America has a gerontocracy problem. The current president and his immediate predecessor are the two oldest holders of the office in its 236-year history. Nancy Pelosi led congressional Democrats until the age of 82 and still sits in the House at the age of 85. The party’s current leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, is 74.
It is of course true that some people, including politicians, remain vigorous and intellectually agile well into their eighties. Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, shows no sign of diminishment at the age of 83. But it is also the case that US politics has suffeed a number of embarrassments over leaders who remained in office too long. Despite her obvious incapacity, California senator Diane Feinstein did not respond to pressure to retire, finally dying in office at the age of 90. Republican congresswoman Kay Granger kept her position on an important committee after checking into an assisted living facility with dementia.
The most egregious and damaging of all these cases is that of Joe Biden. A new book reveals the extent to which the 46th president’s physical and cognitive decline was concealed from the American public by a coterie of family members and close advisers.
It is a tale of hubris, deception and political cowardice that casts a shadow over the Democratic party and a stain on Biden’s long and honourable record of public service. After positive midterm election results in 2022, Biden and his circle convinced themselves that only he could defeat Donald Trump. They went to elaborate lengths to disguise his flagging reserves of physical and mental energy. And they attacked the reputations of anyone who dared to dissent.
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The public were not fooled. As the campaign got under way, poll after poll showed that voters, including Democrats, thought Biden was too old to run again. And yet the doomed project trundled on regardless until nemesis arrived with Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate in June. Only then did senior party figures exert the necessary pressure for Biden to withdraw his candidacy. By then, it was too late.
Sunday’s announcement of the former president’s advanced prostate cancer may have brought messages of sympathy – including, unusually, from Trump – but should not be permitted to deflect the important and difficult questions raised by these revelations. Over the last few decades, the two traditional parties have been hollowed out while a combination of geographical polarisation and obscene amounts of donor money has rendered too many US politicians immune from challenge. The result is stagnation, corruption, demagoguery and disillusionment. The world’s oldest representative democracy is gravely unwell and there is little evidence that any treatment is at hand to cure its ills.
