As the 119th Congress returns from recess this week, the nation’s aging political class is once again under renewed scrutiny. Questions about the age of U.S. leaders arrive on the heels of the news of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sudden death on Saturday. His passing — the sixth such instance of a member of Congress over age of 65 to have died during this term alone, according to the legislative news service Congressional Quarterly. It also followed weeks of speculation over the health of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is 84, after he had been absent from Congress for over a month. McConnell broke his silence this week, noting he suffered a health scare in which he was “briefly unconscious” and citing the “vulnerability that comes with growing older” as the reason he wasn’t forthcoming, he said in a social media post this week.
While those events have generated debate among political scientists, reform advocates and voters about whether new limits should be imposed on America’s aging political class, often referred to as the “gerontocracy,” the topic has been voiced many times over the years. Former President Ronald Reagan famously quipped that he wasn’t going to make age an issue during a 1984 debate with younger candidate Walter Mondale: “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan said.
