Gerontocracy

2003-2023 | 20 years

In this episode, the Chief Justice collapses, and the President’s staff has to try to get him to meet with the President so he can ask him to resign. The reason they want him to step down is that at 84 years old he is mentally and physically declining, endangering the Supreme Court’s ability to do its job. Aging politicians have been a recent topic in the news. In the last couple of months we have seen members of Congress have problems similar to those of the Chief Justice in this episode. The oldest serving Senator, Diane Feinstein, is 89 years old and has just returned to Congress after being gone for months with shingles. 9% of district and appellate court seats remain vacant, and her absence from the Senate Judiciary Committee has made it difficult for President Biden to get his judicial nominees confirmed. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 81, has frozen twice in the past few months while talking to the press, requiring his aids to intervene.

The 117th and 118th Congresses have been the second and third oldest in history, respectively. The average age of the current Congress is 58, meanwhile, the average age of the country is 38, a 20-year gap. The average age of the Supreme Court is 63, with the youngest justice being 51 and the oldest being 75. President Biden is 80 while former President Trump is 77. Because of all of this, some have started throwing around the word “Gerontocracy” to describe our government. A gerontocracy is a government ruled by old people.

Younger Americans aren’t getting the representation they need. Younger Americans will have to deal with the ramifications of a changing climate. Younger Americans pay into social security, but won’t get any payouts if Congress can’t make progress to keep the fund from going broke. In the past 50 years, the costs of college tuition and home prices have risen at about three times the amount of inflation. Consequently, it is difficult for older Congress members, who are paid six-figure salaries along with making money on the side, to understand the difficulties of younger Americans in buying a house or paying down student debt

But there are upsides to having more older people in office. They often have more experience than their younger counterparts. There also, of course, needs to be adequate representation of older Americans in government. The Inflation Reduction Act passed last year passed by Congress and Signed by President Biden also proves that the government is making headway on issues important to younger Americans (Inflation and the Environment).

A large majority of Americans favor age limits for elected officials. But the problem is that elected officials, who skew older, have no incentive to pass a law or amendment that limits their own careers. It is also difficult to pick an age at which lawmakers should stop serving, as each person is different, so any age chosen would be arbitrary. Some think that they should have to pass some sort of cognitive test or that legislators should also have term limits. But these fixes also have the same issues. Also, many make the argument that congressional representatives have to run for re-election every 2 or 6 years anyway, and the American people, by reelecting them, are deeming them fit for office. From this point of view adding limits to who can serve in Congress is subverting the will of the American people. The problem with this argument is that it is much easier for incumbents to get elected than those they are running against due to name recognition and the funding they get by already being in Congress.

There isn’t a clear solution, but there is a general consensus that those in government should retire when they are no longer fit to serve.