Old Folks in the Senate?

This article is all about the geriatric nature of the Senate. While it is humorous, it is also worrisome. One of the reasons that is often given for the imposition of term limits (along with the "fresh blood" line of reasonsing) is that it prevents people like Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd from hanging on for years, being re-elected and serving after they have anything left to give. My apologies to Byrd, who seems to still have all of his mental faculties about him, but he's now the longest serving Senator in history so I decided he was the poster child (or, poster geezer, if you prefer) for this issue.

I said in a previous post that I am opposed to term limits because I view them as undemocratic. If the people want to elect a particular representative, they should be allowed to do so. It is for the very same reason that I am opposed to the idea of mandatory retirement ages for elected officials. The people have a right to choose who is going to represent them in Congress. Who am I to say that Robert Byrd is too old to do his job right? Isn't that something that should be decided by the people, rather than by a rigid rule saying "80 is too old?"

There is one way I can see in which my argument can effectively be countered. Since the political parties have so much influence on who runs (or at least, who can run effectively), there is tremendous pressure on people not to challenge some of these elderly office-holders in primaries. As a result, a Democrat in West Virginia isn't going to get a legitimate option in a primary, because no one with a chance to win is going to challenge Byrd. As a result, the case can be made that mandatory retirement prevents the parties from stopping challeges before they get going by writing the retirement age into law. While I understand this argument, I don't place that much faith in it. I still think the people can choose whether or not they want to elect the old man. And if it's such a huge issue, then even a well-funded, non-party endorsed candidate should be able to win in the primary against the old fella (or lady).

One final note: while I do not support mandatory retirement ages for elected officials, I most certainly do support them for appointed officials, most notably federal judges, who hold lifetime appointments. Past history indicates that too often, judges don't listen to common sense or to their bodies. There is no question that if some of these elderly judges who died on the bench had to face an election, they would lose. The nation finds itself lacking all confidence in their ability to do their job, and yet there is no way to remove them from office. So, I say set a mandatory judicial retirement age at 80. I'd be tempted to go lower, to say 70 or 75, but the actual age isn't as relevant as the idea. The constitution would need to be amended, so this isn't going to happen. Nevertheless, I think it should be done. Incidentally, the current judges (especially the Justices of the Supreme Court) could be grandfathered in to avoid any suggestion that politics is the motivating factor. Court packing this most certainly is not.