Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell struck up a friendship during their nearly quarter-century in the Senate together. Now in their 80s, the Democratic president and the Senate GOP leader appear to be giving political cover to each other as they fend off questions about their advanced age and health issues.
Notably, McConnell, R-Ky., 81, hasn’t joined Donald Trump, 77, and other Republicans who have attacked Biden’s age, health and mental acuity as he seeks re-election.
And after McConnell’s second freeze-up last week, Biden was one of the first to call McConnell, telling reporters that his “friend” sounded like “his old self” and that such episodes are a “part of his recovery” from a fall and a concussion this year.
I do have to admit, after getting concussed I also appeared to freeze but I was thinking hard of what the right word is to say next.
That said, probably anyone in concussion recovery should be on leave from legislating. The brain will heal more slowly, and your work will be of poor quality.
That’s all before getting into the actual politics of having a gerentocracy.
I know a lot of people have talked a out adding an age limit, but it seems to me most of the ancient ones are skating by on incumbent effect. If we had term limits it would resolve that. Alternatively something like the Virginia Gubernatorial rules where you cannot hold the position successively.
I have the same occasional issue with forgetting words after a TBI, and have worked with people in recover who have it much worse than I. It’s an interesting outcome when simple words just cannot be recalled. To fabricate an example; I know what this object is, a tool for writing, it’s in my hand, it has ink, but what the hell is it called. (a pen) - it can be for the most mundane and common words.
However; I don’t go slackjaw and become completely nonresponsive for 10-20 seconds. This guy needs to be in medical care.
You’re right, it’s never as long as this. I am young, though so I don’t know how it would show in an ancient man hahaha.
I don’t see the appeal in insisting everything is fine. I would rather see my leaders saying “hey, I don’t feel good so I’m going to take some time to get healthy”.
The hubris of man
I appreciated that about Fetterman. I feel as though he presented his injury as something humans go through. He will continue his job, at times with assistance, and do the best he is able. He didn’t need to step down and he is not incapable of doing his job, but he has a flaw and is honest of it.
I dunno I don’t feel good about setting laws about who should be eligible to run for public office. The voters should decide who is eligible and who isn’t.
Yeah there’s a lot of dumb voters out there, but the general idea that we’re smarter than the voters and therefore need to make laws that supersede the voters feels wrong to me.
I think the problem of voters being dumb is just something we have to accept about democracy.
Voters being dumb and electing incumbent yet incapable people is not just democracy, but populism. Especially when those in power have been in power for so long that they meddle in education funding to keep said voters dumb
Democracy and populism are mutually exclusive?
Improving education is indeed the solution to the problem. And it’s a thing that is more likely to happen than a law prohibiting those currently in power from running again.
IMO it’s useless talking about what laws or policies need to change to fix this because the people with the power to change it know that doing so will affect their ability to stay in power and just won’t change it to their detriment. It’s the same reason protesting won’t ever fix the fundamental issues. The people currently at the top aren’t just going to hand their power away or cripple their ability to easily generate or access wealth. If it comes to it, they’ll go to war before giving that up.
Then it follows that it’s also useless to even discuss such things on the internet. So why even bring up these topics if it’s impossible to change anything?
Or are you just spending time posting on the internet in an attempt discourage others from trying to improve things?
Solving a problem requires understanding it. I’m not trying to discourage improvement but want more people to see what I see about the nature of what’s going on and how many of these flaws in the system aren’t seen that way by the people who pass the laws and make the policies.
That’s the beauty of the “can’t hold the position consecutively” rule.
It doesn’t matter what age, party, or how long you’ve been in office.
You can always run for a different office, or wait for the next term to run again.
Might be a bit weird with the House.
I don’t know either. It feels shortsighted and bigoted to do things like that. The issue is that when votes in Kentucky vote the rest of us have to endure how they vote. Term limits could and should be tried. So even when the voters make a mistake the mistake doesn’t linger around.
The solution is simply better education. Which solves a lot of problems beyond codgers like Mitch McConnell. There are plenty of other terrible people running for office that wouldn’t be prevented from doing so by such laws. But these terrible people wouldn’t have a chance of winning an election in a better educated population.
It would solve a lot of problems of the Senate if we set the term limit to 0.