When former President Bill Clinton appeared at the White House in early 2023, he was there to join President Joe Biden in celebrating his 30th birthday Family and Medical Leave Act. It was hard to avoid the fact that it had been three decades since Clinton had been in office – yet at 77, he is somehow three years younger than Biden.
Biden, now 81, is the first octogenarian to occupy the Oval Office – and his primary opponent, former President Donald Trump, is 77. A Monmouth University poll conducted in October 2023 found that about three-quarters of voters believe Biden is too old for officeand nearly half of voters think Trump is too old to serve.
My former boss, President George HW Bush, thankfully chose not to challenge Clinton again in the 1996 election. Had she run and won, she would have been 72 in the 1997 inauguration. Instead, he enjoyed a wonderful second act filled with humanitarian causes, parachute and grandchildren. Bush’s post-presidential life and American ideals of retirement broadly speaking, they raise the question of why these two men, Biden and Trump – who are more than a decade and a half apart average american retirement age – they proceed again for one of the hardest jobs in the world.
A tendency towards the elderly
Trump and Biden are two of the three oldest men to ever serve as president. For 140 years, William Henry Harrison owned the Record as the oldest person ever elected president, until Ronald Reagan came along. Harrison was a relatively young 68 when he took office in 1841, and Reagan was 69 at his first inauguration in 1981.
When Reagan left office at age 77, he was the oldest person to ever serve as president. Trump left office at the age of 74, making him the third-oldest to hold office, behind Reagan and Biden.
According to the Census Bureau, the middle age in America he is 38.9 years old. But with the average ages in the House and Senate at 58 and 64, respectively, a word often used to describe the nation’s ruling class is “seniocracy.”
Teen Vogue, who recently published a story explaining the word to younger voters, defines the term as “government by the elderly.” Gerontocracies are more common among religious leaders such as the Vatican the the ayatollahs in Iran. They were also common in communist government committees such as Soviet Politburo during the Cold War. In democracies, elderly leaders are less common.
Beyond the White House
Biden and Trump aren’t the only aging leaders in the U.S. It’s a bipartisan trend: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, is 72, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, is 81. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley he was just re-elected and is in his 90s with no plans to retire. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders is 81 years old and hasn’t mentioned retirement at all.
In the House, California Democrat and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, age 83, has just announced that he will run for re-election for her. 19th full term. Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat serving as a non-voting representative from Washington, D.C., are both 86. Kentucky Republican Harold Rogers and California Democrat Maxine Waters are both 85 years old. 84. The the list goes onand none of these politicians have announced they are retiring.
A local Capitol pharmacist made headlines a few years ago when he revealed that he was filling Alzheimer’s drug prescriptions for members of Congress. Each of the 20 Former Members of Congress it’s at least 80, and that’s it the third oldest House and Senate since 1789;.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Late retirement
What is happening here?
Most baby boomers who delay retirement do so because they do cannot afford stop working, due to inflation or lack of savings. But all these political leaders have a lot of money in the bank – many are millionaires. If they got a pension, they would enjoy it state pensions and health care benefits except for Medicare. So for them, it is not possible financially.
One theory is that it is denial. No one likes to be reminded of their own mortality. I know people who equate retirement with death, often because of others they know who have died soon after they quit – which may explain why both Senator Dianne Feinstein and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg he stayed on the job so long, he died while still in office at the ages of 90 and 87, respectively.
For others, it’s based on identity. Many of the senior leaders I’ve seen have worked so hard for so long that their entire identity is tied to their work. Plus, years of hard work means they have no hobbies to enjoy in their remaining years.
Another theory is the ego. Some legislators believe they are indispensable – that they are the only ones who can possibly do the job. They’re not exactly humble.
In the political world, their interest is often in power as well. These are the guys who think: Why don’t I want to keep voting in a tightly divided House or Senate, or keep giving speeches and flying on Air Force One as president, or tell myself I’m saving democracy?
It is easy to see why so few of them want to leave.
Age limits?
There have been calls for age limits for federal elected office. Despite all these, federal law enforcement officers they have a mandatory pension at 57. So too national park rangers. However, the most stressful job in the world has no upper age limit.
For those who think mandatory retirement is ageist and arbitrary, there are other options: Republican candidate Nikki Haley called mandatory mental ability tests for elected leaders who are 75 or older, though he said success would not be a required qualification for office, and failure would not be grounds for removal. A September 2023 poll shows The vast majority of Americans support competency testing. That way, the audience would know who was sharp and who wasn’t. Sounds like a good idea to me.
So is having the generosity to step aside and think of others. And have the wisdom to realize that life is short and there’s more to it than going to work. And having the grace to do what John F. Kennedy, the nation’s second youngest president, once said: pass the torch to a new generation of Americans.
My colleague Professor Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, he puts it well: “I’m 70, so I have a lot of sympathy for these people: 80 seems a lot younger than it used to be, as far as I’m concerned. But no, it’s ridiculous. We need to go back to electing people in their 50s and early 60s.” And shows polls that most Americans would say, “Amen, brother.”
