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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29148 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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McConell had a scary moment which looks like it could be the onset of dementia or Alzheimers. He froze up for a solid 30 seconds just staring aimlessly when a question was asked of him as to whether he would run for re-election in 2026. People have been saying similar things about Biden, although Biden has had the same verbal tics for his entire career so it'd be harder to know for certain. Dianne Feinstein only just recently announced her retirement despite being over 90 years old. Trump is hardly a spring chicken himself at 77 years old.

Some have advocated for age limits on politicians, as older people can have cognitive decline and are presumably out-of-touch compared to younger counterparts. How much of a real issue is this? How long can aides keep cognitive decline out of the spotlight for before it becomes too obvious to ignore?

This seems to suggest that Xers were on average less likely to enter party politics than Boomers. One theory I’ve seen proposed on this board is that since Xers were more likely to delay adolescence and family formation, they usually spent relatively more time on childrearing and had thus less time to engage in anything else. I wonder if there’s hard data on this.

I suspect it's mostly about generation size.

This seems to be very plausible, at least as a partial explanation. Boomers thought that Reagan and Bob Dole were too old in the 1980s and 1990s. Now they're that age, suddenly being in your 70s and 80s doesn't seem to mean "old" any more...

Hard to believe that the USSR got a reputation as a gerontocracy with such sprightly young leaders as Brezhnev (76 at death), Andropov (69 at death) and Chernenko (~73 at death).

As others have pointed out, we might also worry about (say) Fetterman's cognitive capabilities. Or the emotional stability of some of congress's younger members.

I think it's better to look at this as a symptom. It's not like U.S. voters got together and said "okay, we'd like a gerontocracy". Rather, there's some underlying dysfunction preventing these people from being kicked out. This dysfunction ought to be identified and rectified, not just because having senile officeholders is bad, but because there may be still worse consequences.

We observe that politicians remain in office despite obvious incapacity. Outlawing a single obvious incapacity is hardly a solution.

Because partisan politics means that both unless you have a maverick like Ted Cruz or Bernie sanders, it doesn’t matter if your senator is a smart person, a senile old man, suffering from brain damage, a monkey in a suit, etc, and that core voters(the people who need to be convinced to toss a 90 year old under power of attorney from the senate) are loyal to the party above all and would rather keep an obvious bad case than take a risk, no matter how small.

Politician is such a weird and ill-defined job but at least for the legislative role, I figure that most voters will be willing to vote a sentient skeleton into office provided it can pull the correct lever in Congress. Both Fetterman and Herschel Walker exhibited odd behavior that raised valid concerns about their cognitive capacity, but whether or not that was a problem fell along a cleanly-cut partisan schism.

I think cognitive capacity matters more for executive positions but then again I was shocked to learn that even the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was delegated to a 'Target Committee', with Truman not even finding out until after it already happened.

"Important for the Executive, less so for the Legislative" is an interesting take. Congressmen do some more involved things like negotiating, going to classified committees, etc. If the thought is that their aides could do enough of that to create a reasonable facsimile, wouldn't that be true for the Executive as well?

Yes, every elected position has an army of support staff there to do the actual gruntwork, and it tends to be commensurate with the position's importance. Feinstein's staff apparently is there not just to fill in the gaps but also to tell whether to say Aye/Nay. A judge is in a similar position with their clerks, I've spoken to lots of clerks who were shocked at how much autonomy they had in deciding how to write a case opinion.

Everyone declines on their own timeline. Witness Fetterman (54). Also witness Charlie Munger (99) and Warren Buffett (93). I actually think the latter two showed their age at the last annual meetings, but they were functional for a long time and still somewhat functional. Trump I think is in no obvious decline.

Voters get to choose. Ageism is bad. Partisan politics and some other issues are probably letting some bad candidates thru but simply picking ages doesn’t make sense to me.

I’ll disagree with Trump on a lot of things but at 77 he probably shows more life energy than myself.

Joe Biden (80) I think is past his sell by date and should just be enjoying life with his grandkids but the left is able to unite around him so that’s fine to me. I don’t think he’s the decision maker but for whatever reason he likes being the front man.

