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It’s going to take these old assholes dropping dead in the Capitol before we start doing anything but bitching about the ages of our congresspeople. And yes, anyone selfish enough run for re-election when they’re over the age of 70 is an asshole in my book
Strom Thurmond was wheeled into the Senate in his hospital bed at 99 years old and died in office in 2003, didn't change a thing.
That’s still insane and I lived through it. Never got over the shocked pikachu face of that one.
I remember that. Man, that was so weird to watch.
It's not really about age. There are plenty of older people who are still functioning fine. Hell, Biden is almost as old as Mitch, but he's physically fit and doesn't go into fugue states. (And the claims that his stutter and verbal gaffs are evidence of decline are utter bullshit. He's been that way his entire life.)
Where we're fucking up is that we don't have any systems in place to require our elected officials or candidates to be mentally sound. We should require people running for or in elected office to pass cognitive tests the same way we require people on the roads to pass driving tests. Yes, more of the elderly will fail those tests because age is a factor, but the focus should be on "can this person do the job," not "is this person too old."
Mitch might be someone who'd be removed from office with a test like that, but it would also potentially catch young guys with catastrophic mental health issues, like Herschel Walker, who got frighteningly close to public office while showing blatant signs of illness.
An independent health exam to determine cognitive fitness every year you serve in public office once you're over 65 was my thought when I saw this news last night.
It wouldn't have stopped Walker but it would take care of McConnell and Finnstein. As well as any Supreme Court Justices that go that way.
This would be terribly abused. Imagine who Republicans would shoehorn in there based off their Supreme Court picks...
You’ll love that the doctor in question, Ronny Jackson, now represents Texas’s 13th district in congress.
He couldn't get a job doing anything else!
https://nypost.com/2022/11/25/jerome-adams-say-he-couldnt-find-job-after-leaving-trump-white-house/
Precisely because he said Trump was healthy and proved to anyone with a single brain cell that his medical opinion could not be trusted.
Shoehorn into the Supreme Court?
They already factor age into lifetime appointments.l with nominations (look at the median age of Trump's appointments). I don't see how requiring public servants be cognitively fit to serve and making them prove it if they're getting on in years can be abused here.
I think the point is that the doctor making the call could be corrupted, or a corrupt doctor appointed to the position.
That is an issue which is why we'd need an independent agency and transparency.
And yes, that means this would be public medical information. Want the right to medical privacy, resign. It's a requirement of the position post 65 that you wave that right in this instance.
I agree with all of that, except it should be for every person holding an elected position at that level.
Younger people can be mentally impacted by a host of issues, and, on the flip side, any whiff of ageism should be avoided.
So just make it a universal precondition.
My fear is how easily it can be weaponized as a tool of oppresion if applied to broadly.
I.e. how we define cognitive fitness. But as I think about it I think you're right. A person who isn't competent to stand trial isn't fit for public service, regardless of age.
Tie it into the legal definition. If you can't pass a competency test legally you have no business writing laws.
If you're gonna do a Cognitive Fitness test it should be for all ages. Would Boebert pass?
She probably is emotionally unstable (along with MTG) but that's much different than cognitive decline/fitness.
She barely passed the GED on her 3rd try. Decline? She's never risen above the bottom of the mountain. And she's never been fit for office.
Think of all the outrage it would cause people getting declared ‘unfit’. People would definitely think there is double play going on…
Just like a lot of ideas that seem like they'd be good for government only work until the Right Wing (whichever party they're corrupting, over the decades and centuries) gets ahold of them. Remember the poll tests they used against Black people to prevent them from voting. And think about how they'd slash and burn the funding for a National Healthcare System in order to cut taxes further for the wealthy. You can't base the system on a premise that the people running it will have the good of the country at heart, you have to design it to prevent evil abuse of its power.
Precisely. But how to do that? I would think multiple layers of control, but that would get too complex I think.
This has so much potential to be corrupted…
Just like any system in existence.
I'm still not sure that "let's do nothing and hope for the best" is the best approach in a society where people now live so long that mental decline affects a much larger percentage of the population than it did in 1776.
I think you have a point.
I mean, it's not reason to get rid of him, but he hasn't had it his whole life.
He had it as a child, but there's a bunch of footage of him in politics for over 40 years...
The vast majority of that time he didn't have any stutter or gaffes. I don't even think it was happening when he was VP.
But as we age we lose that "filter" where we think before we speak. Which often causes the re-emergence of childhood speech impediments along with a lot more serious stuff.
