In general, I’m not a believer in a mandatory retirement age, since not everyone ages the same.
Although physical decline usually begins in a person’s 40s, and cognitive decline two or three decades later, the onset and pace of that decline varies. It depends on how well you’ve taken care of yourself and what genetic cards you’ve been dealt.
I am, though, starting to warm to the idea for members of Congress, since the seniority system is geared to encourage them to hang on longer than they should, and since the voters are too fickle to force out those members who don’t recognize or accept their decline.
As with the push for term limits a couple of decades ago, voters may agree with a mandatory retirement age for lawmakers in principle but not in practice. They may say that 80 is too old for most anyone to stay in Congress, but still they don’t want to give up the seniority — and the plum committee assignments and spending influence that come with it — that their own octogenarian legislator has accumulated.
All of this comes to mind with the recent focus on Thad Cochran’s physical health and mental sharpness. After being out for a month dealing with a urinary tract infection, Mississippi’s senior senator returned, somewhat under duress, to Washington. He immediately became the focus of speculation about how much longer he would be able to hang on and who might be appointed to replace Cochran if he were to retire halfway through his seventh term.
His chief of staff, Brad White, got a little testy during a radio program last week. He chastised the speculators and was quoted as saying, among other things, that Cochran’s health issues “are common to men his age.”
Precisely.
And that is why it is reasonable to ask whether there comes an age for most men and women when they cannot physically handle the rigor of jetting back and forth between their home states and Washington, when their brains are no longer nimble enough to dissect complex issues or listen to hours of debate, when they become way too dependent on staff to articulate for them and to cover their lapses.
Cochran, who turns 80 in December, is not the only senator who is long in the tooth. The average age of a U.S. senator was just under 62 years old when the current Congress began in January. That tied for the second oldest on record. There are seven members of the Senate in their 80s, and 17 in their 70s. In other words, almost a fourth of that entire chamber is staying in office well beyond the normal retirement age of those who’ve elected them.
Such longevity may bring the wisdom of experience, but it also may bring a staleness of thought, a corrupting coziness with special interests, and a perspective that has been narrowed by the long time spent within the confines of the Washington beltway.
Until the 1980s, mandatory-retirement provisions were fairly common. In 1986, Congress abolished most of them, deciding that they were a form of age discrimination.
There are some exceptions, though. Members of the military, federal law enforcement agents and commercial airline pilots all fall under mandatory retirement policies because their jobs are considered too perilous or demand high levels of physical and mental skill.
As we live longer and work longer, there are also movements afoot in some life-and-death professions to test older practitioners to ensure their skills have not diminished. Medicine is the most obvious example. For several years, there has been talk about requiring physicians, and especially surgeons, to submit to regular physical exams and cognitive testing after they reach a certain, though still unspecified, age.
Nor is mandatory retirement unprecedented for what are mostly cerebral occupations. At least five states have a mandatory retirement age of 70 for judges, and one, Oregon, pushes it to 75.
Seventy-five sounds like a good number for members of Congress. That’s not pushing them out too soon, the way arbitrary term limits might. Yet it recognizes that it can be difficult for even lawmakers in poor health to voluntarily give up the prestige and power that come from lengthy congressional service.
It’s sad when an aging lawmaker — like an aging boxer — stays in the ring of politics too long. Sometimes they do so because of ego. Sometimes they do so because they’ve been convinced by others back home that their influence is irreplaceable.
Instead of going out while they’re still in command of themselves, they eventually get embarrassed either by opponents or the news media who highlight their infirmities.
It would be unlikely for Congress to age-limit itself. But it might be best for the country and for its own members if it did.
