Politicians who know when to quit

President Biden struggling during his Jun 27, 2024, debate with now-President-elect Donald Trump. Recent reporting alleges those close to Biden went to great lengths to prevent the public from knowing the true extent of his decline. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

As the new year dawns, I’m crossing my fingers that our elected leaders will learn a key lesson from 2024 and make the following New Year’s resolution: Quit when it’s time.

The chief offender this year, of course, was President Biden, whose decline was so pronounced he was forced to withdraw from the presidential race after stumbling through a debate with now-President-elect Donald Trump. A recent Wall Street Journal story detailed how Biden and his aides spent years hiding his true condition from the public.

But other examples abound, nationwide and here in New Jersey.

On Friday, the Dallas Express reported 14-term Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), 81, is living at a memory care and assisted living home, and her son confirmed to the Dallas Morning News that Granger has been experiencing “dementia issues.” She hasn’t cast a vote in Congress in five months. Until March, she was chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

Rep. David Scott, a 79-year-old, 10-term Georgia Democrat who appears frail and confused during public appearances, made news last week when he cursed at a journalist taking a photo of him as he was being wheeled into the U.S. Capitol. A Scott staffer asked the journalist not to take pictures, too, presumably to prevent voters from seeing Scott’s condition.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, a 74-year-old, eight-term Virginia Democrat who had a recent cancer diagnosis, last week became his party’s choice to be their top guy on the powerful House Oversight Committee. And while Rep. Nancy Pelosi, an 84-year-old California Democrat who was first elected to the House when I was 10 years old, was overseas and working behind the scenes to help Connolly win that vote, she fell and broke her hip.

Here in New Jersey, two of our House members — Reps. Donald Payne Jr. and Bill Pascrell Jr. — died after hospital stays this year. Pascrell was 87 years old — one of the oldest members of Congress — and in recent years it was apparent he was greatly diminished from his prime. In both cases, their deaths came after key election deadlines, essentially allowing party bosses to choose their replacements.

Those are just the examples from 2024. Last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein appeared confused and had to be told how to vote at least once — she died in September 2023 at 90 — and Sen. Mitch McConnell, 82, froze while talking to reporters in two alarming episodes. McConnell remains the GOP’s leader in the Senate.

There’s one thing all these public officials have in common: They’re all old. These episodes have rekindled the debate over age limits for elected officials, an idea backed by most Americans.

I talked to gerontologist Tracey Gendron about this. She’s the executive director of the Virginia Center on Aging, and she has lots of thoughts on how we talk about aging elected officials.

For starters, Gendron noted, “Everybody is part of the aging population.” I’m aging, my 12-year-old niece is aging, and Biden is aging. It’s the one thing, Gendron said, every human on the planet has in common. Even that California 47-year-old who claims he spends $2 million a year to try looking 18.

Gendron said when we age as babies, our milestones are all roughly similar. Most of us start to talk, start to talk, start to learn how to read roughly at the same age.

“Older age is exactly the opposite because our lived experiences and our very unique identities create different paths for us,” she said. “So knowing that somebody is 65, 75, 85 is meaningless. It doesn’t tell you how healthy they are. It doesn’t tell you how engaged they want to be. It doesn’t tell you anything. So when we talk about ‘too old,’ it’s really misguided.”

This is fair. There are certainly elected officials in their 30s and 40s who I think should bow out of public service because they’re not up to the job, despite their youth. And there are others in their 80s who seem more with it than Biden does even at his sharpest.

So when I say folks like Biden, McConnell, Scott, and others should have stepped aside long ago, it’s not because of their age. It’s because voters entrusted them to do a job and it is clear they can’t do it.

There is someone close to me who is suffering from significant mental decline. So as I’ve watched Biden and other public officials struggle in the glare of the public eye, I have struggled to understand why their loved ones haven’t stepped in to spare them this indignity. I get the hangers-on — the man pushing Scott’s wheelchair and sparring with a reporter for documenting it, or the aide keeping everyone away from seeing Biden’s condition up close — because they’d lose power and influence if their gravy train ended. It’s despicable, but I understand it. I do not understand the politicians’ wives, husbands, children, friends — why do they want to see their loved ones humiliated on the national stage?

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