This is Part I of On Point’s special series Senior Class.

Older Americans control more political power and wealth than ever before. It’s the topic of a special series from On Point all this week — starting with America’s aging politicians.

Guests

Samuel Moyn, professor at Yale Law School. Author of: “Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It .”

Also Featured

Robert Stivers, president of the Kentucky Senate.

Jesse Green,  youth chair of the Jessamine County, Kentucky, Republican Party.

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

Part I  

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: On election night, November 6th, 1984, Kentucky’s newest senator declared victory.

MITCH McCONNELL: After 16 long years in the wilderness, the two-party system is back in Kentucky. (APPLAUSE)

CHAKRABARTI: Mitch McConnell was the only Republican challenger to beat an incumbent Democrat for a Senate seat in that cycle, a cycle that also saw Ronald Reagan reelected to the White House, at that point, the oldest man ever elected president.

Reagan was 73. McConnell was 42 years old, and he ran a savvy campaign against incumbent Democrat Walter Dee Huddleston. McConnell hired Roger Ailes, who later went on to create Fox News. Huddleston had a 94% voting record in the Senate. Ailes discarded that fact and instead focused on the few votes Huddleston had missed, and Ailes conjured up an attack ad classic, a Kentucky voter in his overalls with a pack of bloodhounds hot on the missing senator’s trail.

(AD PLAYS)

I was close at Dee’s $2,000 speech in Puerto Rico.

Senator Dee Huddleston, thank you very much. Come on.

We can’t find Dee. Maybe we ought to let him make speeches and switch to Mitch for senator.

CHAKRABARTI: The nation had its first taste of McConnell, the whatever-it-takes political tactician. He was ambitious, and he was young.

Before the Senate, McConnell pulled off a surprise victory in his campaign for Jefferson County judge executive in 1977. The then 35-year-old McConnell made that victory speech holding one of his three young children in his arms. A few years later, he gave an interview to WHAS TV’s Ange Humphrey. She reported that the young conservative made no bones about the fact that his youth, his new ideas, and the new people he brought with him were among his greatest assets.

ANGE HUMPHREY: A new director at the jail, new people in the police department, and the human services department, too. It’s part of the image Mitch McConnell has, an image of the new politician.

McCONNELL: This may sound terribly corny to some of your viewers, but we really try to do what’s right.

CHAKRABARTI: The man who once took pride in bringing new ideas to office matured into a Senate majority leader who relished killing any new idea that came his way, especially in the Obama administration, when McConnell gleefully called himself the Grim Reaper.

McCONNELL: I am indeed the Grim Reaper when it comes to the socialist agenda, things that would turn us into a country we’ve never been.

CHAKRABARTI: Things like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, or confirming a Supreme Court nominee in President Obama’s final year in office. McConnell put a stop to it all.

McCONNELL: The issue is who should make the appointment? We’re in the middle of a presidential election. You’d have to go back 80 years to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential election year was confirmed. You’d have to go back to Grover Cleveland.

CHAKRABARTI: Back in 1984, Mitch McConnell railed against Walter Dee Huddleston’s 16 years in the Senate as too much one-party rule.

But now it’s McConnell who’s been in the Senate for 42 years. He is one of the most consequential and polarizing politicians in Senate history. But time spares no one its most reptilian ravages. McConnell is now 84. The last three years have not been kind. In March 2023, McConnell fell and severely injured himself, and twice that same summer, McConnell appeared to freeze mid-sentence.

McCONNELL: This week there’s been good bipartisan cooperation and a string of —

CHAKRABARTI: This is the July 2023 episode. He froze, eyes vacant, for more than 20 seconds.

(REPORTER CROSSTALK)

CHAKRABARTI: Senators huddle around McConnell. Wyoming’s John Barrasso whispers, “Are you okay?”

JOHN BARRASSO: You okay, Mitch? Anything else you wanna say, or should we just go back to your office? Do you wanna say anything else to the press?

