Age-old dilemmas
IT seems likely at this juncture that the next presidential contest in the United States will once more pit Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Biden will be almost 82 years old at that stage, while Trump will be 78. Opinion polls suggest almost 70 per cent of Democrat-aligned voters consider Biden too old to be a viable contestant. Yet the party hierarchy appears not to have considered any viable alternatives.
At 80, Biden is already the oldest president the US has ever had. Ronald Reagan was ‘only’ 77 when he passed the baton to George H.W. Bush, and it emerged only after his presidency that there was some evidence of dementia while Reagan held what is seen as the most powerful post in the world.
The founding fathers of the US, many of whom were not yet 40 when they signed the Declaration of Independence, did not consider age or term limits. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson set the precedent for no more than two-term presidencies, but it wasn’t until after the thrice re-elected Franklin Roosevelt died early into his fourth term that the constitution was amended to restrict presidencies to eight years.
No age barrier was decreed, however, let alone limits on senators or congressmen. That’s why Americans still have to contend with the likes of Mitch McConnell, the 81-year-old Senate minority leader who has exhibited more than one ‘senior moment’, and the 90-year-old Democrat senator Dianne Feinstein, who frequently seems to be unaware of her surroundings, let alone her tasks.
The US is a decrepit democracy in more than one way.
Almost 20 other senators and members of the House of Representatives are in their 80s. This level of decrepitude is unprecedented in US history. It is partly a consequence, obviously, of the steady increase in life expectancy since the previous century, reflected in the rising retirement age across many parts of the world.
No one can seriously claim that age takes its toll uniformly. Nor would it be fair to say that younger US voters take their cues entirely from the decades-long gap between themselves and their electoral choices. After all, youth support was crucial to the presidential runs of independent senator Bernie Sanders — now 82 — in both 2016 and 2020. The outcome of the primaries in both those years may well have been very different had the Democratic establishment not intervened decisively.
Young Americans rallied to Sanders’ cause precisely because he addressed some of their biggest concerns and offered viable alternatives, instead of offering to stick to the status quo (Hillary Clinton), or to return to it (Biden). A Sanders presidency might have been a disaster in either of those instances in the face of bipartisan congressional resistance to his progressive agenda, but at least it would have helped to clarify the foibles and fallacies of America’s democratic pretensions.
In all too many ways, the prospect of a re-contest in November 2024 between the incumbent and his predecessor — the first time in more than 100 years when two presidents would be in the fray — demonstrates the deficiencies of American democracy. A majority of the electorate is wary of both potential contenders, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
It is hardly surprising that substantial numbers of young Americans can’t be bothered to vote, or that older generations have fewer concerns about backing older candidates — even though the average age is now being taken to extremes. Even Nancy Pelosi, the 83-year-old former speaker of the House of Representatives, intends to run again — for what would be her 19th term. One can only wonder whether such tenacity is intended to somehow serve the public interest, or to find a slot in the Guinness World Records.
The question of age and cognitive decline is a tricky one. It’s taken for granted that intellectual capacity declines with the decades, but its effects are disparate. There are people in their 90s whose minds remain sharp, and some whose physical agility can be envied by far younger folks. Others can’t disguise their decrepitude. The retirement age has steadily been rising in many parts of the world, sometimes in the face of stiff resistance (ask Emmanuel Macron), but the general rule of a cut-off age is widely accepted. Not so, however, for US politicians. Or judges. A respected court of appeals judge recently had to be suspended for refusing to cooperate in an investigation into her competence at the age of 96.
It’s hard to imagine why anyone would be unwilling to comfortably take a backseat once they hit their mid-60s or 70s. And while this isn’t US democracy’s biggest shortcoming (or indulgence), it occasionally has its entertainment — such as when Trump (who shouldn’t have been a presidential candidate at any age) tried to diss Biden by claiming he threatened to take America into World War II. Perhaps he was confusing the incumbent with Roosevelt.
Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2023