Let new generations rule Congress

Hardly a day goes by without some discussion in the news about who the next president of the United States should be. In my view, it should not be Joe Biden.

I do not mean this as a criticism of President Biden. After the era of Donald Trump, America needed a hefty dose of decency, and Biden is providing it. Besides, he aspired for the office so long and worked so hard that he deserved it. Now, he is confronted by a soul-crushing onslaught of challenges that mostly are not of his doing. His reward for climbing to the highest office in the land is to wake up every day to the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

It’s not just Biden who should retire from public office. The next Speaker of the House should not be Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and the next majority or minority leader in the Senate should not be Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Pelosi is 82 years old. McConnell is 80. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is 71. At the beginning of the current Congress, the Senate was the oldest in U.S. history. The average senator was 64, while the average member of the House was 58.

“One of the most striking yet less-noticed facts of contemporary politics is that Americans have … shown a striking affinity for selecting — and keeping — old people in political office. Really old people,” the Miami Herald pointed out before the 2020 election. In the current Congress, 61 percent of House members and 79 percent of senators were born before 1965. Although age 58 may be the new 30, we all are products of our times.

The benefits of seniority are one reason voters keep reelecting their representatives in Congress. As incumbents age, they typically climb the leadership ladder into positions where they can obtain more benefits for their states and districts. But as former President Barack Obama pointed out in 2017, elderly leaders who’ve been in Congress for decades may block young leaders who “could be more innovative and creative solving the problems we face today rather than the problems we faced 35 years ago.”

We’ve seen how longtime members of Congress can become so wrapped up in politics that they forget why they’re there. McConnell is Exhibit A. As the Senate Majority Leader in 2012, McConnell said his top priority was “making sure President Obama’s a one-term president.” Nine years later, as the Senate Minority Leader, McConnell said he was 100 percent focused not on public policy but on stopping the Biden administration. Old war horses in leadership may be why the Pew Research Center found that Democrats and Republicans in Congress are “farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.”

It’s true members of Congress gain valuable experience and even wisdom as they accumulate years. It need not be wasted. Many former members have proved there is life and public service after Congress.

In saying this, I doubt I’m guilty of ageism. I am 75. I think senior citizens in public office should pass the torch because our leaders should be infused with contagious “vim and vigor,” as people said about John Kennedy. They should project hope and practice pragmatic idealism. America should project those qualities to the rest of the world, too, rather than slipping further down rankings of flawed democracies and joining the ranks of has-beens.

So, having achieved the highest office in the land and having slain as many dragons as he could, Biden should retire with our gratitude at the end of his term, while Republicans save their party from indelible ignominy by retiring Trump. The 2024 presidential election should be a new beginning for America. The 2020 congressional elections are an excellent place to start.

William S. Becker is a former U.S. Department of Energy central regional director who administered energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies programs, and he also served as special assistant to the department’s assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy. Becker is also executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations for the White House as well as House and Senate committees on climate and energy policies. The project is not affiliated with the White House.