CHAKRABARTI: His office later said he had felt lightheaded. The Capitol physician said there was no evidence McConnell had suffered a stroke or seizure, but for a painful half minute, McConnell’s mind seemed to have gone. And this summer, the elderly senator’s health took a turn for the worse, and he was hospitalized, literally gone, no contact, no press conferences, no update for months.

This is On Point. I’m Meghna Chakrabarti. We’re starting a special week-long series, Senior Class: Gerontocracy in America, where we’ll explore the political influence and financial wealth controlled by American seniors. Today, it’s episode one, The oldigarchy. Now, no one should be surprised by the fact that America’s national politicians are becoming the elected elderly.

We’ve seen moments like McConnell’s freeze before. In fact, McConnell suffered that first freeze on July 26th, 2023. The very next day, July 27th, California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein needed help casting a simple voice vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

ROLL CALL: Clerk will call the roll. Senator Feinstein —

MURRAY: Just say aye.

CHAKRABARTI: Feinstein was 90 years old. You heard Senator Patty Murray there whispering to Feinstein, “Just say aye.” Feinstein instead rambles into reading a prepared statement.

FEINSTEIN: And it funds priorities submitted —

CHAKRABARTI: Until an aide crouches at her side.

AIDE: Just say aye.

FEINSTEIN: Okay. Aye.

CHAKRABARTI: Senator Feinstein died two months later. Of course, not every superannuated lawmaker suffers a decline in mental capacity. Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is 93 now, and the Senate’s oldest member. And just days ago, he talked openly about the possibility of dying in office.

GRASSLEY: But one of the reasons I’m worried about who’s going to be elected governor, I don’t plan on dying in office, but if I did, I don’t want a Democratic governor choosing my successor.

CHAKRABARTI: The truth is, America’s senators and representatives are far older than the people they represent. From 1960 to 1990, the median age of a member of Congress was 53.

Now, it’s over 60. Meanwhile, half of all Americans are under the age of 40. In the last House, out of 435 members, just 64 were born in the 1980s. Only one was born in the 1990s. These numbers come from Yale University Professor Samuel Moyn, who we’ll hear from later. And then, there are our aging presidents.

Remember when I said that back in 1984, Ronald Reagan was the oldest elected president at 73? Joe Biden.

JOE BIDEN: Dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare —

CHAKRABARTI: And Donald Trump.

DONALD TRUMP:  And two months ago, we had 100, I told this story yesterday, we had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan.

CHAKRABARTI: Both men beat Reagan. Biden and Trump were 78 when elected, Trump in his second term, and 82 at their term’s end. So what does it matter that America’s politicians are getting older and more frail? Surely there’s value in the wisdom that can only be earned with the turning of many decades. But there’s also evidence that as lawmakers become elderly, their ideas grow stale with them.

Going back to Senator Mitch McConnell for a moment, on June 14th of this year, McConnell had his worst health scare yet.

CNN ANCHOR: This is video obtained by CNN showing a person believed to be McConnell on a stretcher being put into an ambulance. CNN obtained this cellphone video —

CHAKRABARTI: For weeks, his office answered questions about his condition with a roar of silence.

Rumors of McConnell’s death began spreading. A few members posted on social media that they had 20-minute conversations with McConnell, but that wasn’t enough to quell the questions. Even Kentucky’s governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, demanded proof of life.

ANDY BESHEAR: And when you’ve been in a hospital for a month and you’ve missed all the votes, which is your job, basically, you’re not able to show up for work, you owe your boss, like anybody else out there who works, an explanation of what’s been going on and when you’ll get back.

CHAKRABARTI: Last month, a wheelchair-bound McConnell finally returned to the Senate. He spoke briefly with reporters, no cameras allowed.

McCONNELL: I wasn’t sure how many of you would be here today. So I’m glad to see you. It’s time to get back to work.

CHAKRABARTI: Mitch McConnell was gone from the Senate for three months. Throughout that time, he continued receiving his Senate paycheck because Congress members have a paid medical leave benefit.

