Mitch McConnell — What’s His Condition? (No teasers!)

Do you know if age or term limits were ever discussed at the constitutional convention?
In the Philadelphia Convention of 1787? Not that I recall.
Life expectancies were lower. I've buried 3 out of 4 parents/in-laws, so I have some experience watching the elderly. Modern medicine has figured out how to keep a body alive a lot longer than a century ago, but doctors have not figured out how to help the elderly to keep the mental acuity at peak or near-peak efficiency. Not every elderly person loses his/her mental acuity (I know an 93 year old who is sharp as a tack and I've known some 60 year olds whom I would not put in charge of pouring urine out of a boot with instructions written on the bottom of the heel). On average, however, octogenarians tend to be less sharp mentally than they had been in their sixties.
In the 1700s, most of those people would have died in their fifties or sixties so they did not live long enough for their brains to lose acuity. Thus "aging out" of eligibility for office was an unknown problem. At their deaths, the average age of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence was 66.

As for term limits, William Symmes in the Massachusetts state convention said this: "I have been, and still am, desirous of a rotation in office [i.e. term limits], to prevent the final perpetuation of power in the same men."

Richard Harrison of New York, on the other hand, said this about re-eligibility and ambitious politicians: "If the senator is conscious that his reëlection depends only on the will of the people, and is not fettered by any law, he will feel an ambition to deserve well of the public. (i.e. he will try to earn re-election.) On the contrary, if he knows that no meritorious exertions of his own can procure a reappointment, he will become more unambitious, and regardless of the public opinion." (i.e. will ignore public opinion).
 
FWIW:

The median age of a Congresscritter in 1956 (seven decades ago) was about 53, Senate about 58.
Today, the median is about 57 1/2 in the House and close to 65 in the Senate.

I said MEDIAN, not AVERAGE.

So they've added a little over 4 years in the House and seven in the Senate.
Life expectancy (I know, I know) was 69 and has increased to 79, so those numbers actually parallel quite well. Remember, you can't be in the House for the first 25 years of your life or Senate the first 30.

Whether this SHOULD be so is a discussion worth having. I have a problem with a PRESIDENT who cannot function late at night and immediate process things, and the reason is obvious: a PRESIDENT holds the nuclear football to decide the future of civilization.

A Senator, for better or worse, is one of 100 people who tends to have very little influence save for a few effective ones who can work a President if he's in their own party.


But that gets back to a point covered ad nauseum here: it is incumbent upon the VOTERS to reject these folks if they're "too old." I cannot blame Feinstein-Grassley-McConnell-Strom-etc for staying in office if the voters put them there.


Way back in 1970, a 65-year-old Senator from Delaware (John J Williams) retired, largely because he was now 65 himself (and he advocated mandatory retirement for everyone at that age) and also because a young guy (49) named William Roth was sorta pushing him out the door.

Thirty years later (in 2000), Roth decided at 79 to run for a sixth term in Delaware and while being popular, he collapsed twice during the campaign, once in a TV interview and once during a campaign event.

He got smoked, 56-44, by 53-year-old Tom Carper and died in 2003, when he would have been in office.
Carper served until 2025, retiring at 77.
 

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