Is America’s Gerontocracy a Problem?

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks Christiane. Susan Glasser, thanks so much for joining us once again.

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Great to be with you.

MARTIN: So a couple of incidents that have just really gotten the public’s attention. Some of it stoked, some of it not. There was, President Biden was concluding his press conference when he was overseas, you know, earlier this week. He kind of ended it rather abruptly saying, I gotta go to bed. Of course, the conservative media was thrilled to talk about this saying, you know, it was bizarre. And it showed, you know, the obvious implication that he isn’t isn’t quite up to it. But then, you know, twice now, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has frozen up during press conferences, wasn’t being asked particularly challenging, you know, questions, and that’s raised questions about his health. So, you recently wrote a piece for the New Yorker about what you call “America’s fragile gerontocracy.” How is the age of these leaders, not just these two, but others kind of playing into our current politics?

GLASSER: Well, you’re right, it’s inescapable, unfortunately framed to a lot of our politics. And I would throw a third actor in there by the way. Donald Trump at age 77 is not exactly exempt from these questions, except that there’s just so many more questions perhaps about him. And so you have this sort of national debate that I think is a legitimate national debate. But of course, it’s playing out in the framework of our extraordinarily polarized and in a way paralyzed politics. And so, you know, Biden could wake up in the morning, nothing eventful happens, and for parts of the country that would be evidence that he’s too old to serve. Donald Trump can fail to even muster a single coherent sentence with a noun and a verb and a period. But somehow that’s not evidence of it. So, you know, partially we’re having a national debate about an important issue without real evidence, you know, where is age actually affecting the ability of our leaders to lead? And where is it part of the sort of optics of this media saturated world we live in? That’s really hard. But the bottom line is Joe Biden is already the oldest president ever to be an American president. Of course, second oldest was Donald Trump. And if Biden is reelected, he would be 86 years old at the end of his second term. So I think it is a legitimate conversation for us to be having. I just wish we had a better framework and more understanding of what matters in this case and what doesn’t.

MARTIN: Shy is it that Democrats are concerned about President Biden’s age in a way that Republicans don’t seem to be about Donald Trump? As you’ve pointed out, Democrats are also concerned about President Biden’s age. It’s one of those things that seems to come up in focus groups, and it’s one of those things that you don’t have to scratch very far into the surface to get people to express concerns about it. So why do you think it’s a concern for Democrats when it isn’t a concern for Republicans?

GLASSER: Well, here’s one word for you, electability. And the bottom line is that right now, as you pointed out, it’s Democrats and Independents as well as Republicans who have these concerns about Biden’s age. And for many Democrats, I think part of the issue would well be, some of it is a question of governance. Is he up to the job when he’s gonna be 86 years old at the end of his term? But some of it is about this question of can he win? Because Republicans have fixated on this issue. Donald Trump, remember, started calling Biden by the name Sleepy Joe way back in the 2020 election. Interestingly, polls back then had a very different story on the age issue. People forget this, but actually Trump’s age was seen as a liability. And he actually lost on that question in many polls late in the 2020 election in a head-to-head versus Biden as actually Biden who came out on the positive end of that. Remember Biden, to some people certainly in 2020, he’s healthier, clearly than Donald Trump. He is, you know, exercising, he’s bike riding, you know, Donald Trump not doing much exercising unless you count getting in and out of the mechanical golf cart to be exercising. And so, you know, vigor is in sort of the subjectivity of the narrative, first of all, right? Like, how much of this is really about the objective truth? Not very much. I do think it’s a lot about Democrats very worried as they should be. It’s a risk factor in our politics and in our national governance. When Mitch McConnell had that second freeze up the other day, I’m sure I wasn’t the only American who thought, imagine what could happen in our presidential election when the stakes are so high if Joe Biden has a Mitch McConnell moment in the middle of a debate in October of 2024. The stakes are Donald Trump possibly coming back into the White House. So I think that at a minimum, it raises the risks in our system at a time when there’s already a lot of concerns about the fragility of American democracy.

MARTIN: One person that Republicans do seem to be concerned about though is the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. Do we know what’s going on with him?

