Our U.S. Gerontocracy Needs to Go (and Biden Isn’t Even the Worst)

Last year Teen Vogue felt the need to explain to its readers what a “gerontocracy” was.

Their article was on the heels of Mitch McConnell, then a youthful 81, being escorted away from a televised press conference after he froze without explanation for 20 seconds. Teen Vogue explained that the word meant “a government ruled by the elderly.”

At a press conference two weeks later McConnell froze again, this time for 30 seconds.

Within a month of that article Dianne Feinstein passed away, age 90, while still a sitting U.S. senator. She had missed two months of work earlier that year, stalling many crucial votes for President Joe Biden’s judicial and executive nominees, but died hours after her final vote.

The presidential debate last week shone a laser light on Biden’s age. But it ought to force a wider discussion on why the U.S. Congress is one of the oldest in global politics, and what it means for representative democracy.

The Pew Research Center, in a study last year, noted that 82 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats support putting a maximum age limit in place for elected officials in Washington, D.C. But who gets to decide whether term limits would be appropriate for elected US officials?

Meet (some of) the gerontocracy: Sen. Charles E. Grassley, of Iowa (R), is 89; Rep. Grace F. Napolitano, of California (D), is 86; Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey (D), 86; Rep. Harold Rogers, of Kentucky (R), 86; Rep. Maxine Waters, of California (D), 85; Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita, of California (D), is 84; Rep. James E. Clyburn, of South Carolina (D), is 83; and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) is 82.

These are all older than Biden, 81, and Donald Trump, 78.

Pelosi, the long-serving former House speaker, announced last year that she will seek re-election this November—her 20th term.

A few months ago Jon Stewart was riffing on Democrats’ growing anxiety over Biden’s age. “I know liberals say, ‘Don’t say Joe Biden is old’—don’t say what people see with their own eyes! You can say it, he can’t hear us.”

It was funny. But after last week, a little less so.

Close to one in five members of the U.S. House are aged 70 or over. In the Senate, that figure is closer to one in three.

There is a place for experience and wisdom in politics. But older people are not just overrepresented in US politics; they are also overrepresented relative to age.

The median age of the U.S. Congress has been climbing for the last 40 years. In 1980 the median age of the Senate was 52. In 2023 it was 65. In 1980 the median age of the House was 48, last year it was 57.

According to the Census Bureau, the median age in America is 38.9 years old.

In this case age is not just a number, as Biden said in May of this year. It’s an outlook. It’s a world view. It comes with different priorities, different preferences and different prejudices.

Philip Bump, a Washington Post reporter and author of last year’s The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America, makes the point that the gerontocracy inhabit a different world to many young Americans.

"Young Americans are more likely to be college-educated, more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ and more likely to be immigrants or have immigrant parents. Younger Americans are more likely to be Asian, Black or Hispanic.

"They’re more likely to have kids in schools for example, or be looking to buy their first home."

This age profile should come as no surprise. After all, you're not allowed to run for the House of Representatives until you turn 25, and you have to be 30 to run for the Senate.

But you can own a gun at 18.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The median age of European politicians is significantly younger. As are their leaders. The new Irish taoiseach (prime minister), Simon Harris, is 37. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, is 46. Giorgia Meloni, Italian prime minister, is 47. Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is 46. Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Spain, is 52.

If this is to change anytime soon, money will be a key factor. On average, it costs about $2.8 million to win a congressional campaign. Daniel Stockemer, associate professor in the Department of Political Studies of University of Ottawa, makes the point that to raise that type of money, “You need to have the connections, the networks. It’s rather hard for young people to have that.”

More likely they’re mired in student debt.

When Teen Vogue organized a watch party for last week’s presidential debate their readers were, unsurprisingly, underwhelmed.

“I saw two very old men competing against one another,” said one of those in attendance. “I think, regardless of who wins the presidency, it’s really going to start to show. I don’t know if either of them would make it to the end of their term.”

Teen Vogue's explanation of a gerontocracy as being a government “ruled by the elderly” hardly goes far enough. It might have added that it is also a government that risks losing sight of the demands and concerns of its people, and with it growing distrust and cynicism. Representative democracy: there’s a clue in the title.