The changing of the really (really, really) Old Guard
Plus, The P Word's end-of-year Naughty or Nice list.
Happy Tuesday!
It’s beginning to snow in New York City and I’ve been thinking a lot about change. Change is an inevitability of life, but that rarely seems to be the case on Capitol Hill, where public officials who were elected decades before are seldom voted out from their seats, even when they are no longer capable of legislating.
A report in the New Yorker by Jane Mayer revealed that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA-D), who has been serving in her seat since 1992, has become increasingly impeded by her deteriorating cognitive. But she’s certainly not the only elderly member in Congress’ history to remain in her seat despite troubling signs of decline.
The article portrays an aging Congress through the details of Sen. Feinstein’s supposed decline with stories of repetitive questioning during hearings, forgotten briefings, and Groundhog Day conversations. As a result, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY-D) has also had to resort to workarounds, like sending in trusted aides as “handlers” to prevent negotiations from derailing, because of how bad things have gotten with Feinstein, who is a top-ranking Democrat and, therefore, is on a bunch of important committees and caucuses in the Senate.
One particularly terrible instance happened in November when Feinstein was caught repeating herself verbatim after she received an answer during a hearing and seemed to genuinely not realize she had done it. The moment went viral. Right-wing pundits and progressive supporters, the latter who have become increasingly disenchanted by what they view as her traditional streak and respectability politics, ripped her apart, demanding that she step down as senator.
At 87 years old, Feinstein is the oldest serving member in the U.S. Senate. She’s older than Joe Biden (78) and Donald Trump (74), both of whom were briefly subjected to concerns over their ages in relation to the presidency.
But Feinstein isn’t even the oldest member in Congress — that title belongs to U.S. House Rep. Don Young (AK-R) who was born two weeks before Feinstein in June 1933. Young (huh, ironic) is both the *oldest* and *longest* serving member of Congress, having held his seat since the days of Nixon.
Anonymous aides argue that stories about Feinstein’s impairment are exaggerated. They also fairly pointed out that there have been plenty of elderly men who’ve remained in their positions without facing such vocal demands from constituents to step down, even as they were no longer of sound mind.
One Senate aide pointed to former senators Strom Thurmond (SC-D) and Robert Byrd (WV-D) as obvious examples. Byrd served in the Senate for 51 years. The only reason he didn’t continue was because he passed away while in office in 2010. He was 93 years old at that point.
As for Thurmond, an aide bluntly said that the senator “didn’t know if he was on foot or on horseback” for the last decade of his public service. Thurmond was more than a century old when he finally left office and there’s a C-SPAN recording of his 100th birthday in the Senate chambers. A funny bit at the 59:00” mark of the video shows a massive cake with 100 candles brought out and his family helping him blow them out.
After, the senator is given the podium for less than 30 seconds to say thanks to the room. His daughter prefaces his appearance by stating that her father is a man of few words so his speech will be short, but I suspect it was really due to his painfully obvious wilting physical state.
The extent of Feinstein’s condition dredges up questions about the rejuvenation of Congress as a whole, a conversation that has become more mainstream in recent years thanks to the rise of millennials who are being elected into public office around the country, and the growing demand for a more diverse elected body.
There is a clear trend of younger politicians looking to replace the Old Guard in power. In the upcoming Georgia run-off elections, incumbent Sen. David Perdue, 71, won the seat in 2014 to replace former Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who had served in Congress since the 1990s and was 72 years old when he retired. Now, Perdue is facing-off with candidate Jon Ossoff, who is 33.
In the other Georgia race, Sen. Kelly Loeffler was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to replace former Sen. Johnny Isakson, who resigned at the age of 75 due to health reasons in 2019. His old seat is now being contested between Loeffler, 50, and candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock, 51. Sure, Loeffler and Warnock are older than the millennial bracket, but they’re still a decade younger than the median age of the current Senate which is 63.
Age is a thorny subject. Anyone with an aging parent will easily sympathize with the aides quoted in the article, who spoke about Feinstein’s noticeable decline with a saddened tone of concern rather than in an admonishing way.
As someone who understands what it’s like to have your competency judged based on your age (albeit for being “young” rather than the opposite), I try my best not to enforce ageism, particularly when it comes to professional women who have to deal with a double-bind with sexism as well. As one aide put it, even in her declined state, Feinstein is “still smarter and quicker than at least a third of the other members.”
That said, I believe it’s fair to evaluate an elected official based on their mental capacity instead of their age. I know elders who are nearing 100 years old yet are still sharp as tacks. I also know millennials (this is anyone between the ages of 24 to 39) who can barely tell the difference between their left hand and right hand.