Tens of millions of working Americans do not. Reporter Judd Legum says one of the reasons why is Mitch McConnell. Legum writes the Substack Popular Information, and he went digging through the Congressional Record and found that between 1985 and 2022, McConnell voted against efforts to expand paid medical leave at least 23 times.

Meanwhile, popular support for paid leave has grown dramatically over that same period, and it’s bipartisan. In the run-up to the 2024 election, several polls found that more than 75% of respondents supported federally mandated paid medical leave. So does this mean that the 84-year-old’s stiffened political views are out of step with his Kentucky constituents?

Robert Stivers is the current president of the Kentucky State Senate, and he’s known McConnell for more than 30 years.

ROBERT STIVERS: Now, I was with him, literally, about this time last week, and we talked for 20 minutes. Was he in a wheelchair? Yes. But that, just because he’s having a problem with his leg doesn’t mean he can’t function in the Senate.

CHAKRABARTI: Jesse Green disagrees. He’s 27 and the youth chair of the Republican Party in Jessamine County, Kentucky.

JESSE GREEN: I hold a frustration as a younger person on politicians who stay in office past when they have the physical and mental capabilities to do so.

CHAKRABARTI: Green believes Senator McConnell should have stepped down during his long summer hospitalization.

GREEN: The biggest frustration that I had and a lot of people that I spoke to, especially younger people, is we didn’t know what was happening.

He’s supposed to be representing us in Washington, and so a lot of people felt that they were being left out of the loop.

CHAKRABARTI: But if indeed the bony, arthritic hands of America’s elected gerontocracy refuse to relax their grip on power, and if younger people don’t like it, surely there’s a simple solution.

Robert Stivers thinks so.

STIVERS: So I don’t think there should be any age test one way or another on how old you should be or should not be. Voting constituents will know that, and they will cast their vote accordingly.

CHAKRABARTI: Episode one of our series Senior Class continues in a moment. This is On Point.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI:  Welcome back to On Point and our special week-long series we’re launching today. It’s called Senior Class: Gerontocracy in America. And this is episode one: The Oldigarchy. I want to bring Samuel Moyn into the conversation now. He’s a professor at Yale Law School and author of “Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth and What to Do About It.” Professor Moyn, welcome to On Point.

SAMUEL MOYN: Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, let’s dive into the numbers a little bit more. Because I’d like to give shape to how America’s political class has been aging. I mean, you do not pull any punches in your book. I have it right here in front of me, and you say, “America is victimized by a slow wizening of political life. When the ship of state is crashing into a gerontocratic iceberg mostly out of view, it’s a good thing that Americans are noticing the ice hazard protruding above the water.” And that’s politicians.

So let’s stick with Congress for a few more minutes. I mean, what evidence would you look to support your argument that Congress is getting inexorably older, and that that’s bad for democracy?

MOYN: Well, you reported earlier that half of Americans are still under 40. But we only have one senator that age, and he’s about to turn 40. Jon Ossoff. And so that’s to say that in one of the two Houses of Congress, half of Americans are not represented almost at all by age.

Now in fairness, the Senate is literally named after old men. When you look at the House, as you said, it’s a little bit better, but it’s still shocking how few people there are under 40. And once again, we have to ask, are cognitive decline and outright death of the oldest folks in Congress the only problem? That’s what’s being noticed.

Or is there something deeper, which is that there are too many older people compared to the age of the American population. And it’s gotten worse. Obviously we should expect, since Americans in general are getting older, for our representatives to do so. But the Congress has aged way more than Americans generally.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So can I just jump in here, Professor? So you’re exactly right about we need to kind of explore what the deeper problem is, but I just want to hold on that for a second because two other branches of the federal government only got a glancing mention in the first segment.

But you dive into them a little bit more deeply in the book. Regarding aging presidents my pushback to that would be, aren’t really Joe Biden and Donald Trump kind of just outliers in the 20th century when it comes to presidents? Because we also had Barack Obama, well, Bill Clinton was before the 20th century, 21st century, sorry. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton. I think that we’ve just had a couple old ones recently, but maybe is the presidency itself getting older?