Like I said, it's not a reason to impeach him, but it's definitely a reason to ask why we're expecting him to be president for four more years.
Especially since the main reason he said he ran was the country needed him because only he has the Senate experience to work with Republicans...
And then immediately after assuming office he said he can't do anything to even get Democratic senators to support the party platform.
So why are we running him again instead of a primary?
It was. And the vast majority of the time, it doesn't happen now. It's just that when it does, right-wing media seizes on it.
You can find plenty of footage from when he was VP, and when he was in the Senate, where he clearly struggles to say the right words, and sometimes a malapropism slips out. In the past, he's referred to himself as a "gaffe machine" (that is a direct quote) because of it. So it's less accurate to say that he overcame his stutter, and more accurate to say that he found workarounds that usually - but not always - work.
It's only become a big deal now because of his age. Republicans latch onto any slip of the tongue or difficulty speaking as supposed evidence of his decline, but it's completely disingenuous.
Sure, but listen to any of his recent speeches. You'll find that for the overwhelming majority of the time, he's perfectly clear-spoken. There will occasionally be hiccups, but find any long speech of his in the last 40 years, and you'll see the same things.
My point here is that while I'm sure he's not quite as sharp as he used to be, there's a material difference between a verbal stumble and what happened to Mitch McConnell. I'm not sure what exactly that was, but McConnell has no medical history of fugue states. That's new. Biden's intermittent verbal stumbles aren't.
I'd much rather have a different candidate, but not because of Biden's age. I think he's too willing to go along with Republicans for the sake of "bipartisanship." Obama had the same problem.
That said, he might actually be the best possible candidate, given the circumstances. He utterly spanked Trump last time around, and keeping the orange shit-gibbon out of office is of paramount importance.
Maybe a handful of examples over 40 years of politics... But no more than any other politician who's caught off guard.
Here's two examples of him in high stress public speaking situations where he had zero issues while in his 40s:
Concession speech after his plagiarism torpedoed his campaign:
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/11/07/watch-joe-bidens-speech-from-1987-when-he-dropped-out-of-his-first-presidential-run.html
Heckled by reporters while he insults them:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D1j0FS0Z6ho
It seems like back then his issues were plagiarism and anger management, I'm not hearing any speech impediments tho...
Because like I said, those are often a childhood thing, then re-appear in your 70s due to completely normal age related mental decline.
This isn't two people with different opinions, this is you saying science and video evidence is wrong and your opinion is right
It's not like it always comes up.
Your two examples are a super well prepared and rehearsed speech, and an off the cuff "insult", which is exactly where it would not happen.
What?
If it doesn't happen with off the cuff remarks, or we'll prepared speeches...
Why is it now happening in well prepared speeches and off the cuff remarks?
That just doesn't make any logical sense unless something changes in the last 35 years like the same normal age related mental decline everyone experiences if they live long enough.
Not that I watch it all but I don't see it in super well prepared speeches. Concession speech with political hopes for the future, I guarantee you that shit was dialed in to 9000.
Not off the cuff remarks, off the cuff "insults" (your words). Anger (your intonation) tends to clarify your brain. Insults are a pretty simple message.
See how you're trying to change it?
It happens more in regular speeches that are not super well rehearsed, and interviews where you have to come up with complex answers, convey complex points on the spot, etc.
Nah, I think I'll go with science and video evidence over unfounded opinions...
Thanks tho, I'm sure someone might enjoy reading your opinions.
Don't like how I caught you trying to change it huh.
Long story short: it doesn't happen all the time and your two examples are exactly where it wouldn't happen. Cue your more cherry picked examples, cue me saying it doesn't happen all the time because that's how it works.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=D1j0FS0Z6ho
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Ouch, way to shit on his 1988 presidential campaign...
He was a frontrunner leading up to it...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_1988_presidential_campaign
Voters just cared more about plagiarism and lying back then. Which is why he couldn't win a primary until post trump, and that was with around 10 candidates all drop and endorse him in a week.
If trump was never president, Biden wouldn't be either.
Side note:
No signs of any issues with public speaking back then:
It might be before you were born, but 1988 isn't ancient history, we still have plenty of records of what happened back then.
I think it would be completely reasonable to put an upper age limit on elected officials - say you can't run after 75. You can run right before 75 and serve as an elected official for a few more years, but after that you're done.
My question is why are Americans electing them? While we have a similar age group structure, if anything our median age is larger, middle age of our parliament is little bit over 47 years.
Ribbit