GLASSER: You know, it’s a good question. Transparency, I think, is one of the issues around health that really matters to people. And actually McConnell did move pretty aggressively, at least to try to assuage some of the concerns of his own members. He serves at the pleasure of his Senate Republican conference. He has to answer to them. He had the capital attending physician put out a note when that wasn’t good enough for some people, because basically it said, take my word for it, and it dismissed McConnell’s episodes as momentary lightheadedness. I don’t think people were really buying that. Then the phys – capital physician actually did an examination with McConnell. That seems to at least temporarily quieted concerns inside McConnell’s Republican Conference. But my observation is slightly different, which is, look. Look at how quickly and visibly McConnell’s decline has happened. We have all had a parent, a grandparent, a loved one, who seems to be a healthy and vigorous age 80, and then something happens, a fall. That’s exactly what happened to Mitch McConnell. He fell down and got a concussion while going to a fundraiser a few months ago. And, you know, his decline has been there for everyone to see. He just looks like he’s aged, not six months, but, you know, several years. And he seems to be struggling in ways that remind people again, of the risk factor of having leaders of this advanced age. And by the way, advanced age, it’s not my term is not a pejorative. I think that’s just the medical definition of anyone who’s been lucky enough to make it to a healthy and vigorous 80 in the case of Joe Biden and 81 in the case of Mitch McConnell.

MARTIN: So, Politico reports that Senate Republicans are consulting about whether to call an emergency meeting on McConnell’s leadership when the Senate is back in session. You know, so I wanna ask two, sort of, two questions here. You know you know, McConnell play – is an interesting figure in the party right now. I mean, it’s not a secret that Donald Trump loathes him. I mean, loathes him because he acknowledged that the 2020 presidential election was fairly run, that it was not stolen. So what’s the dynamic in the Republican Party around Mitch McConnell’s health right now from your reporting? And then secondly, I wanna ask like, the stakes for the country around Mitch McConnell’s health. So, Republican Party first.

GLASSER: Yeah, I mean, first of all, it’s a clear reminder of just how much the Republican party has shifted in recent years. I’m sure if you asked Barack Obama, he wouldn’t think wow, just a few years later. You know, Mitch McConnell is what passes for the sort of relatively sane Republican establishment. He’s been willing, for example, to work with Joe Biden’s White House to pass several bipartisan bills in the last couple years, although obviously remains a fierce partisan. He has been what passes for the opposition to Donald Trump within his own party. It’s a rear guard action, clearly. But, you know, Mitch McConnell not only recognized Biden’s legitimate victory in 2020, he was very clear in attributing the blame for the crisis in American democracy on Donald Trump. But to your point about the consequences for the country. Right now, it actually matters who’s the Senate Republican leader, because look at the House Republicans, look at speaker Kevin McCarthy. Just before our conversation, Kevin McCarthy unilaterally announced that he’s opening up an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden. Has new evidence been produced? No. You know, has there been any specific bill of indictment? No. Is Mitch – is Kevin McCarthy able to even put a measure on the house floor to formally open an impeachment inquiry? No, he doesn’t have the votes to do it. And yet nonetheless, he’s proceeding. He has become, in effect, a hostage of this very narrow majority he has in the House of Representatives. Right now in September, we are looking at a major confrontation over government funding between McCarthy and his House Republicans and the Biden White House. They look to be hurdling toward, once again, a government shutdown. Potentially the only thing that would stop this from happening would be a deal in which McConnell and his Senate Republicans would work to keep the government open and funded. Same thing on the additional emergency funding for things like disaster relief and Ukraine aid. Right now, the administration’s asked for $24 billion in additional funding to help support Ukraine against the Russian invaders. And right now, if that passes, it’s gonna be because of Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans.

MARTIN: You know, we’ve been focusing on, you know, President Biden, Mitch McConnell, senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. And of course, you know Donald Trump. But they aren’t the only older political leaders of consequence. I mean, in July, Senator Diane Feinstein, she’d been in frail health, seemed to be confused during a committee vote. She’s not the only one, though. The median age in the Senate is 65, which is a record high. Then you’ve got Senator Grassley, who’s a Republican of Iowa. He’s 89. Grace Napolitano, she’s a Democrat from California. Now she’s retiring, she’s 86. But just the median age so high. How did we, how did we get to this point?

GLASSER: Well, look, I mean, partially of course you know, life expectancy over the decades has gone up. People have had longer and longer careers. They’re reluctant – also, we have more of a celebrity based politics where name recognition really matters. It’s very hard in our fragmented media moment, you know, to acquire the ability to run statewide in a state like California where Diane Feinstein is from. That’s a really hard thing to do. And she’s a household name. So part of it is the politics of that. But I do think it does say something interesting about a nation that had long had this sort of self-identity as a kind of – the vigorous nation of the future. That the nation, not just of young John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, you know, was one of our youngest presidents in your and my lifetime, in his early forties. And yet, I always find this to be really telling. There have actually been three American presidents, including Bill Clinton, who were born in the exact same year in 1946. Bill Clinton, we think of him as a young guy, perpetually young ’cause that’s when he was elected. The other two presidents who were born in the summer of 1946 were George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.