MOYN: It is, but in fairness, you’re right that there’s just one president, and anyone can be elected. Now, the Constitution says the president has to be at least 35.

And so that sets a lower boundary. But of course, if Donald Trump somehow doesn’t make it the next year, we’ll immediately have the youngest president in U.S. history because JD Vance will beat Teddy Roosevelt’s record. But if you look over time, we really only had one very old president in the 19th century, and now between the late 20th and 21st century, we’ve had three.

You mentioned Reagan, Biden, and Trump. So there’s a trend emerging, but it’s way worse in Congress and I’d say also the judiciary.

CHAKRABARTI: So that’s the other branch that I didn’t even mention at the beginning of the show. And you particularly focus on the federal judiciary, because at the state level it’s a completely different ballgame.

A lot of states have mandatory retirement ages for their judges. But at the federal level, these are appointments for life, so it makes actual sense that as health care has gotten better, that sitting judges are sitting on the bench longer.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s exactly right, Meghna. And it’s worth noting that when the country was founded, there was a big debate about this.

And New York State back then had age limits for judges, as most countries around the world do. But the framers of our Constitution decided to lock in gerontocracy, not just by a Senate that’s named after older people, but through a set of judges who could not be forced to leave. They could be impeached of course, but that has meant that there have been older judges our whole history.

But when people stay alive more readily, they’re going to stay more readily. And that’s what we’ve seen to an extraordinary extent in the last few decades on the federal bench.

CHAKRABARTI: You’re a law professor, so you automatically know the pushback against criticisms of an aging federal bench.

And one is that those lifetime appointments are there in order to ostensibly insulate judges from shifting political winds. And two, we actually did a show about this maybe last year or so, about whether there should be mandatory retirements at the federal, on the federal bench, and I heard a lot of argument from legal scholars saying actually older judges, due to the experience they have on the bench, make fairer decisions.

What are your thoughts?

MOYN First off, you asked, before what’s the problem with old age and this claim about experience would apply not just to judges, but all the old politicians or really the old folks in power across the board. And I think the answer is that one word for experience is wisdom, and another is being in a rut or captive to the olden days, and less flexible when it comes to new things.

And so you could just be repeating the same mistake if you’re older, and that’s been charged since many centuries ago. So there’s an open debate about exactly what you gain as your years pass. I wouldn’t say that judges are different. They’re political officials. They’re making political decisions.

And you can say the results are fair. I wouldn’t if you look at the Supreme Court today. But the main thing is that once we recognize those folks as exercising political power, we should ask, wait, why are there so few young people on the bench, or even people in middle age representing everyone else, since age matters in deciding what’s fair?

CHAKRABARTI: You know what I found very interesting in your book? Because I didn’t know this, that this issue of gerontocracy has come up in the past, not only in American history, but in other countries as well, and I find the example that you bring about France and Jean-Jacques Fazy, if I say his name correctly, to be very instructive. Because what? In the middle of the 19th century, he wrote a big, long tract called Gerontocracy: The Abuse of Wisdom of Elders in the French Government.

What was Fazy’s complaint?

MOYN: You’re right, Meghna, that gerontocracy is old, not new. And in fact, it’s probably the way most people have been governed for most of human history. But it was named in the 1820s when after the French Revolution, there was a restoration of the monarchy.

And what was amazing about that restoration is that it very specifically placed older people in power, not just old Bourbon kings but especially in the kind of representative chamber of that time, which was mostly a sham. Like there were controls to make sure that mainly older men served.

And this young rebel, who was actually Swiss and just hanging out in Paris among the other radicals, said, “I need to coin a new word because in modernity, in modern times like ours, we’re supposed to let people shine. We’re kind of launching them into the prime of their lives for the sake of everyone.”

