As the occupants of the White House and Congress grow older, how will generational conflicts define the future of American politics? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Late last month, as Washington\u2019s political and media elite gathered at the Hilton hotel for the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner, Joe Biden, 80, couldn\u2019t gloss over a fact that\u2019s increasingly colouring his political future: He\u2019s just an exceptionally old person to be president.
In fact, he\u2019s the oldest person to ever hold the White House.
\u201cI believe in the First Amendment, not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,\u201d the president began in his remarks, before good-naturedly taking The New York Times to task for stories about his age.
\u201cYou call me old? I call it being seasoned,\u201d he said. \u201cYou say I\u2019m ancient? I say I\u2019m wise. You say I\u2019m over the hill? Don Lemon would say that\u2019s a man in his prime.\u201d
The reference was a telling one. Mr Lemon, who was ousted from CNN last month, caused a minor media scandal when he commented about women of a certain age being past their \u201cprime\u201d. This remark was itself a reaction to former South Carolina governor and current presidential contender Nikki Haley calling, somewhat scandalously, for mental competency tests for politicians over age 75.
Generational conflict is nothing new in American politics, but age has played an especially prominent role in Washington in recent months, impacting everything from leadership battles in Congress to the future of the presidency, raising questions about fairness, gender, and the vitality America\u2019s very institutions themselves, which have scarcely ever been filled with more senior citizens.
Mr Biden may have been in a laughing mood at the Correspondents\u2019 Dinner, but that may have just been him putting on a smiling face for the cameras.
His pollsters are surely worried about recent data, such as a March poll finding 68 per cent of registered voters thought he was too old for another term, or an April poll finding that 70 per cent of adults said Mr Biden shouldn\u2019t run again, with the roughly same percentage saying age was a factor in that decision. The age-related worries are just the tip of the iceberg though. Overall, there\u2019s a marked lack of enthusiasm for Mr Biden, with 57 per cent of respondents in a recent poll suggesting the Democrats should nominate someone else in 2024. If these doubts were vanquished, and Mr Biden did win again, he would be 86 by the end of his second term.
If Mr Biden was re-elected, it would further cement the dominance baby boomers have exerted over national politics in recent decades, according to Kevin Munger, assistant professor of political science and social data analytics at Pennsylvania State University, author of Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture.
\u201cWe\u2019ve had 28 years of boomer presidency in a row,\u201d he said. \u201cThat streak was only ended by Joe Biden, who is technically too old to be a boomer by two years. That is unprecedented for a single generation.\u201d
Age was a political accelerant during the Donald Trump presidency, too.
Prior to Mr Biden, the billionaire, at age 70, was the oldest person ever to become president. Throughout his presidency, Mr Trump\u2019s mental fitness and cognitive health was a political flashpoint, with the former president bragging about his results on mental competency tests, psychologists openly opining about the president\u2019s mental acuity, and former advisers gossiping to the political press that Mr Trump\u2019s mental decline was so serious cabinet officials considered invoking the 25th Amendment and removing him from office.
Of course, Mr Trump, the insult-comic-in-chief, found a way to turn this speculation against his rival, dubbing Joe Biden \u201cSleepy Joe\u201d throughout the 2020 campaign season.
It\u2019s not just the White House, though, where age has been a concern.
The present Congress contains the second-oldest Senate and third-oldest House in US history. Generationally, the US population fits roughly into four, equal-sized blocks of about 20 to 25 per cent: ages 0 to 18, 19 to 34, 35 to 54, and 55-plus. The composition of Congress, meanwhile, is drastically tipped toward the elder part of that range, with the median House member aged 57.9 and the median senator aged 65.3.
Beyond just being another way the US government doesn\u2019t mirror the wider diversity of the US population, age within Congress can become a political weapon, used by both parties as part of their machinations.
In March, Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, the oldest US Senator, who has been dogged in her later years with accusations of declining mental faculties, was hospitalised with shingles, and has had to miss large swathes of in-person work in the upper chamber as she recovers.
The following month, she asked to temporarily be replaced on the key Senate Judiciary Committee, which handles the appointment of federal judges, one of the few remaining ways the Democrats can exert lasting influence in a divided Congress.
However, Republicans, knowing that the full Senate must approve committee assignments, have added a major, likely unacceptable demand for the Democrats: they\u2019ve asked that Senator Feinstein must resign the Senate entirely before they consider a replacement.
In a sign of just how scrambled the politics of age are on the Hill, members of both parties have argued such treatment is unfair, but that hasn\u2019t stopped the GOP from changing its tune.
Sen Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the demands \u201cvery anti-woman\u201d and \u201cvery anti-ageing\u201d in an interview with The Independent, while Sen Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, argued, \u201cThe Republicans are saying no, for no reason, other than trying to block the court from going forward in its investigation of the Supreme Court and pass more judges, which is the right of the majority to do.\u201d
The issue has divided the Democratic Party as well.
