Former Republican Indian Gov. Mitch Daniels said he doesn’t agree with Sen. Dick Durbin about much, but his recent decision to sail into retirement at the end of his current time is something Daniels said he hopes more politicians pushing 80 will follow.
In a blistering Washington Post column on Monday that calls out America’s aging politicians, Daniels warned the United States is slipping into a “gerontocracy” where government is run by leaders who are too old to fully grasp, let alone manage, the crises ahead. He built the case for readers on why a younger generation is better suited to take on new challenges and why “Congress shouldn’t be an assisted-living facility.”
“Of course, a Congress of 500-plus members theoretically can manage around any who are slipping or no longer contributing much,” Daniels wrote Monday. “It’s not nearly as dangerous as a senile president, being covered for by a lapdog press and a staff who are doing the real work of managing the nation’s affairs.”
But, he added, “the gerontocracy into which we have drifted raises issues more troubling than just the feebleness or incompetence that aging brings. Acknowledging the occasional exception, today’s elderly — I grudgingly have to admit to belonging to that category — are unfit to lead the nation in the face of its greatest threats and challenges.”
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He pointed to developments in artificial intelligence and challenges surrounding the national debt as issues a new generation of leaders is better suited to take on.
“It is past time for those who will have to clean up after a 60-year spending bacchanal, and try to save the safety net for those who need it most, to take full command,” he wrote Monday.
Daniels, senior adviser to the Liberty Fund and president emeritus of Purdue University, noted the Senate’s rising median age – now 64.7, with more than 35 members over 70 – which he compared to the ages of legislatures in other parts of the world as further proof of the aging political leadership in the nation.
While he has often been the target of Durbin’s criticisms over the years, Daniels praised his decision to end his career after 44 years in Congress – and hoped others would follow his lead.
“The institution and our pro-incumbent electoral system make it all too easy for people to accommodate those who are determined to go out Skechers-first,” Daniels concluded. “Better if they take Durbin’s example and hand the reins to newcomers better suited to deal with the big troubles ahead.”