And what’s happened is that gerontocracy, the oldest form of government in the world, has struck back and I think that’s happened even more clearly in our time. That’s why I’m kind of copying his title.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. What you claim that Fazy says that because of this, France, this is a quote, France, it left France hostage to a politics of conservation.

MOYN: … I think that’s a fair point. But his claim was that in our kind of world you have new forms of power. And this was a big inspiration to me in thinking about the United States, which at least until recently has never had a monarch.

And, Fazy says, Look, it’s true we have a monarch, but what really matters in the modern world is who gets to vote and who has money. And both of those things are potentially more important. And if the voters age and who is rich ages, we will have a different kind of society. And the king would just represent the old folks in perpetuating the old ways.

CHAKRABARTI: You just previewed episodes two and three in this week’s series. But one more thing about how in the past, nations, including the United States wrestled with this issue of gerontocracy. Before we get to the why does it matter now. Again, I just found the history that you bring in the book so interesting. Because almost at the exact same time that Fazy was writing his screed against gerontocracy in France, you note appropriately that in the United States, maybe because of the progressive movement or whatnot, there was also some kind of pushback against gerontocracy.

MOYN: Absolutely. America used to stand out on a global scale for being the country of youth. Oscar Wilde, with his way of saying things, commented that the youth of America are its only tradition. Now, that goes a little far because I’ve already mentioned the Constitution and the way it controls young people in power.

At the time of the Constitution, 1787, the age minimums for serving as representative or senator or president, 25, 30, and 35 excluded up to 80% of the population of the time. And we mentioned how the founders looked at the possibility of an age limit for judges and said, “No, thank you.” And yet across American history, you can see a greater and greater commitment to launching youth and having those not just young, but in the prime of their lives get the resources they need to shine and to create for the sake of us all.

And that changed, I think, in our time, mainly because our doctors did so well in keeping us alive.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Moyn, let me just give voice to some of our listeners who had some very pointed things to say about their opinions regarding gerontocracy.

It’s interesting because they all kind of leaned one way. I’m not claiming at all, I’m not claiming at all that this is a scientific sampling of the diversity of opinion out there. It’s just folks who chose have their say. So this is Stephanie from Raleigh, North Carolina. She actually says she’s a baby boomer, but she thinks there’s too many boomers in politics.

STEPHANIE: At this point in time, I would’ve expected all of these old people to have fixed Social Security, made Medicaid more efficient and effective for a broader population, and fixed health care. It seems to me that these older people are resting on their laurels and figure that nothing’s going to fail before they die.

CHAKRABARTI: Here’s Jo G., who lives in Sacramento, California. Jo’s a millennial, and she says old politicians aren’t risk-takers.

JO G.: I think they tend to be less willing to listen to their constituency. They feel entrenched. They feel untouchable They don’t need to listen. Younger politicians that need more of a competitive edge are more willing to listen.

CHAKRABARTI: And here’s Chris, a millennial letting it rip in Tampa, Florida.

CHRIS: I think the aging generation of individuals that is governing the United States should all resign. I think it’s almost a crime that there are still people in our government who don’t understand that it’s no longer their turn.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, Professor Moyn.

And the intensity of the opinion and emotion there is, I think, meaningful, but I want to get into the evidence that you see to this question of what is the deeper problem. So what is the evidence that you see that an aging political class in this country is bad for America?

What would you point to as hard facts?

MOYN: So first I love your listeners. They’re the wise ones, I think. I’m a moderate compared to some of them. So the evidence really has to do with what we should want out of our government and our society. And I think the comments are right, that we do have to acknowledge that we change as we age, and therefore, it matters who has power.

I think one of the worst things about the correlation between age and power that we’re living through is the postponement of festering problems. Because of course, very reasonably, the older we are, the more we can say it’s someone else’s issue. And a great example of that or for which there’s hard fact is climate change.

