He’s advancing the idea that one person’s wisdom garnered through age is another person’s calcified thinking.
He’s advancing the idea that one person’s wisdom garnered through age is another person’s calcified thinking.
R ahm Emanuel is a likely dark-horse candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. A 66-year-old seasoned politico — he was White House chief of staff under President Obama, mayor of Chicago for two terms, and Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan — he wants to yank his party somewhat to the center. Bill Clinton accomplished a similar move in the early 1990s and won back the White House for Democrats.
To that end, Emanuel has said Democrats must get “comfortable” talking about crime and dropping “defund the police” rhetoric. On education, he argues that his party’s left has “stopped holding schools accountable on the presupposition that there is no real way for educators to lift up children living in poor, crime-ridden, drug-laden neighborhoods.” When asked on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, “Can a man become a woman?” his answer was “No.’
All of those stances will enrage enough of the interest groups in the Democratic Party to make Emanuel stand out from other consultant-dependent candidates. His bet is that enough Democrats will be so sick of being out of power that they will pick someone who would govern in a space to the right of Joe Biden and who also could win.
Not all of Emanuel’s viewpoints will be unpopular in his party. Last week, he took on one of the many reasons that Americans think their government is unresponsive, out of touch, and rooted in the status quo.
He says that anyone 75 or older should be barred from serving as president, a cabinet official, a member of Congress, or a federal judge. “Across all three branches of government, 75 years — you’re out,” Emanuel said. “Clean it up, all of Washington, and when you’re 75, you can’t do that in the military, you can’t do it in corporate America, you should not be in government at all. Thank you for your service, up and out.”
His idea is certainly popular on a superficial level. A 2023 Pew Research survey found that 92 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats supported a maximum age limit for federal elected officials. For the conservatively controlled Supreme Court, 82 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans supported an age limit for justices. In 2024, North Dakota voters went so far as to back a ballot initiative setting a congressional age limit of 80 for its delegation.
Voters are reminded every time they watch the news that they are governed by a gerontocracy. The Senate’s median age is now over 64 years old. That’s up from 62.4 as recently as 2017. More senators have been eligible for Social Security than not for years. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, is 75 and viewed as out of step with much of his party. Until a year ago, the GOP Senate leader was Mitch McConnell, who was so frail that Republican senators told me privately that he had ceased being effective. They also admitted that his condition made it difficult for them to effectively criticize 81-year-old Joe Biden, who had become a fading husk as president. Other Republican members worry how they will handle the issue of President Trump, who turns 80 this June, if he shows obvious signs of aging.
Currently, the House has an average age of 58.4, making it the third-oldest in U.S. history, according to NBC News. By comparison, the median age in the United States is 39.1 — a full generation younger than members of Congress.
By the time this congressional session ends in a year, some 140 members in either the House or Senate will be 70 or older. That’s over a quarter of the 538 members.
Many of the old-timers hold key positions. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is 92 years old and is president pro tempore, the position third in line for the presidency. Senator Jim Risch, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is 82 and running for reelection this November.
Obviously, many members — such as Grassley — retain their vitality and wits and can be productive legislators. But many other members have clearly become waxen figures who are steered by their staffs. Others go to extraordinary lengths to conceal their infirmities.
Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican, was one of the most powerful members of the House as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. In April 2024, she quietly surrendered her chairman’s gavel and entered an assisted-living facility that offered memory care. She stopped voting in early July, and her district office was basically abandoned. She was found out through a tip to a local Fort Worth reporter. She drew her full salary until her retirement in January 2025.
Mike Kim, owner of Grubb’s Pharmacy in Washington, D.C., told STAT News in 2017 that he routinely shipped medication for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia to members on Capitol Hill through a contract with the Office of the Attending Physician of the United States Congress.
“It makes you kind of sit back and say, ‘Wow, they’re making the highest laws of the land and they might not even remember what happened yesterday,’” Kim said.
When his quote circulated around Capitol Hill, it was made clear to local pharmacists that no future public observations along those lines would be tolerated.
Of course, there are obstacles to actually implementing Emanuel’s proposed age limit.
The Constitution imposes very few qualifications to serve in Congress. A House member must be 25 years old, a senator 30. There is no provision for advanced age.
In 1992, voters in Arkansas and nearly 20 other states passed term limits on their members of Congress. But in 1995, a 5–4 Supreme Court majority ruled that states or Congress could not add to the constitutional qualifications for congressional office. A constitutional amendment would be required.
But the Supreme Court has shown a willingness of late to revisit its previous decisions in such areas as abortion, environmental law, and the power of federal agencies to issue regulations. Should North Dakota’s new law find its way to the Supreme Court, it could find a more receptive audience than expected — even from a body whose members enjoy lifetime appointments.
But that’s not the point of Emanuel raising the issue. He recognizes that citizens are dissatisfied with the performance of their government and distrustful of politicians. Younger voters believe that people from a different generation would be more in tune with current conditions and might be less beholden to special interests.
So no matter how unlikely it is that Emanuel’s attempt to disrupt what some call a “senility system” will succeed, he is at least addressing an issue that politicians retreat from the way Dracula reacted to the display of a cross — that we are all mortal, that few of us want to ever admit we’ve lost a step, and that one person’s wisdom garnered through age is another person’s calcified thinking.
Let the debate begin.