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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I am good. One of the reasons why I am good this morning, Nia, besides the fact that the day we are recording, it's nice and sunny and comparatively cooler, is we're going to do a podcast episode that is a follow up to a recently completed episode where we looked at age.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. The median age of the United States turns out we're all getting older. Guess who else is getting older?
J. Aughenbaugh: Elected officials.
N. Rodgers: Elected officials.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Which is not super surprising. When you consider that our median age as a country is roughly 39.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then it's not super surprising that our median age for federal service is 964.
J. Aughenbaugh: The listeners, it's not that old, but it would be rather shocking if the country's median age was increasing, and in the case of the United States, increasing pretty dramatically. Then to find that the median age of our federal government officials, particularly the leaders, was getting younger.
N. Rodgers: That would be weird. That would be Benjamin Button.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It would be suggesting that there was some deep state conspiracy actually going on where we were bumping off. Our elderly members of Congress, presidents, Supreme Court justices, etc.
N. Rodgers: Can we get some statistics first?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, before we do that, we hardly ever engage in warnings, but some of our listeners might be a little off put because Nia and I are going to approach this topic with a certain amount of seriousness, but also two because it is Nia and I, we will probably make some jokes.
N. Rodgers: Or have some death levity.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That's a good way to describe it. In part it's because truth be told, Nia and I are closer as we discussed in the previous episode.
N. Rodgers: To the end or the beginning. As we say, how they say you got one foot on a banana peel and the other foot in the grave?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Our toes are in the grave.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: One toes are on the banana peel and our toes are in the grave. But some of the people we're going to talk about today got whole legs in the grave. They're already.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They got multiple limbs.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. You're like goodness, you should just lay down. The other thing we should and when I just said that, please hear listeners. We do not wish death or illness on any of these people.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Regardless of their political positions, regardless of any wrongdoing they may have engaged in or right doing they may have engaged in. None of us want to see people suffer and we don't wish death on anybody. That's not what we're talking about here. What we are talking about here is trying to be realistic about what this can mean a policy because everything for Aughie when it doesn't come back to the Commerce clause, it comes back to what does this do to policy and regulation. Because he's an administrative law goob, and that is the part that he cares about with the federal government. What effect is that going to have on the administrative state?
J. Aughenbaugh: For listeners, if you were wondering why we decided to do this particular episode before Nia, we get to the statistics, there were a couple of incidents earlier this year and again we're recording in 2023, but there were a couple of incidents earlier this year. They got Nia and I thinking about how old is too old to be an effective government leader? One incident was Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, has had two different instances. Now, in fact, actually three different instances where he froze up during press conferences.
N. Rodgers: Apparently what happens to him is something akin to a seizure in the sense that he just goes still. He doesn't appear to hear the question, he doesn't appear to be able to answer. He just stands there, and in all three instances, his aides have ushered him away, and it's been announced that he's fine because if I did that publicly, people would not think I was fine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Notwithstanding the doctor for the Senate claiming that he is perfectly healthy. Again, when I read that, I was just like nobody at Mitch McConnell age is going to go perfectly healthy.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. That's when they said that, what was his name? The White House physician who said about Trump is in perfect health.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We're like, you know we have eyes. What we see that he's overweight, that he has poor eating habits because he clearly does them in public.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm not saying that to slam Donald Trump, but they've said that about a lot of politicians and presidents. You're like, you know I can see that person. They're not invisible.
J. Aughenbaugh: I still recall during the 1990s when President Clinton's doctor said, "He's in reasonably good health for a man his age with the job he has."
N. Rodgers: You're like, yeah. The eating habits?
J. Aughenbaugh: Two weeks earlier, there were photos splashed across newspapers across the country.
N. Rodgers: I think it makes think that it's all over his face.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He had just finished jogging and him in a cadre of Secret Service, McDonald's.
N. Rodgers: Now, he's much better post presidency because he's actually gotten his health much more under control.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He's had some hard problems and he's gotten.
N. Rodgers: The reality is tough job combined with age is going to mean you're not in health.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. The second incident that got us thinking was Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. She is the senior California Senator. She has served in the Senate for, good lord, 20 plus years, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Before that she was mayor of San Francisco, etc.
N. Rodgers: It's a long history career.
J. Aughenbaugh: She has struggled with various health problems. But the incident that really got us thinking was she was in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and it was her turn to vote and she just didn't know what she was supposed to do.
