'Vintage' politics: why power in the US is concentrated in the hands of those over 75

Biden, Pelosi, Sanders, Trump, Mitch McConnell - prominent American politicians are of a “respectable” age. Why are such elderly people ruling America, what are the reasons for this phenomenon, and where can this lead the country? The Atlantic.

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During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden did a lot of strange things. At one event, three things happened in a matter of minutes. He basked in the storm of applause from the crowd. He mistook his wife for his sister. And he delivered a confusing, intermittently slurred and sometimes unintelligible speech.

One would expect the typical opponent to jump on these verbal reservations, asking if Biden, who was 77 years old, was too old to reason with a competitor. But then this did not happen, since his rival Bernie Sanders, who had already suffered a heart attack during this campaign, was a year older than Biden.

Before us were three candidates, divided by ideology, but united by senile insanity. All three white men were born in the 1940s, before the invention of Velcro and the independence of India and Israel. Surprisingly, each of them is currently older than any of the last three US presidents. If, due to some constitutional glitch, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama were to jump into the 2020 race at this very moment, each of them would suddenly become the youngest person in the competition.

How did it happen?

One possibility is that it's just a coincidence. You might think that this is just one election that Trump has been roiling about, and younger blood is waiting in the wings. But old age is deeply embedded in contemporary presidential politics.

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The mystery of America's old presidential candidates actually consists of two separate questions - one about demand and the other about supply. First, is there any reason why today's voters might prefer older candidates to younger ones? And secondly, why has the list of viable presidential candidates gotten so “aged”?

The most obvious reason why America's politicians are so old may be that Americans are getting older. Voters over 65 tend to go to the polls more frequently than younger voters, and political science studies have shown that voters generally prefer candidates "who are closest to them in age." It sounds like a universal formula: old countries produce old politicians.

But since the 1980s, almost every European country has aged, and the typical EU leader has actually gotten younger. In the United Kingdom, while people over 55 outnumber people under 30 by one of the largest margins in the world, current Prime Minister Boris Johnson is "only" 55 years old. Biden, Sanders and Trump are now older than the five previous UK prime ministers since Tony Blair.

Perhaps we are talking about decades of keeping young people out of politics. According to The Economist, older Americans outperform younger Americans by a wide margin than in a typical OECD country. This is especially true at the local level. As Timothy Noah writes in Politico, research has shown that the median age of an American municipal voter is 57—"nearly a generation older than the median age of those eligible to vote."

Or maybe it's because the American electorate prefers "experienced newbies." Since 1996, each new president has had less national political experience than the previous commander in chief when he was elected. Bill Clinton was a fresher face than George W. Bush, but had more gubernatorial experience than George W. Bush, who in turn had been governor longer than Barack Obama had been a senator. And then came Trump, who had no political experience at all. Only Biden breaks the big picture - more than 30 years in the Senate, he was the youngest senator in US history, in fact, all his life in politics.

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But audiences tend to gravitate toward extreme novelty when paired with something familiar. Most people want to feel both slightly surprised and comforted by the media, be it movies, TV or music. The ideal "familiar surprise" in politics would be a character very similar to Trump: a well-known celebrity who also presents a shock to the political system.

American leadership is old people, down to the bottom

The US government is a creaky machine, the most important cogs of which can be safely called "vintage".

The average age in Congress is near a record high of 75. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 82 years old, Senator Bernie Sanders is 81 years old, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is 80 years old, Donald Trump is 76 years old, and Joe Biden is 80 years old.

To be clear, this phenomenon is more than politics. In business, science and finance, power is concentrated in the hands of older people. Over the past 40 years, the average age of Nobel Prize winners has increased in almost every discipline, including physics, chemistry, medicine, and literature. Among S&P 500 companies, the average age of new CEOs has increased by 14 years over the past 14 years. Americans 55 and older make up less than one-third of the population, but they own two-thirds of the nation's wealth—the highest concentration of wealth on record.

The predominance of the old power is undoubtedly connected with the predominance of old age. Higher income Americans are living longer than ever and working longer hours. Leading a country is a tedious job (at least in theory), but it's not as tedious as working in a factory or in construction. As the economy shifts to white-collar work, seventy-somethings stay at work. The share of Americans over 75 in the labor force has increased by 85 percent over the past 20 years.

Spending on presidential politics also benefits the elderly disproportionately

Older politicians have had more time to build support networks, and older wealthy people may be more likely to take self-financing risks. If Jeff Bezos were to step down from Amazon to run for president this year, he would be giving up years of peak earnings and peak performance in the private sector. Meanwhile, Trump and Bloomberg are rich grandpas whose most significant achievements in the private sector are behind them. They can afford to run for president both jokingly and literally (they obviously can afford it) and in an existential sense: what else is Bloomberg going to do in his 80s other than spend his money on political causes ?

Age is not just a number

First, gerontocracy is the cousin of plutocracy. Power concentrated in the hands of the elderly, who are also wealthy, will predictably lead to policies that benefit the old and rich at the expense of the less privileged. The federal government already guarantees universal health insurance and universal basic income for the elderly, even as Republicans yell socialism when younger people request options for the same policy. It is unlikely that young people will achieve many political victories in a government whose average age is over 70 years.

Second, old management can be bad management. At the end of the Cold War, the USSR was often criticized for the fact that the country was falling apart, in part because the Soviet politburo was too old and out of touch with modern times to keep up with the changing world. Research shows that cognitive decline typically accelerates by age 70. Without the encouragement of voters or employers to ageism, it seems risky to leave the most important issues of life, death and well-being in the hands of a group of seventy-somethings who are in the crossroads of a biologically predictable cognitive decline.

Finally, the most important issue facing the United States and the world, climate change, deeply affects generations. Solving it requires a forward-thinking approach to diplomacy, inventiveness, and the deployment of technologies that the old, creaky country will simply never master. This crisis urgently requires the contributions and ideas of the generations that will be most affected by it. If the government of the old, by the old and for the old does not disappear from the face of the earth, everyone else may suffer.

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