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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?
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.
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