N. Rodgers: She was confused. She's 90.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, she's 90 and mind you, this is a senator.
N. Rodgers: She's somewhat a fog.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. This is a senator who was known for her quick responses.
N. Rodgers: Sharp take, sharp tongue.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Biting acerbic if you will, which I always admired. Go figure. But it got us thinking.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. An incident that Aughie very kindly has gently moved past which I appreciate, which I am going to mention is President Biden not seeing sandbags tripping over them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: We have had presidents that have tripped over things before. Like Chevy Chase's version of President Ford.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It is that he fell down all the time, which is not quite true. Gerald Ford did not fall down nearly as much as Chevy Chase made him seem like he fell down. But we've had presidents that have tripped and presidents that have you taken a header and all that other stuff. There was a brief moment when I thought, we are lucky that President Biden didn't break a hip when he went down on that sandbag. Because at a certain age, your bones are brittle.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It doesn't matter how much you run, it doesn't matter how good health you're in, just physical fact of brittle bones catches up with you.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the physical. Then you add, for instance, the mental.
N. Rodgers: Where people get confused with the words you're trying to say.
J. Aughenbaugh: We now know, for instance, that in President Reagan's second term, more than likely he was already beginning to suffer from the early effects of Alzheimer's, which contributed to his passing once he finished his term. If we think about this statistically, Nia, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Right now as we're recording this episode, the two leading presidential candidates from the two main political parties, Joe Biden, who's 80, the Republican nominee, at least the candidate who's leading in the polls is Donald Trump. Trump is 77 as we record. Then if you look at the institution that I spend a lot of time teaching and researching, two Supreme Court Justices are over the age of 70, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Two more are old enough to qualify for Social Security, and those two are Justices Sotomayor and Chief Justice John Roberts. If you look at, for instance, just US Senators Nia if we decided to put age limits.
N. Rodgers: Which is something that people regularly talk about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. In fact, there have been a number of polls in the last few years where a majority of the Americans who were surveyed are in favor of putting age caps on elected officials. But if the age cap was 60, 71% of the current senators would have to resign.
N. Rodgers: Seventy-one percent.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This would be their last term in office. That is a super-majority of the current US Senators. If the age cap was 70, 30%, nearly a third of all senators and both of the leading presidential candidates, and 2/9 of the Supreme Court justices would being ineligible to serve.
N. Rodgers: I think that those statistics are deeply important because when you think about the sheer number of people who should be enjoying a retirement, either enjoying or we would like you to go away so we can enjoy your retirement, whichever way you want to look at that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Look at it.
N. Rodgers: That is a huge number of people. Now, that being said, I do want to note that young people also occasionally have illness. Senator Fetterman was young when he had his stroke, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's a young man, he has not passed. He's a young man relative to these other folks, but what we are talking about is the likelihood.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia is talking about the junior senator from Pennsylvania, Senator John Fetterman. But what we're talking about here is.
N. Rodgers: Is statistics. Statistics catch up with you as you get be 60, as you get to be 70, you start to see more illness, you start to see more brain fog, you start to see a withdrawal of certain skill sets that you might have had when you were younger because that's the natural human aging.
J. Aughenbaugh: We are aging. Just even the ability to put in the long hours that these positions require.
N. Rodgers: I know President Trump says he only sleeps four hours a night. Actually, many CEOs have said similar things and I know that there's a whole thing with business, and sleep is for the week, you'll sleep when you're dead kind of thing, whatever. But the reality is, you don't perform as well. You just can't.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The human body requires a certain amount of sleep in order to perform well in most people.
J. Aughenbaugh: As we want to do on this podcast, we're going to give both sides of this; we're going to give multiple sides. This is a civil discourse, if you will, podcast. There is plenty of research by gerontologists that suggest that being older doesn't mean that a person can no longer do their job. That many elderly individuals have both the physical and mental abilities to do the work, even the strenuous work of governing. I know perhaps that some of our listeners are like, well, how difficult is it to go ahead and vote no all the time in the United States Congress?