The data are very clear that the older you are, and this is true as a politician or as a voter, the less you care about global warming. And so you’ll let some future generation solve it. You won’t live to see the worst effects. And so it’s really going to matter when it comes to that kind of problem who has power, and that’s why among other reasons, we’re living in an overheated world that shows no signs of finding a kind of popular response, even though everyone wants it, so many, much like age limits for politicians, which polls show are overwhelmingly popular, but we can’t get them enacted.

CHAKRABARTI: I was just going to ask you about that because over and over again, we’ve heard from On Point listeners and just about everyone else that a solution would be term limits or even age limits, if you want to put a different spin on it. But to your point, we can’t get them enacted, and I’m not sure that when push comes to shove, even voters themselves would enact it because there’s a trade-off there, right?

There’s the seniority, the literal political seniority trade-off that voters, at the end of the day, may not want to give up.

MOYN: I’m not sure we should trust elections because as we’ll talk about in this series, are they really democratic in the first place, or gerontocratic?

America has this syndrome of basically an incumbency advantage, which means that once you’re in office, you’re not going to be forced to leave. Except, unless there’s some catastrophe that befalls your campaign. And so that’s just like a hard fact we have to reckon with before we just say that the outcomes are what people want.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: There was an interesting example about 10 years ago of pushback against aging politicians, and it happened in 2016 when Democrats had just lost the presidential election and remained the minority in the House.

California’s Nancy Pelosi was 76 at the time and had led House Democrats for nearly 14 years. A small band of her fellow Democrats thought it was time for change. Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, then 43, challenged Pelosi for the top job. Here he is on Bloomberg TV.

TIM RYAN: I’m having a lot of disagreements with some people in my party right now. I’m pulling the fire alarm because the House is burning down, and we can sit here and we can play the normal traditional game, and we’re going to get where we got, and where we are right now is not where I want to be. We got a lot of young people in this party that want to move up.

CHAKRABARTI: However, Pelosi soundly beat Ryan in the Democrats’ secret ballot.

She got twice as many votes, 134 to 63, but the challenge against her didn’t end there. The following summer, Democrats lost a closely watched special election in Georgia, and several House members again questioned whether Pelosi should stay as leader. She pushed back in a press conference.

NANCY PELOSI: So we’re paving a way for a new generation of leadership, and again, I respect any opinion that my members have, but my decision about how long I stay is not up to them.

CHAKRABARTI: Then Democrats won back the House in 2018, giving Pelosi a chance to become speaker again. Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton was among those trying to stop her.

SETH MOULTON: The American people have been very clear that it’s time for new leadership, and we can’t answer that call by reinstalling the same leadership we’ve had since 2006.

CHAKRABARTI: Pelosi initially resisted, but in December she did reach a deal with seven Democrats who opposed her leadership bid. They would back her bid for speaker if Pelosi promised she would serve no more than four additional years.

PELOSI: I feel very comfortable about what they are proposing, and I feel very responsible to, to do that whether it passes or not. That’s what I’ll say about that.

CHAKRABARTI: Nancy Pelosi kept her side of the deal. She officially stepped down from her leadership position in 2023, and Hakeem Jeffries succeeded her at 52. Samuel Moyn, I wonder if there’s any lessons that you draw from this multiple leadership battle story regarding Nancy Pelosi?

MOYN: It’s an interesting story. Subsequently, I think a lot of people have admired the way Nancy Pelosi was able to kind of confront Trump. She had a lot of experience and power to do so. On the other hand, she was taking a bet on behalf of all of us. Now, she won it, but if you ask about someone else, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she took a bet.

She said, “It’s completely up to me whether I stay or go,” and she lost her bet on longevity and became notorious for a new reason with the shredding of abortion rights. So I think the main conclusion is that we can’t just let the older person decide how long is too long, especially when, if decline sets in, they’re not well-positioned to make the decision, as so many cases have illustrated.

Seth Moulton’s loss, I think, illustrates something else, which is that you can’t just run on age. You have to establish a policy difference, some daylight between you and the older politician. Because maybe age isn’t enough, especially when the voters are so old to change people’s mind about keeping the devil or getting a new politician in his or her place.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so age itself not being enough. That’s interesting, because we had an On Point listener, Ann, and she’s in Arvada, Colorado. She’s almost 70 years old and a retiree, and she says she’s felt firsthand how out of touch a person can become as they age.

