Our permanent gerontocracy

“Grow old along with me!”

Robert Browning; Rabbi Ben Ezra

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We deserve better.

The median age of the population of the United States is just under 39 years. It pales in comparison to the age of our representatives. House members, who need be only 25, average 58 years old, while the average Senator tops in at 64, with 34% of the Senate over 70!

There’s nothing intrinsically “wrong” with growing old. Just think of the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, who produced astonishing, daring, inventive art well into his 80’s. But few of our representatives could be considered a Titian. No, our representatives are like most of the rest of us, when growing older too often means growing less flexible, less receptive of change, more interested in preservation than creation, more vested in the past than in the future. What’s worse, illness and senility stalk the halls.

One of the structural defects of our Congress is that it unduly rewards seniority. Although there is much to be gained from experience (our two most effective recent Speakers, Sam Rayburn and Nancy Pelosi, worked successfully well into their 70’s), there are also losses, not least of which is a diminishing connection with that huge younger swath of the population, their needs, their vision of the future.

Just look at the positions so many in Congress have recently espoused: denying climate change while the country stews in its hottest summer ever; impeding the transition to renewable energy and the vast green economy that is evolving under their eyes; and seeking to install a petrified notion of our own history.