N. Rodgers: Then go home for several weeks of time.
J. Aughenbaugh: In addition to that, Nia, there is the old adage that with age comes experience and wisdom.
N. Rodgers: I agree in the sense of this particular side of the argument that experience does matter in certain positions. It is helpful for a president to have had governing experience before.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It is helpful for that person to have experience with international relations because that's part of their job and part of what they're going to do.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are many first-term, second-term members of Congress who say it took me one or two terms to figure out how does Congress, either House, do its work, what schedule do I need to have?
N. Rodgers: That's why almost every job gives you a probation period before both sides decide that you're going to stay because you want to figure out if this really is a place where you can work and where you can fit in and where you can do what needs to be done. But I would argue on the other side of that is that a huge amount of that work is done by minions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That was the next point I was going to raise. As somebody who studies government institutions, the reality is many members of Congress, former members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, even presidents have acknowledged that one of the reasons why they can do the demanding work of their position, and in some cases do really excellent work, is because they have assembled really good staffs. If you think about, for instance, Supreme Court Justices each of them gets four clerks who are fresh out of law school. If you think about the office of the White House, the Executive Office of the President, we did a previous podcast episode, Nia, about the Executive Office of the President, or just watch The West Wing, the old TV show, you're talking about a huge number of people, very talented, who do a lot of the day-to-day minutia of governing. I've had an internship working for a US Senator and a huge chunk of the work was done by the staff.
N. Rodgers: They read bills and highlight things that they think the senator is going to care about or want to know before they make their vote. They do a lot of that background work, so when they hand it to you like they're, here, read the highlights.
J. Aughenbaugh: They meet with constituents, they meet with interest groups. Again, this is not to disparage the work of these government officials, but at the same time, from a Democratic theory perspective, we got a problem because we don't elect the staffs, we elect their bosses, so who are we holding accountable when we vote? Elected officials or their staff?
N. Rodgers: Sometimes we're holding the staff accountable.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: The reality of Watergate is that Nixon didn't do any of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: He didn't break into.
N. Rodgers: He didn't break into anything, he didn't actually really do a whole lot of the cover-up until the end. He hired Ehrlichman and help me out with.
J. Aughenbaugh: Halderman.
N. Rodgers: Halderman. He hired those guys. Then he said, get the job done, and they said, yes, sir.
J. Aughenbaugh: They did.
N. Rodgers: They got the job done.
J. Aughenbaugh: He crushed in the.
N. Rodgers: They were held legally accountable and several of them went to jail, but the person who was held politically accountable was Richard Nixon.
J. Aughenbaugh: The thought that always comes to my mind about the role of the staff was former South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond.
N. Rodgers: Strom Thurmond. He lived to be 480.
J. Aughenbaugh: He served in the Senate well over the age of 100, and by all accounts.
N. Rodgers: I think he was still sharp apparently even to the end.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the last two or three terms that he was in the Senate.
N. Rodgers: His staff was doing the work.
J. Aughenbaugh: His staff was doing the work.
N. Rodgers: His mind was sharp in the sense that he could make arguments.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But only because his staff had done all the background work to give him that. I'm going to ask you a question.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Do you think that the olds can represent the youngs?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's another issue here, Nia, and I really struggle with this. Let's face it, Nia, you and I, in our jobs, interact with typically 17-23, 24-year-olds, and in many ways, they keep us young.
N. Rodgers: They force us.
J. Aughenbaugh: They force us to.
N. Rodgers: Because parents, their kids age out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Mack will not stay 11 forever, which I'm sure you're grateful for in many ways. But in some ways, you'd love her to stay 11 forever because she's a really great person right now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: When she's 16 and saying I want the car keys and I want to go out and do things, you'll be like, can we go back to 11? That whole notion of one of the best things for us in our job is that young people keep coming in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In that age group, they keep doing that. But I would be completely remiss and wildly wrong to say that I could represent or even understand a lot of the positions that they have and a lot of things that they like to do, they say words and I'm like, okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: We talked about this in the most recent podcast episode in regards to the meeting age increasing. That is, when you get older, your priorities change.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: I got to wonder to what extent when we have older elected and government officials whether or not they actually have the ability to represent the younger generations.
