When former President Joe Biden unraveled on the debate stage before 51 million television viewers, some Republicans were no doubt giddy. I was not. Like many people, I have watched cognitive decline afflict loved ones, often parents. What unfolded that night was sad. Whatever the precise nature of Biden’s condition, he plainly should not have been offered for election in 2020 (as the newly released taped interviews indicating mental decline as early as 2017 show), let alone reelection in 2024.
Yet Democrats pushed him forward — while keeping him out of the public eye as much as they could — until his deterioration could no longer be concealed. Then he was dragged behind the Democratic National Committee woodshed and given the Bambi treatment.
The Biden episode — and the public health struggles of senators such as Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the late Dianne Feinstein — underscores a troubling development in Washington that accompanies one of modern medicine’s greatest achievements: people are living longer, but political careers are lengthening with them.
CONGRESS CAN’T TERM-LIMIT ITSELF — THE SUPREME COURT ALREADY SAID SO, TWICE
Biden was hardly the only member of the governing establishment to retain power past his sell-by date, nor is the problem confined to one party. Six sitting senators were born before or during World War II. Thirty-five are at least 70 years old: 19 Republicans, 14 Democrats, and two independents who caucus with the Democrats. Sixty-five senators are 62 or older, the age at which most people can claim Social Security retirement benefits.
The House is younger because it was designed to be the more fluid chamber, with elections every two years. Not so the Senate. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and McConnell have each occupied a Senate seat for more than 41 years. More broadly, only about 1 in 18 voting members of Congress is between 25 and 39, although that age cohort constitutes roughly 29% of the public.
Longevity is a remarkable social achievement. Being alive, however, is not the same as being effective. Voters are entitled to ask whether an official can still perform one of the world’s most demanding jobs.
The danger is twofold.
First comes competence. How can someone make sound decisions affecting millions of people — or involving war, nuclear weapons, and financial markets — if he cannot reliably understand the information before him?
Second comes democratic legitimacy. When an elected official can no longer govern, authority inevitably shifts to unelected advisers, aides, and family members. The public may have voted for the name on the ballot, but someone else begins exercising the power. Biden’s created precisely that fear, namely that the visible president had become a figurehead while people unknown to the electorate made consequential decisions behind the curtain.
Even President Donald Trump, arguably the most energetic senior citizen to occupy the Oval Office since Ronald Reagan, appears to be slowing. He sounded tired during his latest primetime address. Trump is 80 and will be 82 when he leaves office. Two years at that age can matter far more than two years at 30.
The framers built an extraordinarily durable system in Philadelphia in 1787, but they made one serious omission: no term limits for members of Congress. And although they were clear about how old one had to be to hold office, they declined to bracket it with an age limit the other way. Certainly there should be an age ceiling for the presidency.
Their failure is understandable. Eighteenth-century travel was slow and punishing. Martha Washington’s 1775 journey from Mount Vernon, Virginia, to her husband’s camp in Cambridge, Massachusetts, covered roughly 450 rugged miles by horse and carriage and took 25 days. The city of Washington itself was humid, mosquito-ridden, and hardly an obvious place to build a lifelong career. Most of the founders were already accomplished outside government. Leaving farms, businesses, and law practices to serve for modest compensation seemed like a sacrifice, not a winning lottery ticket.
Today it is a coveted profession. Washington has accumulated enormous power and an immense treasury, creating opportunities for lobbyist influence, profitable relationships, privileged information, and lucrative post-government employment. Former officials become television commentators, corporate directors, university presidents, lobbyists, and highly paid speakers. They also receive generous pensions.
Democrats have shown an extraordinary willingness to overlook infirmity when power is at stake, while Republicans denounce the practice while tolerating their own gerontocracy. They generate plenty of Sturm und Drang for the cameras, yet Grassley, McConnell, and other long-serving figures remain as long as their voters and parties permit it. The problem is bipartisan because the incentives are bipartisan.
Only two years ago, the United States — with the world’s most lethal military and 750 overseas base sites in roughly 80 countries and territories — was navigating tensions involving Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran while serious questions surrounded the capacity of the man at the Resolute Desk. That was not merely embarrassing. It raised a basic constitutional question: Who was actually running the country?
Washington can disregard public disgust because incumbency remains extraordinarily safe. Since 1946, members of Congress who seek reelection have won roughly 92% of the time. In 2024, 95.9% of House incumbents and 88% of Senate incumbents seeking another term prevailed.
The framers lacked a crystal ball to see that their limited federal government would become an edifice into which politicians enter as paupers but exit as princes. Had they foreseen permanent politicians, congressional stock portfolios, and lawmakers remaining in office into their 90s, they might have imposed limits themselves.
King George III’s famous descent into mental illness was still years in the future when Americans declared independence. Our own leadership crisis unfolds before us in real time — and we still reward the system that produces it. The elderly men and women who cling to power will remain loath to relinquish it, and we will continue reelecting them.
NO-SHOW CONGRESS: WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S MOVES TO CAPITOL HILL
As Alexis de Tocqueville is often paraphrased, a people get the government they deserve.
More the fools us.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, the Daily Wire, National Review, the Hill, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, ZeroHedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three books. His latest book, A War for Half the World: Why the Real Battle for the Future was Fought in the Pacific, will be released in February 2027.