Oscar Wilde famously said that “with age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”
Whether we get wiser as we age is open to argument, but the years inevitably take their toll in myriad other ways.
As we have seen with 84-year-old Mitch McConnell’s vanishing act since a fall at his Washington, D.C. home on June 14, our health is often the casualty of advancing age. It was not his first public illness. The former Republican Senate leader froze mid-sentence for over 20 seconds twice, at two separate press conferences in the summer of 2023.
Lindsey Graham, then 71, paid the ultimate price with his life on July 11 after suffering an aortic dissection (a tear in the inner layer of the main artery) likely caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Of course, the young can be hurt in falls or even die from heart problems. But the deterioration of the mind and the body is largely the province of the old.
Which brings me to the elephant in the chambers of Congress that McConnell’s bizarre disappearance has finally highlighted—even to our 80-year-old president: How did we allow our leaders to become so goddamned old?!
It seems unlikely that our lawmakers will do much about it. There’s a bipartisan self-interest here … both parties have turned Capitol Hill into an old people’s home.
So, the Daily Beast has done some analysis to prove just how out of step our Congress has become with the rest of the United States.
While the average age of Americans over the 26-year period in our data is firmly in the 30s, the average age in the House was in the 50s and in the 60s in the Senate. And there has been a clear upward trend in the average age of members over that time.
In our current Congress, the 119th, the average age of House members is 57.9. In the Senate, it’s 63.9, with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley the granddaddy of them all at 91. There are exceptions—Democrat Maxwell Frost is the youngest at 27—but the average age of Americans over the last couple of years is 39.4, according to our research.
Before the Democrats jump on their high horses, they should remember that Dianne Feinstein, one of their own, was the oldest member of the 118th Congress at 90.
The average age in the House has risen from 54.4 years in the 107th Congress (2001-2003) to 57.9 years in the current session. The Senate average has gone from 59.8 years to 63.9 years.
The oldest member during the 26 years of this century was Sen. Strom Thurmond at 99 in the 107th Congress. Thurmond turned 100 (the only to ever do so) while still serving.
In every session since then, the oldest lawmaker was in their mid to late 80s or in their 90s. Grassley and Sen. Robert Byrd (111th Congress) were 91.
When Thurmond was still a serving senator, the average age of Americans was 35.5.
Clearly, this is not a new problem. We have been voting these dinosaurs into office for a long time now.
But voters from both parties have been given notice. Democrats put Joe Biden into the Oval Office in his late 70s, and he served into his 80s before that calamitous 2024 debate when he was campaigning to be president for another four years.
At 80, Donald Trump is now the oldest president ever elected to the White House. As someone who listens to him talking almost every day, he is increasingly sounding like a grumpy grandpa irritated that his audience isn’t awed by his every word.
But self-awareness has never been Trump’s strong point, and he hit on (one) good point in his boorish, ill-received speech to the White House Correspondents’ Association last Friday.
He accepted there should be a debate about term limits in Congress.
“I think term limits are very important because I see what’s happening,” the president told his lukewarm audience as he tried in vain to get some laughs.
“The other day, a senator I knew got a text, a great guy, from his wife. And she said, ‘When you get home, I wanna have you immediately come up the stairs and make love to me.’ And he said, ‘I can’t do both.’ Does anybody get that one?”
Sens. Ted Cruz and Katie Britt, both Republicans, came up with an idea earlier this year that would limit U.S. senators to two six-year terms and members of the U.S. House of Representatives to three two-year terms.
McConnell’s fellow Kentuckian Thomas Massie suggested, perhaps in jest, that Congress needs a “three strokes and you’re out” rule.
As it stands, Congress is always weeks away from a vacation. Of course they need a rest. Many are way past retirement age. They should be playing golf or walking the dog, not running the country.
The president won’t care, and neither will McConnell. The debate won’t affect them.
But politics is so short-sighted that someone has to shepherd us into a difficult future. How can these representatives understand the pros and cons of AI when some can barely write an email?
Our lawmakers don’t keep paintings of their young selves in their attics. We can see them aging in plain sight. In some cases, right to the end.
Perhaps they should be reminded of another Oscar Wilde quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray.
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