N. Rodgers: Dude, if you are 80 years old and you are still paying on your student loans, somebody needs to talk to you, like to help you. But you know what I mean? Once you start first paying your student loans, theoretically, when you're 80, you've probably also paid off your mortgage. Not you and me, but other real people, their mortgage is relatively young. They'll be paid out Aughie and I by the way listeners will never be paid off. We're just going to be paying forever. You know what I mean? Like you lose your perspective on what that means in terms of your monthly budget and how you live your daily life knowing that you have these huge payments that you have to make each month. It changes what jobs you go after, it changes and that thing. If you're a person who doesn't really remember how it was to be young and hungry and struggling.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, or even think about how the generations change.
N. Rodgers: That then what's important to them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. I mean if we're talking about Mitch McConnell, Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, etc.
N. Rodgers: Buy the House have 2.5 children.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I'm not even going there. They're Boomers. That's a different generation. Nia, you and I are Gen X and we frequently joke both on and off recording about what it's like to be a member of Generation X. But we're now talking about Millennials. That's a different generation. They may have different priorities. They might actually be concerned about climate change, which is not to say that older Americans aren't.
N. Rodgers: Aren't, but differently.
J. Aughenbaugh: But differently because if you were a Boomer, you were coming to age and driving when gasoline was still cheap and plentiful and the thought that, us burning fossil fuels was damaging the climate.
N. Rodgers: Was unthinkable.
J. Aughenbaugh: Was unthinkable.
N. Rodgers: Can't affect something this big.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's just one example. The generations are different.
N. Rodgers: The work they want to do, the kinds of families, the size of families, they want to have.
J. Aughenbaugh: The way they perceive government institutions. Nia, you and I are Gen X. Not all Gen Xers are the same, but you and I have a certain amount of skepticism and cynicism about all kinds of institutions, whether they're government social institutions, educational institutions. Our level of expectation of any of them wasn't all that great.
N. Rodgers: It's very low.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it wasn't all.
N. Rodgers: If somebody said to me tomorrow, here's this giant conspiracy that happened the entire time you were a teenager, I'd be like, tell me something I don't know. I'm totally not shocked even though I don't know what this thing is because I was pretty sure we were going to die in thermonuclear war when I was a kid so like I'm alive now, I consider to be a pretty awesome thing. But if you told me there was a giant conspiracy of a deep state thing to do this thing and that thing, I'd be like, yeah, probably.
J. Aughenbaugh: But yeah, probably, because you well, let's face it, when you're eight years old and you're doing duck and cover drills,.
N. Rodgers: Right. Feel like whatever. I've drunk more water out of more hoses. I have probably 30% rust in my person. It didn't kill me and let's move on.
J. Aughenbaugh: But generations change, so how can?
N. Rodgers: This generation is very socially oriented in the sense of social justice, environmental justice. They have a lot of passion about those subjects that previous generations didn't have and may not have and may have. Yeah, I want the world to be a good place too but not the way the youngest generation is now. They're very powerfully connected to this idea of we have to fix this, we have to change things.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's a level of immediacy with the younger generations. Level of immediacy that if you are a four-term US Senator, change-.
N. Rodgers: Twenty-four years you're like slow your role, it's going to be fine. They're like no. No slowing. Speed up.
J. Aughenbaugh: Speed up.
N. Rodgers: Part of that is because their entire world is delivered in four seconds. They live in a very immediate world with their phones and with their connectivity and most 80 year olds don't live in that immediate world.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, even if they understand that, they're not predisposed to go ahead and think about the world in that kind of immediacy.
N. Rodgers: Now, that being said, some get it better than others.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure, yes.
N. Rodgers: Some of our older senators try to stay young, they try to get their staffs to get them to do things. But I mean, we all saw the painfulness that was Mark Zuckerberg sitting in front of Congress-.
J. Aughenbaugh: Trying to explain.
N. Rodgers: Try to explain the Internet and Wi-Fi and you're like, oh, you should just stop talking. This isn't going to work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Every time a member of Congress asked the CEOs of the social media companies questions, I began to crunch.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. There's almost like a bad drinking game.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Right.
N. Rodgers: You're like, we're going to be drunk in 20 minutes.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is day drinking gone bad.
N. Rodgers: Can I ask you a question about being re-elected?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Doesn't that happen approximately 100% of the time?
J. Aughenbaugh: Not that high. But typically most election cycles it's between 90, 95% at the time. Which by the way, I'm a college professor. That's A-level, if you will, success.
N. Rodgers: If it was mandated 50% of the time and they keep their jobs.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The incumbent level is 90%.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is 90%.
