Mitch McConnell has episode at the podium

That's really in poor taste, and childish to boot.

 

I saw it somewhere this afternoon and cringed. Though I don't like the bastard, you hate to see someone displayed like that on tv.

 

My wife tests me regularly and, get this, for free! I'm often deemed delusional (which may not surprise some - most of? - you).

 

You are nasty sir.

 

Who says they haven't?

 

For all of these old farts, it was still 65.

 

Hard to watch. But looking at Mitch, I get the feeling that he (like Feinstein) is such a creature of the institution that dying in the senate chamber is the plan.

 

70 currently.

 

Just keep it simple. No one in Congress can run for re-election after their 70th birthday.

POtUS already has term limits so if we keep electing first term septuagenarians or re-electing octogenarians, that’s largely on us. But hopefully a younger Congress ultimately breeds a younger pool of POTUS candidates.

Tired of seeing 70-80 year olds telling us how we should be running our lives and country when they’ve largely lost touch with most of the rest of us, and I can’t imagine how abjectly uninspiring that must be for anyone 40 and under. (I’m 63 so it’s not like I’m a spring chicken)

 

I think age limits is less of a pipe dream than term limits. I also think age limits might pave the way for term limits. Of course all the dinosaurs in Congress are the most staunchly opposed to term limits.

 

There are 21 senators between the ages of 70 and 80. That is insane.

 

With 4 more Senators (one 89 and another 90) and 15 House members over 80,

 

I agree in principle where we live in an idealistic world where the voters are able to be fully informed. But the truth is, whatever health issues brought on by aging that these people have, we are not allowed to know it. The truth of it is deliberately hidden by several cohorts who have competing interests not necessarily aligned with our collective need to have the nation’s key leader’s functioning at top cognitive ability. Families want to avoid embarrassment and protect the dignity of their loved one. Staffs want to keep their positions. People with unofficial authority want to keep the influence they have through the leader in question. Parties don’t want to risk losing whatever power they hold via this person. A reasonable age restriction protects the democratic institutions we are trying to preserve and reduces the need for these cohorts to lie to us.

 

I know it's agism, but nobody is hiring a 70-80 year old for basically any other job. But somehow they hold these super important jobs

 

Is it agism that we have minimum-age restrictions on many other activities or life, including public service, or is it a cold recognition that, generally speaking, people do not have the cognitive skills necessary to perform certain tasks until they reach a certain level of maturity? The reverse is also true. Physical and cognitive ability declines at a certain point. That is just a cold fact of life for all of us.

 

Age and term limits are interesting issues, because they both imply that we are asking for our own choices to be limited. “Please make it illegal for us to vote for X-type candidate.” If X-type candidate is so bad, why are we voting for them over the other options in the first place?

And not that I disagree that these octogenarians are problematic leaders. But something feels weird about barring the candidacy of kinds of people that keep winning these democratic elections.

 

It maxes out at 70. At 67 you can draw it and continue to work full time without penalty.

 

I’m no McC fan, but sad to see him dying on camera.

 

People seem all excited by term limits, but I haven’t seen any evidence that new congress persons are better than established ones. Actually the opposite. Most of the newer ones don’t care if they accomplish anything, they just want to get their video snippets for their constituents favorite news outlets.

 

Why? It's definitely a possibility