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Notes -
The average age of a member of Congress is 59 years old, the oldest in modern history. The United States used to criticize the ‘gerontocracy’ of the Soviet Union of the 1970s-1980s, as Glen Greenwald points out here.
We have constitutional age minimums for elected office, so why not age maximums? I don’t trust our geriatric leadership to respond effectively to a real threat to the country. If we have to rely on their handlers instead, just now representative are our elected leaders? We need a ruling class that is virile, strong, responsive, and bold.
Perhaps we need a ruling class that is thoughtful, levelheaded, and wary rather than virile, strong, responsive, and bold.
heavy-handed COVID policies were driven largely by the fact that the elderly people in charge were under greater threat than the public at large, and reacted emotionally out of fear. If the government were run by a bunch of healthy, 30-year old frat bros rather than octogenarians willing to sacrifice their grandchildren's schooling for a misplaced sense of security, none of this would have ever happened.
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COVID policies were enacted at the state level, where (to hazard a guess) the governors were younger and more responsive to the threat than our elderly Congress. The only federal legislative response I can think of was the CARES Act in 2020. I would have preferred decisive action early in 2020 by Congress—even if wrongheaded—then to pivot quickly once we knew more about COVID. Instead, we got a lumbering, indecisive Congress afraid to take strong actions in an election year. Maybe Congress was too old to risk bold policy in the face of uncertainty. More cynically, maybe this was the point given the Democrat-controlled Congress and a Republican President.
I don’t know enough about the Korean War to comment about that, sorry.
Alternatively, perhaps they were too wise to risk bold policy in the face of uncertainty. Although it seems to me that Congress in fact did quite a bit.
And my point is not about old versus young. It is about your professed, and it seems to me, rather thoughtless, preference for "virile, strong, responsive, and bold" action, "even if wrongheaded."
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Eh, I'm the weirdo who thinks this is just a particularly bad moment with Mitch, Biden, and Trump in leadership positions and it'll soon pass.
Look at both parties - on the Democratic side, whether you like them or not, they're Newsom, Harris, Shapiro, Whitmer, Walz, etc. all of whom are normal political ages, and Pelosi just stepped down.
For the GOP, there's DeSantis, Reynolds, Hawley, Cruz, Kemp, etc. who again, are all in normal political leader ages, and McCarthy and most of McConnell's likely successors.
Now, the actual problem is that in 2028, if he's still living, the 80-something Trump will still likely be the choice of at least 30-40% of the primary voting base.
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On the other hand, everyone else had an equally awful Covid response except for a few places that were worse.
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How determinative is age really, on covid policy opinion? The youthful Briahna Joy Gray e.g. appears to agree with the oldies on this subject.
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