N. Rodgers: You can be more or less incompetent and keep your job.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, that's the thing.
N. Rodgers: Not even incompetent. I should say that because they're not incompetent, but you could be marginally competent, doing okay job job.
J. Aughenbaugh: But yeah, listeners, what Nia is referring to is the incumbency effect for those who already have the job.
N. Rodgers: Right. It's hard to break out, it's hard to break in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's hard to break in because you are known, you have the advantages of your office that you can utilize. You can go ahead If you're a member of Congress, bring home the infamous perk to your state or to your district.
N. Rodgers: The party will probably support you because of your unknown quantity.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the thing. The political parties have a bind. I mean, even if they want to go younger, are you willing to give up a "safe Senate seat" that is occupied by an octogenarian?
N. Rodgers: It's no.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: It's name is out there, you got name recognition all that stuff. They spend less money on those races.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Because they don't have to get that name out there. That name is Lisa Murkowski's name is known in the lower 48.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's a big deal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which means that in Alaska.
N. Rodgers: If you don't know her name, it's because you're dead.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and if you're a challenger.
N. Rodgers: You literally can't live in that state and not know who she is.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you are challenging Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, not only do you have to bring your A-game, but the stars, the Moon, the tides all have to line up if you're going to go ahead and take her down.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. I mean she got in the last time on a ride in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: She wasn't even on the ballot.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the ballot.
N. Rodgers: She won. There is that complication of if you do want to make it younger, if you do want to try to bring the younger people into Congress, what's going to have to happen is that people are going to have to leave of their own volition. It's not going to be that you're going to knock them out generally.
J. Aughenbaugh: I tried to explain this to my students who again, are generally much younger. They're just like why aren't the parties more responsive to young people? I said, okay, so the United States Senate currently is pretty close to 50/50 divided. There's a slight majority for the Democrats. The next set of Congressional elections is in 2024, and you're the Democratic Party and you want to retain control of the Senate. Now you might want to go younger because you want to appeal to younger voters. However, you also want to maintain the majority. Seven of the 10 oldest senators currently are Democrats or they caucus with the Democratic Party.
N. Rodgers: Right. Bernie and Angus King.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Bernie Sanders and the Angus King are the dependents to caucus with the Democrats. Did you to risk?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Do you risk replacing Bernie Sanders or even do you risk replacing a straight Democrat?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Like straight-up Democrat, Dianne Feinstein?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Although she's pretty safe in California. It's pretty safe in California that would be a Democrat.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But what about in a purple state? What about in a state like Virginia?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Do you replace Tim Kaine who is not one of the oldest Senators, but let's pretend that he was? Do you try to bring in a young person without that name recognition and hope that it all goes your way? A state that's purple and could easily go the other direction.
N. Rodgers: Or if you're thinking about the Presidency, Nia.
N. Rodgers: What do with Biden and Trump at this point? The name recognition is off the chart.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm hearing a lot from my students.
N. Rodgers: Do they want to vote for either one of these guys?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. In part because of their age. They don't think that either one of them really represents their generation, their friends, their loved ones, etc. But I'm like, okay, but who do you replace them with? Because as you just pointed out, Nia, Biden, and Trump are well known.
N. Rodgers: Right. How a bunch of the people going up against Trump are much younger. Relatively speaking, they're much younger.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Then he is 30 or 40 year gap, and they are not doing anywhere near the business he is doing in the polls.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. He's cleaning their clocks. Right now, if you're the Democratic Party, are you going to run somebody against an incumbent President when you're afraid that if you lose the election, Donald Trump's going to be President again? Well, we'll just go ahead and stick with Uncle Joe. Or think about the institution that I study, the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had an opportunity to retire when Barack Obama was president. I mean you had Democrats and liberals writing up at pieces in the New York Times.
N. Rodgers: Past who will retire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who retire. President Obama even had a lunch with her, and he tap-danced around the subject. But her thinking was, I can still do the work, I still like the work, and yes, I've had cancer and at that point, she had already had cancer three times and eventually she succumbed to cancer when she got her fourth bout. But nevertheless. If you think that you can still do the job.