Ageism is bad

If this is true it should cut both ways. Why can a 34 year old not president but an 84 year old can?

I never said we should have a 34 year old limit. If Trump were to be assassinated and the GOP decides Barron Trump is the best candidate to unite the party around then they should be allowed to. I wouldn’t consider Barron as less qualified than Joe right now.

34 is an allusion to the provision of the US constitution that requires the President to be at least 35 years old.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The average age of a member of Congress is 59 years old, the oldest in modern history. The United States used to criticize the ‘gerontocracy’ of the Soviet Union of the 1970s-1980s, as Glen Greenwald points out here.

We have constitutional age minimums for elected office, so why not age maximums? I don’t trust our geriatric leadership to respond effectively to a real threat to the country. If we have to rely on their handlers instead, just now representative are our elected leaders? We need a ruling class that is virile, strong, responsive, and bold.

We need a ruling class that is virile, strong, responsive, and bold. So, we want a ruling class of adolescent males? Weren't the COVID policies that so many here complain about examples of virile, strong, responsive, and bold policies? As was crossing the 38th Parallel.

Perhaps we need a ruling class that is thoughtful, levelheaded, and wary rather than virile, strong, responsive, and bold.

heavy-handed COVID policies were driven largely by the fact that the elderly people in charge were under greater threat than the public at large, and reacted emotionally out of fear. If the government were run by a bunch of healthy, 30-year old frat bros rather than octogenarians willing to sacrifice their grandchildren's schooling for a misplaced sense of security, none of this would have ever happened.

COVID policies were enacted at the state level, where (to hazard a guess) the governors were younger and more responsive to the threat than our elderly Congress. The only federal legislative response I can think of was the CARES Act in 2020. I would have preferred decisive action early in 2020 by Congress—even if wrongheaded—then to pivot quickly once we knew more about COVID. Instead, we got a lumbering, indecisive Congress afraid to take strong actions in an election year. Maybe Congress was too old to risk bold policy in the face of uncertainty. More cynically, maybe this was the point given the Democrat-controlled Congress and a Republican President.

I don’t know enough about the Korean War to comment about that, sorry.

Maybe Congress was too old to risk bold policy in the face of uncertainty.

Alternatively, perhaps they were too wise to risk bold policy in the face of uncertainty. Although it seems to me that Congress in fact did quite a bit.

And my point is not about old versus young. It is about your professed, and it seems to me, rather thoughtless, preference for "virile, strong, responsive, and bold" action, "even if wrongheaded."

Eh, I'm the weirdo who thinks this is just a particularly bad moment with Mitch, Biden, and Trump in leadership positions and it'll soon pass.

Look at both parties - on the Democratic side, whether you like them or not, they're Newsom, Harris, Shapiro, Whitmer, Walz, etc. all of whom are normal political ages, and Pelosi just stepped down.

For the GOP, there's DeSantis, Reynolds, Hawley, Cruz, Kemp, etc. who again, are all in normal political leader ages, and McCarthy and most of McConnell's likely successors.

Now, the actual problem is that in 2028, if he's still living, the 80-something Trump will still likely be the choice of at least 30-40% of the primary voting base.

On the other hand, everyone else had an equally awful Covid response except for a few places that were worse.

How determinative is age really, on covid policy opinion? The youthful Briahna Joy Gray e.g. appears to agree with the oldies on this subject.

It might not even be dementia. Elderly people have less physical stamina and "slack in the system" in general. A bad night's sleep (not uncommon for politicians), mild food poisoning, a dizzy spell, whatever - they're all going to hit an 80-year-old harder than a 40-year-old.

People do vary a lot, so I don't find it inconceivable that there might be some octogenarians who are perfectly fit to be senior politicians. What's eerie is the increase in politicians now being so elderly. Whether or not they're fit for the role strikes me as secondary to working out the reasons for the change. And simply banning them seems very unlikely to solve the actual core problem that's producing this phenomenon.