MARTIN: Why don’t the Democrats point out the deficiencies on the Republican side? I mean, because on the kind of the coverage of it, or at least the public utterances around this are much more sympathetic to Mitch McConnell, much more you know, expressions of concern than they are, you know, of ridicule and contempt that you see directed, you know, at President Biden. And of course, President Biden has said publicly whether this is true privately, he considers Mitch McConnell a friend. But I’m just curious, like, why don’t the Democrats kind of hammer on their age in the way that the Republicans do on President Biden?

GLASSER: Well, first of all, because I think there’s a genuine fear, and I think a realistic fear that that could backfire and simply serve to call more attention to the overall issue of age right now, at a moment when Biden is perceived to be vulnerable on this point. So that’s number one. I think number two is that Mitch McConnell for Donald Trump and his supporters, they’re happy to throw Mitch McConnell under the bus. And in fact, that’s exactly what you saw. In the aftermath of McConnell’s sort of second freeze up moment, you had Trump allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene immediately leaping into the fray publicly and saying, yes, Mitch McConnell is unfit to serve and he should go too. So I don’t think there’s any, you know, love lost between the Trumpists and McConnell. And so if it’s a question of losing their age issue against Joe Biden versus sticking up for McConnell, or getting rid of McConnell, or, you know, just simply sacrificing him politically, they’re happy to sacrifice Mitch McConnell. They might see that as an advantage.

MARTIN: There’s a Republican presidential candidate, the former South Carolina governor, former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley has said that she thinks there should be tests for older politicians. I just wonder, just, I don’t, how do we even talk about that? I mean, I know that there are people who would find this conversation, you know, inappropriate. I mean, you know, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s also 80 I believe, is, has said that he thinks some of this conversation is ageist. He doesn’t seem to show any signs of sort of impairment. So he seems to have, you know, a very good case. But I’m just, I’m just sort of interested in your take on it of is – what’s the, what are the ethics of this?

GLASSER: Yeah, I mean, look, first of all, in our politics big important issues can’t be off limits. I think we gotta, you know, stipulate to that. And I think that Democrats looking to police, you know, what we can or should talk about and what the voters are on their mind, that’s not gonna work anyway. So let’s be real about that. And we’re talking about a situation where it’s many Democrats as well as Republicans who are, in my view, legitimately concerned about this. Does that mean that everyone ages like absolutely not. In fact, that’s one of the big problems that we’re struggling with. I don’t think we have enough real information. I think that we live in an optical world in which, you know, the things that we think of as leadership are essentially projections on a TV screen first and foremost. And, you know, Donald Trump is nothing if not obsessed with a certain kind of very facile image making where – you talk about tests for our leaders. Remember that it’s Donald Trump is the guy who memorably gave us person, woman, man, camera TV back in the 2020 election. You know, you can’t look at a video of Donald Trump from 2016 or go further back, look at his interviews, say in the late nineties or, you know, early nineties with Larry King. This is a different man. He’s been transformed. He has visibly aged in front of our eyes. His coherence has almost evaporated. His vocabulary has dissipated to an extreme degree. His ability to formulate clear cut sentences is almost nil in his public remarks these days. And yet we have this narrative around Biden’s age. So I do think it’s important to talk about, you know, the age issue could just as well crop up as a major liability for Donald Trump by the time the actual election rolls around, he’s certainly not immune to it either.

MARTIN: One area in which one can see the leading figures becoming visibly younger is on the nation’s high court and on the nation’s highest court. But I’m just curious if the conservative movement can be so intentional about attracting and putting in place the next generation of leaders. Why don’t progressives do that?

GLASSER: <Laugh>, you know, it’s a good question. I think you’re right that there are some major structural differences. Not only do they want someone young to serve for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, but a younger nominee also tends to have less of a record to wade through and to pick through. And I think democrats have known that theory of the case too. But, you know, I — look, every generation has to renew its commitment to American democracy. We are in a crisis moment, not because we have two very old standard barriers in the Republican party and the Democratic party today, but because we are at loggerheads over basic questions, and neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden is gonna be a long-term leader for the country at this point, right? And so I think part of our anxiety, and part of why you’re asking that question is because we don’t know what’s the path forward for the country right now, and we don’t have either party with a clear cut set of new standard bearers and a new direction that is taking the country. And so I think it adds to the uncertainty at a very volatile moment.

MARTIN: Susan Glasser, thanks so much for talking with us once again.

GLASSER: Great to be with you. Thank you.