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APRIL 19, 2022

Cooper on TAP

Democrats' Looming Leadership Vacuum

The party's leadership is largely in its seventies and eighties, and
nobody is waiting in the wings.

President Biden is the oldest president in American history-at 78
years old when inaugurated, he was already older
than previous record
holder Ronald Reagan, who left office while still 77. Now Biden is
reportedly planning to run for a second term. Sources tell

**The Hill**

that he has informed Barack Obama to this effect. If he wins and serves
out another four years, he would be 86 at the end.

Now, this may not actually happen.

**The Hill** is not exactly a reliable source, and it is generally
politically unwise for a president to announce long in advance that they
are not running for a second term even if that is the case, since it
makes them a lame duck and sets off an instant succession scramble. But
it is still indicative of a political party looking down the barrel of a
huge power vacuum because its elderly leadership has not paved the way
for any successors.

Biden is 79, but he is still younger than the entire House Democratic
leadership. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny
Hoyer are both 82, while Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is 81. Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is a comparative spring chicken at just
71, though Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin is 77. At 57, Vice President
Kamala Harris is by far the youngest top-ranked Democrat, and she is
still ten years older than Barack Obama was when he was inaugurated in
2009. As Christopher Ingraham points out
, this makes
the average age of the president and the leaders of the House and Senate
higher than it has ever been in American history.

Worse, there is not even a middle-aged heir apparent for any of these
positions. So far, reporting on Pelosi's plans to retire has been

contradictory
,
but if she does give up the speakership both her lieutenants will likely
also quit, and it would be a succession free-for-all. Sen. Patty Murray
(D-WA) is the likely successor to Schumer in the Senate, but she is just
as old. Harris would take office if Biden were to die before his term
was up, but if he does not run again, insiders are already predicting a
bitter primary battle

because her approval ratings are so soft-just under 40 percent
approval in the FiveThirtyEight polling average, though to be fair
Biden's numbers are just as bad-and she has relatively little firm
support in the Democratic establishment.

This is not to say that all politicians should be under, say, 60. Some
people can and do function in top form long into their eighties, like
West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who expertly guided his country
through the chaotic post-Second World War years. Moreover, a political
party can benefit from a few graybeards to pass along political wisdom
and institutional knowledge.

But it is one thing to have a single elderly leader, and quite another
to have most of the top ranks of an entire political party composed of
people well into their twilight years.

Moreover, high-functioning octogenarians like Adenauer tend to be the
exception. Science tells us
that as people
age, they tend to lose cognitive capacity, particularly the ability to
process new information quickly. The onset of serious cognitive decline
can be quite fast, as well-witness Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), whose
memory problems have been discussed for years and who now reportedly
struggles sometimes even to remember the names

of her own colleagues in the Senate.

A few bad rolls of the actuarial dice, and Democrats will be embroiled
in an apocalyptic succession struggle-like when they lost a Supreme
Court seat because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused suggestions to
retire

in 2013, when she had already had two exceptionally deadly cancers.
Being a political leader is a difficult job, which is precisely why one
of its most important tasks is preparing a second-in-command to take the
reins.

~ RYAN COOPER

Follow Ryan Cooper on Twitter

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A class action case charges that chicken farmers are so beholden to
middlemen that they are effectively employees of the company. BY CLAIRE
KELLOWAY

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