Trego's Mountain Ear

I’ve reached an age where complaining about a gerontocracy is complaining about my own generation – but the problem is worse now than when I was younger. Joe Biden leaves the White House at 82, Donald Trump goes in at 78. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell steps down as Senate Minority leader at a month shy of 83. The youthful Charles Schumer moves back into the Minority Leader role at 74. Nancy Pelosi has stepped down from the Speaker’s role, but she’s hanging on as an 84 year-old representative.

And I remember the saying that the good die young. If true, it says a lot about our ruling class. Too old, entirely too old. PEW says the median age in the Senate as it starts in 2025 is 64.7 – the last start was 65.3. The House is a little younger – 57.5. PEW shows the spread in this chart:

The article is worth reading at: https://www.pewresearch.org

There are some fairly strong arguments that Ronald Reagan was showing signs of Alzheimers when he was elected to his second term in 1984.  It seems obvious that Joe Biden spent the last four years limited by his dementia – though, to be fair, Biden never was the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Two senile presidents in my lifetime – and, since I’m not dead yet, let me add “so far.”