Bored? Who has time to be bored?
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi left her post with a historic legacy of accomplishment. There is much there to admire. I wish she’d go back to San Francisco. Or at least leave Congress. She could take Steny Hoyer, Dick Durbin, and Chuck Schumer with her for the good of her party. (Let Republicans clean their own houses.)
Political life in this country is dominated by a gerontocracy that is stunting its growth. Local Democrats are forever lamenting the lack of young blood in their ranks. But look around at the dominance of wrinkles at most any meeting. It’s not a particularly inviting environment for people under 50. And with the oldsters tending to stay in positions of power well beyond their “best by” dates, the young have nowhere to go. Why bother wasting the time?
The Washington Post reports that the trend extends beyond politics:
Yet even beyond Washington, a geriatric elite also controls many other aspects of an aging society, to such an extent that in some professions there are deep concerns about how those roles will be filled in decades to come. In medicine, big business, farming, construction trades, and across much of the American economy, the workforce is getting older and older. In the leadership ranks, the elderly are increasingly staying in command, well past traditional retirement age, which can sometimes limit the positions available to younger workers from a wider variety of backgrounds.
“Why should people at the top of their game retire? This is their life,” Jonathan Evans tells the Post. Evans, a geriatrician in Charlottesville, studies demographics and retirement.
Why? Because while with age comes some degree of experience and wisdom, locking out the young starves society of fresh ideas and innovation at time when both are sorely needed. If we sneer at the ultra-rich for not knowing the meaning of the word ‘enough,’ is it any wonder the young might sneer at the old for not knowing when to move on?
From New Year’s Day 2018: “[A]n organization doesn’t thrive when leaders hang on beyond their time. Nor will young activists join one with the institutional vigor of a men’s fraternal organization.”
Hello?
“Age diversity is super important to a healthy society,” said Brian Spisak, a Harvard public health researcher and business consultant. His research on voters’ attitudes toward the age of political candidates found that “people prefer the look of older leaders to assure stability and younger leaders to explore alternatives.”
When one generation seems to be in charge, he said, the results can be unsettling. In politics and business alike, “when leadership stays too long, they can be stiff and unchanging,” Spisak said. “Older employees bring a ton of practical knowledge … But if you’re staying on and status-hoarding, maybe you’re not really a leader, you’re just somebody in a hierarchy trying to maintain power.”
I remind Democratic Party functionaries that one of their principal jobs as leaders is to train their replacements. But succession planning is often far down their list of priorities.
The Post concedes that the job market is changing, younger job-seekers are job-hopping, and “the old tough-it-out culture” of seniority that once held sway no longer does. But whether in farming or in medicine or in politics, opportunity is more attractive than years of standing in line hearing “it’s not your turn.”
Yes, Joe Biden is older than I’d like. But that problem won’t solve itself until leaders in this country and in both major parties start investing in their country’s future leaders the way they invest in themselves. They need younger blood not just for the cosemetics but for institutional vitality.
William Tate, the 81-year-old mayor of Grapevine, Tex., has held that position for 48 years and he’s convinced his work is keeping him alive. “If you retire, what do you do?” he said. “Your mind and body start shutting down. I would be so bored, I don’t think I’d live very long.”
Bored? Who has time to be bored? Democracy in this country and in the world is at risk. Authoritarianism is on the rise, if not flat-out fascism, fergawdsakes.
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” is more than a typing drill. Those who have made their fortunes and reputations are well positioned in their retirements to commit themselves more fully to something greater than status-hoarding and padding their retirement accounts. *
“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required,” it says in Luke. This country has given much to its oldsters. What is required now is for those with all that age, experience, and influence to pay it forward to the young. Wringing the last drops out a career in power is not the way.
*Update: Something greater meaning to saving democracy while letting a new generation operate it.