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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?
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.
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