Old Days

So there's this bit in Axios about "American Gerontocracy." It posits that there's something wrong with having old people in high elected offices.

Diversity and technology are making the workplace, home life and culture unrecognizable for many older leaders. That can leave geriatric leadership of government out of step with everyday life in America — and disconnected from the voters who give them power.

But if those voters don't seem to care, why should anyone else? It's not as if the ages of President Biden, Donald Trump, Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader McConnell are state secrets. The way seniority in Congress tends to work offers a positive incentive for voters to send the same people to Capitol Hill again and again, but still, it's not as if people don't understand that old people are old. As for being out of step, that tends to be criticism that's only leveled during campaign season, or by someone looking to stir up popular resentment of an incumbent. Congress isn't a place where the Representatives and Senators go to explain their constituents to one another. If the person that someone feels will get the job done (whatever job they happen to have in mind) is 80 years old, they can be out of touch all day, every day. So long as they vote the right way on the floor, and back projects that funnel federal dollars into local projects, age is nothing but a number.

I'm not the first person to make this point, but I think it's a useful way of looking at things, so here it is: A lack of understanding and connection isn't likely to change voter behavior. Clear evidence of mental deterioration, or someone simply going to pieces might. Like Congress itself, the public tends to vacillate between ignoring potential problems and overreacting to them, and so it's possible that a serious incident could wind up sweeping the Baby Boomers from Washington in favor of younger people. But as long as the status quo seems to work, there are unlikely to be any changes to it.

Famed wise man David Gergen, 80, told Judy Woodruff last month on "PBS NewsHour": "I think people like Biden and Trump ought to both step back and leave open the door to younger people."

And why do younger people need to have the door left open for them? They can stand for election like anyone else.

While I'm not really an advocate for "people power" in the way the term is commonly understood, one of my general gripes with left-leaning media outlets is their general fondness for telling stories in a way that implies that only a certain minority of the population is capable of making rational decisions. Everyone else is painted as having no agency in their lives, other than dejectedly selecting between whatever bad options are handed to them.

Running for Congress, or for President, is difficult, and it's expensive. The general apathy and disengagement of the American public as a whole results in a system where politics becomes about raising the vast sums of money needed to constantly place messages in front of people who can't be bothered to seek out the information themselves. This has created a donor class, and they tend to choose who they give the resources needed to cut through the noise. And often, that donor class goes with known quantities and people who have long records. That selects for age. But there are always younger people breaking through to the public. There's nothing that stops another Representative Ocasio-Cortez from being elected, or a whole slew of them. The public simply has to want people like that in office, no different than any other popularity contest.