Congress Has Become a Waiting Room for Heaven

Who says our senior leaders have to be senior citizens?

“Sixty-year-olds over the bridge!” 

-ancient Roman saying¹

No, the Romans didn’t throw their elders off bridges like some ancient rendition of the worst scene in the film Midsommar. They did, however, prevent them from entering the voting booths (accessible via bridge) once they reached 60 years of age. Of course, civilization has come a long way since then, and we live much longer.² Yet it seems to me that we have forgotten something that the Romans understood well.

If you’re guessing where I’m going with this post, let me be up front about it:

• This post is not about limiting the right of older people to vote.

• This post is not about enforcing a retirement age on politicians.

• This post is not about stoking generational animus.

• This post is about having representatives who actually represent the people that elect them, in their outlook, in their circumstances, and, yes, in their age. 

We need leaders who have a stake in the decisions they make because we all have to live with the consequences.

Let’s start with the yawning age gap. Americans are some of the youngest people in the rich world. Yet our elected leaders are easily the world’s oldest. The average American is 39 years old, while the average member of Congress is 59 (a 20 year gap!). Japan has the world’s oldest citizens on average (47), but their elected leaders are positively preteen by comparison (56). Fully 18% of our legislators are over 70; no other country’s total exceeds 8%!

It’s no surprise then that our senior leaders have had so many newsmaking senior moments in recent years: Dianne Feinstein, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Mitch McConnell come to mind. Kay Granger, an 81-year-old Texas congresswoman, hasn’t been present at a vote since July. Just this week some investigative journalists found her… at a nursing home with advanced dementia. And yes, there is Joe Biden. President Biden, to his eternal credit, made the selfless decision to pass the baton to a younger candidate. Why has the rest of the Democratic Party not followed his lead?

To be clear, this is a Democratic Party problem. Although the oldest member of Congress is Republican Senator Chuck Grassley (at 91!), Democrats make up 15 of the 20 oldest Senators and 15 of the 20 oldest Representatives in the House in the 118th Congress. Just this week, House Democratic leadership voted to nominate Rep. Gerry Connolly, 75, as the ranking member of the powerful House Oversight Committee, over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC is an extremely talented and hard-working young voice for the Democratic Party. Connolly meanwhile is battling cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. Yet Democratic leaders decided it was he rather than AOC who was the best person to lead the party on the committee that oversees and investigates the Trump 2.0 executive branch. Add in the fact that Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, 84, threw her weight behind his candidacy, and the image of a generational beatdown is inescapable. That may not be the whole story, but those are the optics, and in politics optics are everything.

During the Obama era, Democrats were the young party: President Obama was youthful, handsome, and energetic, and his coalition represented the next generation of American leaders. Given time, we were told, this generation would grow as a share of the electorate and usher in a new era of Democratic ascendance. Sixteen years on, Obama is gone, the previous generation is still in power, just older, and the youngest voters are flocking to the Republican Party.

If we are to reverse this trend, our Democratic leaders need to take younger voices a lot more seriously, for three reasons.

The first reason is moral. It is profoundly hypocritical for Democratic officials to serve so long that they die in their seats. The party of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama once inspired young voters by telling them to see themselves in their elected leaders. When the party repeatedly fails to deliver on this pledge, it tells young voters – not just aspirants to political office – that the Democratic Party says one thing and does another. 

Reflexive deference to seniority and incumbency is also a poor way to run a caucus. Leaders of all stripes know that their organizations’ success depends on having qualified managers who can take over when they inevitably leave the scene. Failing to make way for worthy younger candidates stifles their ambition and drives them to seek other careers. If they do stick around, they arrive stunted, having lost years of useful on-the-job experience. The trajectory of AOC’s own career over her three terms attests to this. Her first election in 2018 was a totally unexpected fluke, but the Democratic Party has benefited from her voice. How many more AOCs have we missed out on because Democratic leaders so privilege seniority and incumbency?

Lastly, sidelining young Democratic leaders undermines the Party’s viability, empowers Republicans, and ultimately damages the body politic. The corollary of the moral case above is that voters will reward the party whose elected leaders do look like them. There is evidence that Republicans are figuring this out. The rizz-free J.D. Vance (40) will be our country’s first millennial Vice President. Trump’s Secretary of State (53), Secretary of Defense (44), Attorney General (44), and Treasury Secretary (62), if confirmed, will be the youngest such lineup in at least the past five administrations. Trump’s choice for press secretary is 27. His cabinet would have four millennials, compared to just one in Biden’s (Pete Buttigieg). If Republicans are able to convince voters not only that they are the party of the working class, but also the party of the rising generation, Democrats will be spending a lot longer than just the next two years out of power. 

What can Democrats do? Here’s one suggestion that Democrats can implement right now: Repeal the incumbent-favor rule. This rule blacklists political consulting firms who support Democratic primary challengers and makes it very difficult for political newcomers to solicit professional campaign services. 

There is weakness in holding on. There is power in letting go. No matter what we as Democrats do, we have to move quickly, otherwise it will be us that voters are tossing over the bridge.

1. Or, if you’re interested in the original Latin, “sexagenarios de ponte”

2. Since you’re curious enough to have checked this footnote, I know you’re asking yourself, “Well what was life expectancy back then, Keith?” I have the answer! If you survived your teen years you could reasonably expect to see your early fifties. (Yes, I did look this up.)