What's eerie is the increase in politicians now being so elderly

America is more elderly across the board now; median age continues to rise. I suspect if you managed to gather the appropriate statistics, you'd find there is an increase in age in most professions. Barring a few where physical capability is a requirement.

working out the reasons for the change.

Quoting myself from several years ago:

It was enlightening to read the discussion at a heavily left-wing site of Feinstein's decision to run for reelection. She's 84 years old. She's despised by socialists and moderate leftists, only slightly less than by conservatives and libertarians. Even to non-ideological Democratic partisans, she's taking up a safe-for-the-party seat that even the most cynical would like to have available for "grooming" future presidential candidates.

BUT, when they finally do replace her, they won't just get a new young senator in return for an retiring old Senator, they'll lose a senior-ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Intelligence Committee, Appropriations Committee, etc. They'll be forfeiting whatever favors other senators owe her, losing the web of relationships she's spent decades building, etc.

So, the left-wing majority position appears to be that this Senator, who is cursed and despised by even her own voters, needs to stay in office for as long as modern medicine can keep her from keeling over, because that's the way all the structural incentives are set up.

These are the same incentives faced by voters for every elderly member of Congress, and they won't be fixed by merely exposing the fact of senility there. Even if that exposure had had a list of names attached, and Feinstein was on it, it wouldn't change the game theory here, it would just mean that voters would be reelecting her "handlers" as much as her.

But you're right to point out that the important thing here is the change, the increase - why wasn't this as big a problem thirty years ago? My first guess would be that it's some combination of massive polarization and growing gerrymandering. Even when partisan voters lacked any motivation to replace their own representatives from within their own parties, there would frequently be some sway in the weaker partisans and independents that forced them to accept a replacement by the other party, and then when the first party had a chance to win back control they'd naturally try to do it with new blood. I'd love to hear other theories, though.

they'll lose a senior-ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Intelligence Committee, Appropriations Committee, etc. They'll be forfeiting whatever favors other senators owe her, losing the web of relationships she's spent decades building, etc.

That's the stated reason, yes. The actual reason is that replacing the senator means replacing the staff. Hundreds of people that the permanent bureaucracy likes and knows how to manage. Firing all those people kicks over the table, which they don't want. And if the permanent bureaucracy doesn't like something, it doesn't happen.

It's basically that on the Congressional list, and as I said above, really bad timing w/ Mitch, Biden, Pelosi, and Trump all in power. But, Pelosi has stepped down, Biden will be done after 2024 or his next term, and Mitch will likely be gone at worst at his next election. After that, there aren't a ton of new 70 year olds vying for power - Bernie & Warren aren't running again, and in both parties, there are 40-60 year old politicians ready to run.

I think in a century, it'll be noted this was a weird genorcratic period - maybe something about wanting older leadership after the chaos of the Recession w/ Obama at the helm will be some college students doctorate or something.

But you're right to point out that the important thing here is the change, the increase - why wasn't this as big a problem thirty years ago?

Wait, in the Senate? Did you never hear of Strom Thurmond?

The Senate is a bizarre institution, and extrapolating…anything…from an N=100 dataset is folly. Once you’re in the Senate, it takes a LOT to get you out of the Senate, as seen from this list. There’s only 2 Senators from each state, and once you’re in you immediately accumulate a huge amount of power but then also pretty much vote along party lines, and unless you do something truly wildly insanely wrong, your state party has no particular reason to kick you out.

extrapolating…anything…from an N=100 dataset is folly

So if you tossed a coin 100 times and it landed heads 98 times, you would be agnostic about whether it was biased?

Did you never hear of Strom Thurmond?

Sure. Hence "why wasn't this as big a problem", not "why wasn't this a problem". 30 years ago 6% of Congress was over 70; when Thurmond retired it was 8%; when I was goggling at Feinstein it was 18%; now it's 23%.

extrapolating…anything…from an N=100 dataset is folly

The House is a bit more data, and the secular trend in Congress as a whole seems to overwhelm low-sample-size jitter. I guess we'd expect a ton of temporal auto-correlation, though, so maybe the explanation is as simple as "we're in the period after demographics gave big opportunities to Silent Generation and Baby Boomer politicians but before senescence pushes them out"?

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