Sure, Donald Trump, turning 80 next month, is super-old, and starting to look and act his age. But, hey, on his birthday, Flag Day, he’s hosting mixed-martial arts on the White House South Lawn. “UFC Freedom 250” is touted as a celebration of American culture. And what says youthful vigor like a seven-fight card, right?
And, sure as shootin’, this is all not to mention Joe Biden, who left office at 82, who in his own last doddering White House days looked and sounded a whole lot older than that and simply had no idea what he was saying while he wandered the stage of the fateful last debate.
And the elderly presidents don’t have much on (an admittedly vigorous-seeming) Sen. Bernie Sanders, still gallivanting around the nation at 84, or the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were not precisely gallivanting when they died in office at 90 and at 87, seemingly because they just didn’t have any quit in them.
But you know who is saying that they’re so mad about the gerontocracy of our politics that they just might want to legislate a quit for politicians past their sell-by date?
Americans of all ages.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released last week found that an “overwhelming majority of Americans — 8 in 10 — are in favor of setting age caps as well as term limits for members of Congress. … There are divides on nearly every issue in American politics today. But many voters agree on one topic: Congress is too old.”
In fact, we have finally found the issue that unites us across the political spectrum: “The poll found that 78% of Democrats support both age caps and term limits. Eighty-three percent of Republicans backed maximum age limits, and nearly 9 in 10 supported term limits.”
And it’s not just the young-uns who are saying so. The poll finds older voters were just as likely to support age caps and term limits as younger voters.
Looking at the results of the poll, Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State who studies generational differences, said: “There seems to be a consensus that people think if you’re going to be an effective leader, you should not be 80 years old.”
I’ve always been, in theory at least, skeptical of both term limits and minimum or maximum age requirements for elected office. They are quite literally anti-democratic, as you can make the argument that people should be able to vote for whom they want to vote, without artificial boundaries on who can serve.
But when you do make such arguments, you are also being naive: about the power of incumbency, about the fact that a little experience is a good thing and that’s why the Constitution says you must be at least 35 to serve as president, about the wisdom of the elders in our society being important without acknowledging there’s a point of diminishing returns.
The average working person in the United States is 42. But in Washington, D.C., the average age is 58 for members of the House and 65 in the Senate.
“I feel that they just might be out of touch. You’ve got 70- and 80-year-olds in Congress … running the country,” said 18-year-old Michael Hatch, who lives in Eudora, Kansas. “It’s just not doing it for young people. It’s not representing people like me.”
There’s a likely insurmountable problem facing this desire for change by 80% of Americans. Guess who would need to change the law by creating a maximum age and number of terms in Congress? Congress, that’s who. Its members are unlikely to give up the ghost voluntarily.
Unless some member started a movement noting that a disinterested citizenry opens us up to the worst kind of political leaders, and that thus the future of our republic might hang in the balance.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.