In April, rising star California congressman Ro Khanna forcibly called for Sen Feinstein to resign.
\u201cWe need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty,\u201d he said. \u201cWhile she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfil her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people.\u201d
Age has also been a clear undercurrent in House leadership battles, where former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a point to highlight the comparative youth of the new slate of Democratic leadership, following at times barbed exchanges between her and younger, more progressive parts of the party like representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
\u201cThe hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus,\u201d she said in November when she stepped aside. \u201cNow we must move boldly into the future, grounded by the principles that have propelled us this far, and open to fresh possibilities for the future.\u201d
All told, according to Professor Munger, the age of America\u2019s most senior politicians \u2013 Sen Chuck Schumer is 71, Sen Mitch McConnell is 81 \u2013 often means that issues that matter to other generations don\u2019t get top billing, leading both to disaffection and to bigger-picture existential issues, like a lack of serious climate legislation or the impending funding crisis of social security.
\u201cIt\u2019s been clear that because of the size of the boomer generation, at a certain point we were either going to have to raise taxes on the workforce or cut the benefits,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t do either of those things. Sometime in the 2030s, it\u2019s going to run out. They\u2019re not going to cut benefits to boomers. Instead, younger generations are going to have to fully fund this obvious 30-year shortfall.\u201d
In the case of social security in particular, many of the leaders deciding on the issue are current recipients, while those younger generations who will likely pay more or get less in the future aren\u2019t represented in office. A similar problem arises with climate change: the leaders holding up urgent action on the climate likely will not be alive to see the very worst impacts of their inaction.
\u201cThe issues that matter to younger generations don\u2019t get on the agenda at all,\u201d Prof Munger added.
Instituting a parliamentary system, he said, instead of our current winner-take-all model might lead to more representational and ideological diversity, but like major climate or benefit reform, overhauling the US election system doesn\u2019t seem to be a consensus priority at the moment.
And those younger generations in turn don\u2019t participate as much as they fully could at the national level.
In the 2022 midterms, only 23 per cent of eligible young Americans cast a ballot, up from 2014\u2019s woeful 13 per cent, but still well below the participation rate of older generations. The same held true in 2020, the highest turnout election of the 21st century: 76 per cent of those aged between 65 and 74 voted, while only 51.4 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 did.
Some of this demographic dominance is unavoidable, argues Philip Bump, Washington Post columnist and author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. The boomers, born in the abundant post-war years between 1946 and 1964, were until very recently the largest generation in US history. During their lifetimes, America cemented its place as a global economic superpower, the voting age was lowered to 18, and the federal government poured millions into creating a new middle class. It\u2019s no surprise then, Mr Bump says, that this generation has a strong hold on power.
\u201cThe baby boomers make up a disproportionate share of elected officials, especially at the federal level, simply by virtue of scale,\u201d he told The Independent.
Combine that with the built-in political advantages of incumbency and wealth, and you have a recipe for a political system tilted towards older people.
\u201cSenators are not usually just elected out of the blue,\u201d he added.
Some argue that critcising elected leaders, and the system at large, over age concerns is ageist, and often sexist as well, given the extra scrutiny paid to leaders such as former Speaker Pelosi or Senator Feinstein.
However, according to Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, an organisation that encourages young people to run for office, this is largely missing the point. Any one elected leader can be an effective and competent advocate regardless of age, she told The Independent, but we must acknowledge that the system at large needs to allow more young people in.
\u201cThis isn\u2019t about any one person. This is about a collective problem of Congress not being reflective of the American people,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know that in business, and in other governments, things work better when they\u2019re made up of diverse perspectives. All of us would be better served if there were more voices at the table.\u201d
According to Penn State\u2019s Professor Munger, debates about age in politics aren\u2019t new. During Ronald Reagan\u2019s second term, similar conversations about mental fitness and age circulated around the Beltway and the country at large. And, despite the apparent controversy of someone like Nikki Haley calling for age limits, the US already has such policies in other arenas, like age requirements for generals or pilots, or mandatory retirement ages in certain other professions.
What makes these conversations often intractable, though, is that they\u2019re not really ever just a conversation about age or reform, he argues. Both parties are always considering the partisan stakes.
\u201cThere\u2019s no way to have that debate except through the lens of immediate political reference,\u201d he said.
Finding some resolution to the generation wars will be urgent, however. There\u2019s a higher per cent of Americans older than 65 than there has ever been in US history, so questions about age, competence and representation aren\u2019t going away any time soon. Neither are big-picture problems like the climate crisis, where urgent action is needed now to prevent impacts that will play out in both a matter of seasons and centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n