ANN: I know for myself, I lack the energy and the passion and the organization skills to do all that I was able to do in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and even 50s. I imagine they’re at the same place. I just think it is time for age limits or term limits on people in government.

CHAKRABARTI: I wanted to play that one because it’s quite interesting when that same question is put to the elder members of Congress. They have very strong answers or very strong pushback. For example, here’s Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley. We talked about him before. He’s currently the oldest serving member of Congress. And he was asked about age concerns in an interview with Fox News in 2021.

GRASSLEY: I heard that same thing six years ago, and here I am. I’m ready to go. I get to the office at 6:00 in the morning. In fact, this morning I got there at four minutes to 6:00.

We leave about 6:30. I run. I go to bed at 9:00 and get up at 4:00, go two miles. This morning, I have to confess, I only went a mile and a half because I got a booster shot yesterday, and I feel, don’t feel quite up to it. But anyway, that’s my life and I’m very vigorous and can handle the job.

CHAKRABARTI: So Samuel Moyn, I wanted to play that because yes really, it’s a case by case basis, whether the numerical age of a politician is relevant to their ability to serve. But in the broader picture, in the book, I think you bring up something very important in terms of, what does this matter for America?

Especially as you noted, this country’s, one of its founding stories is that we’re a young nation and that I even remember Thomas Jefferson, he used to say that honestly, the government should just turn over every 50 years to bring new ideas into the political bloodstream of the country.

But so now we have a situation where you write that, this is a quote from your book, “The prevalence of aged politicians is almost certainly increasing the abstention of the young from politics. The older the politician, the less belief the younger constituents have that their votes even matter.” Tell me more about why you are concerned about that.

MOYN: Meghna, I have two college-aged daughters, and I really embarked on this research because I was so upset by their sense of resignation in the political system that we’ve handed them. It was mainly boomers. I’m Gen X, but I’m going to take a share of the blame. My daughters certainly give it to me.

And I think that it’s always been the case that older people are more invested, certainly in voting, and there have always been older politicians. But if you’re a young person, or even not that young, in your 30s, and you look out and not just that the leaders are old and that they have lost touch, if they’re not aging out, it’s because they’re relying on folks who tell them what to do who aren’t elected. And in the end, you’re looking at the policies that our political system produces. And systematically, you think that older people are acting in ways that are too self-serving, politicians and voters alike.

And so why would you attempt to join in? Why try to turn the Titanic when the captains are old and steaming towards an iceberg you can see but they disregard?

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so this is what I think the heart of the matter is when it comes to why we should all think more deeply about the effects of an aging political class.

Because in the very next sentence, Sam, you write this: “A disturbing study comparing national experiences, including that of the United States, concludes that the bigger the age gap between people and their politicians, the weaker the confidence that democracy is working.” Explain.

MOYN: Everyone wants other things being equal to vote for someone their own age.

Younger people, even folks in their prime in America, are forced to vote for older people. And the studies show that even though you have to do it, I’m gonna show up tomorrow and cast my ballot for Rosa DeLauro, who’s my Connecticut congresswoman. She’s 83 or years old. Her staff has told her to dye her hair purple.

Doesn’t make a difference to me. I look at her and say, “I would rather not have to do this, but I don’t have a choice.” And the younger you are, you’re looking out at the whole political system, which is gerontocratic, and you’re saying, “I’m being shamed into participating. I might not participate because in the end it’s something that this group of people has created, and we’re not gonna get involved in it. If it falls, maybe things will be better.”

CHAKRABARTI: I want to actually quote the latest in a series of different polls that are really showing that there is concrete evidence that this kind of disconnect or disinterest in democracy is happening in this country.