N. Rodgers: Well, and that comes back to hubris.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: This idea of whether you can willingly let go of things. Now we've had several Senators this time who have decided not to run and we've had a few Congress people who have decided not to run.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: For whatever reason. But it is awfully hard. It's a certain person that runs for political office to start with. That is a person who is both somewhat narcissistic and has a somewhat high level of hubris. I can fix the world and people love me. Those two things combine and it is really hard to let go.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Of the, I am a world fixer and the people love me.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, these are not people with.
N. Rodgers: Small egos.
J. Aughenbaugh: Small egos. Again, with the Court, as I'm fond of telling my students, you're talking about nine people who basically most of their life have been told that they are the smartest person in the room since they were a kid.
N. Rodgers: Right. The chances of them just saying, you know what? I'm just going to go lax. Now, who went back to Maine?
J. Aughenbaugh: New Hampshire? That was David. Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's like, I don't need this crap because he didn't like DC. It wasn't that. He was like, oh, I don't think I can do the job.
J. Aughenbaugh: Do the job. But this week that we are recording, a very well-known US Senator decided to step down. He's not going to run for re-election, but his age 76. But the Senator who I'm talking about is Utah Senator Mitt Romney. One of the reasons why Romney said he wanted to step down was he didn't like all the demagogues in both political parties. But the other main reason that he mentioned, Nia, was that he thought it was time for his generation to step down and let the next generation of Americans occupy government positions.
N. Rodgers: Now, juxtapose that with 82-year-old Nancy Pelosi?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: She 82.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. She's in her 80s.
N. Rodgers: She is in her 80s. She's going to run again.
J. Aughenbaugh: She's going to run again.
N. Rodgers: For the Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Probably unopposed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I mean, somebody will put in their name on the Republican side just to make a good faith effort.
J. Aughenbaugh: But she's in a safe Democratic.
N. Rodgers: The chance is right, the chance for not being re-elected are pretty low.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and that's the thing you know about gerrymandering of House districts. When you gerrymander House districts so that the incumbents have safe seats, that's yet another reason why you don't retire.
N. Rodgers: Right. Why should you?
J. Aughenbaugh: You don't have to work really hard to maintain your office.
N. Rodgers: You're not getting out there and hustling.
J. Aughenbaugh: In mind, Nia, you and I've struggled with this because we have said on this podcast a number of times that we don't believe in term limits because that's what we think voting is for.
N. Rodgers: That's what the elections are, they're the potential term limits every year except for instances where we don't get to vote. Like the Supreme Court Court.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But then you and I've talked off recording that government work, particularly elected government work, is probably the only profession that does have term limits. Now, mind you, there are some states that have term limits for state court jobs, etc. But almost every private sector industry has age limits.
N. Rodgers: You can say you want to work till you're 80, but at about 67 or 68, HR comes to you and says, so what are your retirement plans? That's how they put it. They don't say you go now, but they start asking you about your retirement plans, which is their message to you that it's time for you to retire and let the next group of people come up through the system.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and I love those conversations that you and I have heard, some of our friends have had. Because the HR officials do it like they're trying to be helpful.
N. Rodgers: Let's start thinking about how we plan for your retirement.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Right.
N. Rodgers: You're like, wait, I'm retiring? They're like, yes, you are.
J. Aughenbaugh: You are, and aren't you happy about this?
N. Rodgers: You're like, I didn't think I wanted to retire. Sure. You do? You can travel. You can bother. Let's plan for it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You can spend time with your-
N. Rodgers: Your grand kids.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kids.
N. Rodgers: Your cats and dogs, you can travel.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your spouse and you start thinking, I don't know if my spouse is going to like me all that much if I'm home all the time and I'm pretty sure my grand kids only like me if I show up with gifts. I'm not entirely sure I want to do this retirement thing, but nevertheless, they're just so happy and helpful.