Unfortunately, at least based on the New Yorker report, Feinstein’s condition has clearly taken a toll on her work. More significantly, it’s also begun to disrupt the work of her Democratic colleagues. Now, the question remains whether she’ll serve her full term through 2024 or whether she’ll get pushed out, too, as Congress’ Old Guard slowly gets replaced.
Since this’ll be the last issue before the new year, in the spirit of the holidays, I’ve curated a Naughty or Nice list featuring political players whose behavior should — at the very minimum — grant them a bag of coal and a visit from Krampus, or earn them a cookie, and the reason why. Note that these lists don’t include anyone from the Trump administration because, frankly, the Naughty list would just be monopolized by them.
So, without further ado, I present The P Word’s 2020 Naughty or Nice List:
❌ NAUGHTY: Mitch McConnell — As the Senate Majority Leader, he was a big reason the majority of Americans hadn’t receive a second stimulus check (if they even got the first one) because he originally didn’t want to give the people any more direct deposits. Not to mention how he led the GOP in ramming through Amy Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination. A mountain of coal and karma is coming his way, for sure.
🍪 NICE: Anthony Fauci — OK, Fauci isn’t a politician per se, but as the country’s leading authority on the coronavirus, which some Americans wrongly still think is a hoax (!!!), his job has been plenty politicized. Yet, he continues to graciously serve the public.
❌ NAUGHTY: The 126 House Republicans Who Signed An Amicus Brief Supporting Trump’s Lawsuit Challenging Election Results In Four States — read about the Coup d'Etat Lite attempt here.
🍪 NICE: Stacey Abrams — The former gubernatorial candidate was dubbed a key driver behind the grassroots movement running up to Election Day in Georgia, which saw a historic voter turnout and flipped the state blue for the first time in 30 years.
❌ NAUGHTY: Hunter Biden — I have no doubts that the non-news that right-wingers were peddling about Hunter Biden right before the election was garbage. But there does seem to be some shady business happening in Biden Jr’s orbit, though it’s unclear exactly what.
🍪 NICE: Gretchen Whitmer — From being threatened by domestic terrorists storming the State Capitol to facing kidnapping plots, the Michigan governor has stared down a lot of wild challenges this year. Still, she remains unfazed and continues to govern with the strength and humility her male counterparts could only dream of.
❌ NAUGHTY: Kelly Loeffler — What kind of U.S. senator uses private government briefings to cash in their trading stocks right before a deadly pandemic, while downplaying that very pandemic? Evil incarnate, that’s who.
🍪 NICE: Ernie Chambers — On Election Day, the Nebraska senator stole headlines for being the long-standing guardian of the sole Democratic elector position in the Red state, which uses a split-vote system to distribute electoral votes. Chambers, whose efforts to maintain the split-vote system have been challenged by Republicans for decades, is the longest-serving Nebraska state lawmaker to date.
❌ Andrew Cuomo & Bill de Blasio — While they’ve both been terrible on their own, their childish feud and Big Apple egos played a big role in the bungling of the city’s pandemic response early on. One time in mid-November, the governor lashed out at reporters for trying to clarify the confusing school closure situation. The mayor, on the same day, was *more than five hours late* to a *separate briefing* on the closure.
Was there anyone who didn’t make the final Naughty or Nice list but should’ve? Share your thoughts in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter!
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STUFF YOU SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW ABOUT
🔥 A wealthy Black family moved into what was supposed to be a suburban diverse mecca in Upstate New York. Then, their white neighbor called the cops on them. They still live next to her. | The Cut
🔥 A New Yorker story about the so-called “rent-a-family” industry in Japan turned out to be a hoax. The publication was forced to attach an editorial note to its debunked article in what is a perfect example of western media’s “weird Japan” obsession. | The New Republic
🔥 Congress finally passed a $900 billion stimulus bill this month. A mix of egos, ill intentions, and partisanship had kept negotiations stalled. Here’s how the sausage *FINALLY* got made, allegedly with help from a group of centrist lawmakers. | POLITICO
🔥 The Pentagon abruptly “paused” transition meetings with Biden’s team which, you know, is not great news to hear when Trump is trying a bunch of shady ways to cling on to the presidency. | Axios
🔥 A Chilean research base in *Antarctica* has confirmed positive cases of coronavirus. This means the pandemic has been recorded on all seven continents in the world. | BBC
🔥 This month marked the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring. Watch this brief retrospective on the revolution that took over the Arab world and its impact on press freedom and the media in these countries. | Al Jazeera
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Thanks for keeping up with The P Word! If you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe and share it with your friends ahead of the long holidays. I’ll see you in the next issue in 2021.
Be well, stay socially-distanced, and happy holidays,
Natasha