Next month the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I live, can have its first genuinely competitive congressional election since I used to be in junior highschool, back within the late Seventies. This is going on only since the remapping of Recent York’s congressional districts left two incumbents fighting one another for a similar seat. So most of my neighbors, including the young couples I see walking dogs and pushing strollers, will make a choice from Jerrold Nadler, age 75, who entered Congress in 1992, and Carolyn Maloney, 76, who entered Congress in 1993. (A 3rd candidate, 38-year-old Suraj Patel, is taken into account a protracted shot against the 2 incumbents.)
I’m in my late 50s, well above the median age of 39 in the US, but elections still make me feel like I’m purported to shut up and let the grown-ups talk. I even have never voted for a president younger than me, and I can’t remember voting for a governor or U.S. senator younger than me, at the least in a general election. I even have voted for younger candidates only in primaries, including then-56-year-old Cynthia Nixon in her hapless campaign against Andrew Cuomo in 2018.
I’m in my late 50s, but elections still make me feel like I’m purported to shut up and let the grown-ups talk.
So I even have sympathy for the people much younger than myself who complain about political leaders past their prime, including President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (79), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (82), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (71), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (80) and Donald Trump (76), the ex-president who desires to get back into the White House. And it is just not just the leaders in Congress who’re much older than most Americans: After the 2020 election, the median age within the U.S. Senate rose to 64.3 years, the oldest in American history. It is not any wonder that the legislative chamber is infamous for its shaky knowledge of latest technology it’s purported to help regulate.
And younger voters are getting impatient. Last month, a Recent York Times survey found that an astounding 94 percent of Democrats under 30 are not looking for Mr. Biden as their party’s presidential nominee in 2024 (compared with 64 percent of all Democrats and 42 percent of those over 65). Amongst all of the respondents who want to interchange Mr. Biden, 33 percent cited “age” as an important reason, just ahead of “job performance” at 32 percent. (Twitter outrage notwithstanding, only 10 percent said Mr. Biden isn’t “progressive enough.”)
One reason for such dissatisfaction is that younger voters have different political priorities. The Times survey found that older voters were focused on the economy, while younger Americans were just as prone to cite guns, abortion and the “state of democracy” as an important issue facing the country. In a companion story, The Times interviewed younger voters and got comments like “How are you going to accurately lead your country in case your mind continues to be stuck 50, 60 or 70 years ago?” Juan Flores, a 23-year-old who works for Amazon, suggested that too many leaders also come from privilege: “I feel like a whole lot of politicians, they already come from upbringing.… [They] don’t really fully understand the scope of what the vast majority of the American individuals are going through.”
I can’t claim to totally understand myself. I took out student loans in college, but they were within the hundreds, not the tens of hundreds. I could get through my lean income years sharing apartments in triple-deckers in Boston and paying a number of hundred bucks a month. And I didn’t should worry about starting a profession or family in a town that is likely to be underwater (or uninhabitably hot) in only a few many years. I’m younger than most U.S. senators, but I still come from a distinct world than most of my fellow residents.
With so many problems facing the US without delay, it wouldn’t be a nasty idea for each congressional district to have a Representative Emeritus or two.
Definitely, there are some advantages to having seasoned political leaders. Particularly within the Democratic Party, the seniority system has helped to preserve racial and gender diversity by applying the identical criterion to everyone: In case you do your job, you retain your job for so long as you wish it. That is why so many have been uncomfortable with the suggestions that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must have retired before her death at age 87; that it might need been time for Speaker Pelosi to offer up the gavel 4 years ago, at age 78; or that California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is probably not as much as the job at age 88. (In spite of everything, Strom Thurmond, a person, served until he was 100!)
This reasoning can also be why nobody will likely be surprised if U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, who each ousted 20-year incumbents by arguing they were out of touch with their constituents, are still in Congress 30 or 40 years from now. If the “latest generation” of political leaders looks too very like Pete Buttigieg (40) and Ron DeSantis (43)—and there is no such thing as a reason it should—then even younger voters might imagine twice a couple of wholesale change.
As well as, long-serving members of Congress, like Reps. Nadler and Maloney, argue that there are advantages from having leaders with a near-lifetime of data. Pope Francis (who faces his own questions on whether he’s getting too old to guide) has continuously reminded us that the wisdom of old age could be a corrective to the “excess of ideology” often exhibited by younger residents.
However the pope has also said that elders should apply this wisdom toward an “alliance between generations,” relatively than toward “inertia” or their very own survival “on the expense of others.” There are many opportunities for veteran political leaders to advise newcomers without hanging on to positions of power for all times. And the previous pope can have given us path forward: With so many problems facing the US without delay, it wouldn’t be a nasty idea for each congressional district to have a Representative Emeritus or two.
[Read next: “Reading the news is torture enough. Watching TV shouldn’t be.”]