N. Rodgers: Right. But in state agencies, listeners, they also do that. Every our newsletter for faculty, every month or so, they're like, how to retire from like quit pushing. We're relatively young, as you get to a certain age, that pressure becomes higher and higher. Partly in fairness to business, because you are making more money than young people. You're costing them more. But part of it too is the young new ideas being more in touch with the consumer, being more in touch with all of those things. Because what we know about, and forgive me for putting it this way, but I'm just going to say it. Frivolous consumer spending is that it happens in your 20s and 30s, and then pretty much slows down in your 40s, and by your 50s, you're starting to be like, I'm not going to buy that, that's silly. For whatever reason, you don't buy silly things even though at that point you have money. What you also have are commitments. I have things I need to pay for, and I need to think about myself when I'm retiring. I need to think about whether I really want to buy Tesla right now. Teslas are for young people and I have no problem with Teslas. I have no problem with buying. Well, I wouldn't buy a Tesla. If I had that money, I would probably buy a muscle car to be honest, because I'm a jerk like that, but whatever, it makes me wonder if my view on that should progress to the point of maybe it's 72 or maybe whatever. If you're going to turn 72 in whatever term you have in your thing, then this is your last election. Then that way you don't have to force people out, you just make a rule. But see, some people would say, I don't want to get rid of Chuck Grassley, and you can't prime my cold, dead fingers from him, I love him, it doesn't matter that he's 88, I want him as my senator and you can't stop me. Then what do we do? That's the conundrum.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you mentioned the private sector, if you will, example or model. The other thing that the private sectors focuses on quite a bit is what they refer to as succession management. How do you make sure that you continue to have a healthy, vibrant workforce that can put in the hours, etc. We don't have that in regards to elected officials. Again, part of that is those who have the positions of leadership, think that they can still do the job that they've been doing great work, etc, but it does beg the question of what are the effects on the democracy? What are the effects of governing if we don't identify the next wave of elected officials?
N. Rodgers: And get them some training. What we want to do if we can get 40 and 50-year-olds into the system now, they will grow in the next term or two terms and then they'll be in their 60s and super active, still able to make good political decisions, good court decisions, good whatever decisions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because there's a lot to be said. Nia, you mentioned this individual a few moments ago. You mentioned Virginia Senator, Tim Kaine. Senator Kaine started out on the Richmond City Council, and I believe he was in his either late 30s or early 40s. Then he was chosen by his colleagues on the council to be mayor and that the time, the City of Richmond had a weak mayor form of government, meaning that the mayor was actually chosen by the other city council members. It didn't have its own independent authority, etc, but he went from mayor to Lieutenant Governor, then Governor, then US Senator, and he was the vice presidential candidate for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But he started when he was in his late 30s, early 40s. Now he's at a point where he's had a couple of terms as a US Senator and many Virginians believe he's got the requisite, if you will, experience, but he's still young enough to where he's not a living fossil,.
N. Rodgers: Right. But in a couple of terms, there's still be time for Tim Kaine to step down.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's what we're talking about, listeners. What is the appropriate age, and then is too old to be an elected official.
N. Rodgers: Tim Kaine is 65.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's 65, yeah.
N. Rodgers: I would say that in two terms, he needs to recuse himself and say, it's been a great run.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or, hey, do one more term.
N. Rodgers: Or one more term.
J. Aughenbaugh: And finish up in the early 70s.
N. Rodgers: And call it good while you're still young and can enjoy, it's not like the retirement from the Senate is bad. It's pretty healthy retirement.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's got multiple pensions. He's got the US Senate, he's got the Commonwealth of Virginia.
N. Rodgers: But I think the other thing is that the question we have to wrestle with, and we're not going to wrestle with it today because it's too big a question, but I suspect, did the founders intend for people to make public service their lifetime?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I think the founders expected that you would go home and farm. Being in governance was a part-time gig, and that your full time gig was either being a farmer or whatever it was that you were in your "real life". I'm not entirely certain that they thought that people would make a career, Nancy Pelosi, I'm looking at you, of being an elected official.
J. Aughenbaugh: The flip side of that, Nia, is governing today is so complicated and so time consuming.
N. Rodgers: And so emotionally fraud, you'll be putting people through this in their 80s?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or can we expect somebody who's got a full time gig elsewhere to just show up for a couple months. We know this here in Virginia because our state legislature is a "part-time" legislature.
N. Rodgers: They meet and then they go away and have real jobs. The question becomes, are they doing either job well?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, that basically means that in Virginia, most of the governing for most of the year is done by the executive branch. Which really undercuts this whole idea of checks and balances when the legislature is out of town.
N. Rodgers: Although in fairness to Virginia, I believe it is the only state where you cannot succeed yourself as Governor. You might get a power grab, but it won't be a long one.
