really isn’t right. They weren’t elected to have their staffs do their jobs for them.
One of my colleagues started a testing program on people over 75 who were going to have major procedures (surgery, IR). People with bad cognitive dysfunction dont recover well. Families were often surprised with the results. People can cover up their problems pretty well sometimes. People dont tend to recognize emotional lability as a senescence issue, its just grandpa getting cranky. Some people confabulate so well it is utterly convincing. I think they ended up extending it down to age 70. (Of note, people with just mild or mild to moderate dysfunction actually responded to training pretty well. We have a team that works with pt before the procedure, in the hospital if they stay, then follows them at home for a short while.
Kind of a long winded way of agreeing.
Steve
You might not remember Adam Clayton Powell (D, NY). He was expelled from the (Democrat) House for egregious corruption. However, the Supremes reinstated him and noted that while the two Houses can evaluate the qualifications of their members, the Houses cannot impose and conditions that are not in the Constitution.
So, if you want term limits or physical/mental tests, you will have to pass a Constitutional amendment.
Two points. First, the House and Senate each have the power to create the rules that govern each body. Second, the case you refer to does not apply as long as you’re not expelling members based on the rules that are put in place. You wouldn’t be expelling anyone. Just encouraging them to assess their ability to perform. That’s the reason the results should be made public.
The House and Senate each have lots of rules that appear nowhere in the Constitution.