Yes. You’ve seen there’s been multiple polls. Of the most recent one I could find was from March of this year from Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, and they did a poll asking about whether people think democracy is working, and here’s what they found.

When it comes to people ages 18 to 29, only 36% of the folks they talked to agreed or strongly agreed that US democracy today can address the issues the country’s facing. Only 36%. Barely 16% agreed that democracy is working for young people. 50% just outright disagreed. These are astonishing numbers, Professor Moyn.

MOYN: And yet it’s very understandable. We’re asking them about democracy, but we’ve actually given them gerontocracy, and it’s clear that they have every reason to be upset. And they’re disaffected from it, and we say, “Oh, democracy’s in crisis.” But what we haven’t yet said, I think loudly enough, is that we never gave them democracy in the first place.

We gave them rule of, by and for older people, and no wonder they’re upset.

CHAKRABARTI:  The numbers here, I’m just going to read a few more, because I think, again, this gets to the heart of why we’re doing this whole series. In this Tufts study, only 9% of the 18 to 29 said they feel like they had, they had power in shaping their own futures.

Only 8% said they had a high level of hope regarding bettering or impacting their own futures. There’s literal disenfranchisement, and then there’s this almost spiritual disenfranchisement, that seems to be happening right now.

MOYN: I think there’s an epidemic, if you will, of alienation.

And the younger you go in America, the more the sense is that the government is not just filled with older people who don’t look like you, but that the government is not even trying to recognize the kinds of challenges you face as a younger person. And the kind of lifespan you’re going to have is very long, but you’re just waiting around to be given any authority over the political outcomes that you’re going to have to live under.

Yeah. And so the alienation effect is the one we have to face forthrightly.

CHAKRABARTI: There are times, though, where voters go to the ballot box and they say, “No, enough is enough. We need new leadership.” And one recent time just happened right where you are in Connecticut, Professor Moyn, because Connecticut Representative John Larson was running for his 15th term.

He’s 78, and that was earlier this year in the primaries, and he addressed concerns about his age in an interview with WSFA News.

LARSON: When you reach that point, the decision becomes pretty obvious. To walk away from what you’ve promised to people for improvements that haven’t taken place in 55 years, I couldn’t walk away from that, and I don’t think anyone else would either.

CHAKRABARTI: He was running in the primary against Hartford, Connecticut Mayor Luke Bronin, and Bronin appeared on MS NOW in August, and here’s what he said.

BRONIN: I think that these are not meant to be lifetime jobs, that any time you’re doing the same thing for decade after decade, people get stuck in routines. They get complacent. And we can’t afford that. I want to see more renewal. I want to see a Democratic Party that recognizes that we would be stronger if more of our leadership saw that part of leadership is knowing when it’s time to pass the torch.

CHAKRABARTI: And in fact, Luke Bronin beat John Larson in that Democratic primary. Bronin’s 47. So Professor Moyn, I guess the argument there is that the United States can self-correct with the institutions and procedures that we have now, voting, for example.

MOYN: It was an absolute privilege to get to vote for Luke Bronin. But so far, although we’re seeing really promising signs of recognition that our politicians are too old, we are just kind of getting lucky in a few different races.

Because in the end, we haven’t changed the system. And as someone might say, it’s not just that power corrupts, it’s that elder power corrupts the elderly politicians absolutely. And what that means is that we have to force these folks out in a great many instances, and that’s just really tough.

You’re going to win some, but you’re going to lose most, until, of course, there’s really no alternative for the politician but to retire if they’re alive at all.

CHAKRABARTI: We have just a minute left in today’s episode, Professor Moyn. Would you dare to predict what might happen in the United States if the sort of gerontocratic political system that we have isn’t reformed?

MOYN: I guess there are a couple of outcomes, Meghna. One is that we just decide as Americans to live under gerontocracy. You can get power, but only if you’re old. Or there’s an outburst among youth to change the system in alliance with those who are middle-aged like me and older, who really do, like many of your listeners, see that times are changing and we need to have intergenerational solidarity to save the country from its current situation.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.