American politics has become amazingly “gerontocratic.”
Congress is run by really old people, the faces of the Supreme Court Justices are as wrinkled as the Constitution they allegedly serve, and the oldest U.S. president in our history is a Silent Generation stumbler with one foot in the grave and the other in his mouth.
Enter Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, sporting an “I” and not an “R” or a “D” next to her name, followed by a hyphen and the state from which she hails: “AZ” for Arizona. She won office as a Democrat in 2018 but with some ballyhoo left her party last December. Wikipedia says she still caucuses with the Democrats, but in recent reporting Sinema has denied this: “I’m formally aligned with the Democrats for committee purposes,” Sinema was quoted in The Daily Wire. “But apart from that I am not a part of the caucus.”
Indeed, she stopped going to the Democrats’ bi-weekly caucus lunches because, as she puts it, they are “ridiculous”: “Old dudes are eating Jell‑O, everyone is talking about how great they are.”
Ah, Washington!
“The Northerners and the Westerners put cool whip on their Jell‑O, and the Southerners put cottage cheese,” she adds, laying it on a bit thick.
While Senator Sinema makes much of her status as an Independent, and the increasing popularity of that stance in her home state, getting re-elected without a major party is tricky business. Politico quotes Sen. Mitt Romney (R‑Utah) as being on the verge of endorsing her, as well as expressing hopes that Republicans can seduce her to the GOP side.
There is nothing wrong with slurping down Jello, per se. The real problem is unbridled power that calcifies our career politicians … and with them our political system.
We need term limits. If not age limits.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Breaking the Jell‑O Mold”
Term limits would change the incentive structure in useful ways, and would grow even more useful if no one were forced by infeeblement to leave office.
A fair amount is done these days by old people who are sure that they will die before the consequences are felt, so I’ll grant that age limits might have some net positive effect in the absence of term limits.
But, in a world with meaningful term limits, the reasons for voting for an elderly candidate would be much changed, and I think that the costs of age limits would outweigh the benefits.
My mother, who is very much a southerner, likes cottage cheese and likes Jello, has never served the two as one dish. However, both of my parents drink MSNBC straight from the hose, so perhaps a day will come when she puts insects in the Jello.
Term limits must include a requirement that government pensions are not paid out prior to the standard retirement age.
We need younger people in congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert!
Really?