J. Aughenbaugh: It might not be a long one, but these are tough issues.
N. Rodgers: It's all complicated. Also the other thing is, and I hate to bring my late stepfather into this, but I will, taking away his keys for driving was traumatic. It's traumatic for everybody. He didn't like it, his son didn't like it, the son that made the decision. It was hard on him because it took away some independence, some personal strength of his, that he struggled with.
J. Aughenbaugh: A sense of identity.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. A sense of identity. I think that's what Ginsburg struggled with. She had seen herself as the Supreme Court Justice. How does she see herself post that? It's very hard.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You and I have talked about this off recording. You have joked to and about me, that the fact that with the exception of being Mac's father, the rest of my identity is wrapped up in being a college professor. For me, and I've already begun to think about this.
N. Rodgers: Who am I when I'm post that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because for a quarter of a century or longer than a quarter of a century, I've thought about myself in terms of I'm a college professor. This is who I am.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, who am I when I am not this person? Who is Joe Biden when he is no longer in public service? He's been in public service 50 years. He doesn't know how to do anything else. Really, do we want Dr. Jill to have to put up with him wandering from room to room trying to find something to do? Dr. Jill was probably chill with that. But I'm just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: But there was the contrast between Bill Clinton and Bush 43. Bush 43 could not wait to get back to Texas.
N. Rodgers: To his art, to his ranch, to his wife and kids and grandkids.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Bill Clinton really struggled the first couple years out of office.
N. Rodgers: Who am I if I'm not president?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I'm not an elected official trying to solve public policy problems, interacting with some really smart people, staying up real late, trying to go ahead and consider all the alternatives. He struggled with it.
N. Rodgers: There's a video of Clinton in his last day at the White House. He's wandering around trying to find something to do. Hillary's getting ready to go off to the Senate and he runs out and catches her limo and hands her her lunch because she forgot the lunch that he packed for her. It's a funny video, but it is also, in some ways, very real, this whole idea of, what if I'm not this guy? Clinton was a very young president. He came to the presidency young. What do you when you've been the most powerful person in the world? What job do you have after that? You have to find the sweet spot between I am so young that when I'm done serving now I'm weird because I don't know what to do with myself. Clinton and Obama, maybe both had a little bit of that. I am so old that I'd promptly die after I'm no longer president. I actually think of all the people who have done a balance, I think Bush Jr did a pretty good balance. He has some public service, but he also paints. He's like, yeah, I don't want to be in charge of things now because 911 was on my watch and that was stressful
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, his transition to civilian life, in my estimation, has been rather impressive.
N. Rodgers: Jimmy Carter's transition went in the other direction. He did not have a particularly effective presidency, but had a stellar post president career, as a peacemaker, as a Habitat for Humanity guy, election watch guy and he was doing all those things. I think finding your way has to do with getting the timing right. I have a certain frustration with Nancy Pelosi because it's time, but then there's another part of me that's like, yeah, but who is she if she's not Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi? You know what I mean? That would be a hard thing to struggle with. We're not saying we're just trying to push people out, but we are saying that maybe Mitt Romney's on something here with, but there needs to be generational change.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That's my [inaudible].
N. Rodgers: But Mitt Romney, he's usually out ahead of things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, he is.
N. Rodgers: He was out ahead of the whole Russia thing. He was like running around going, Russia's going to kill us all and everybody was like, old man and then Russia invaded Ukraine and he went, see, and everybody went, turns out you were right.
J. Aughenbaugh: I even remember when he was governor of Massachusetts and he worked out a health insurance deal with a democratically controlled state legislature.
N. Rodgers: Yes. He was the first. Obamacare was Romneycare.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was Romneycare.
N. Rodgers: Ahead of his time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and when the Utah Olympic Committee went ahead and hired him to clean up that mess.
N. Rodgers: Just saved Salt Lake City from utter ruin. Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I still remember when he took over. He made comments saying perhaps the International Olympic Committee has to change its model because you have these communities who are devoting significant public resources to host the Olympics.
N. Rodgers: It's bankrupting them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It encourages so much morally hazardous behavior, and I even remember when he used that phrase and a whole bunch of sports reporters are like, morally hazardous behavior, what the heck is he talking about? Why isn't he talking about sports?.
N. Rodgers: But he was right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But he was right. Because it's happened too many times. Again, you don't even have to like Mitt Romney's policy or politics.
N. Rodgers: Or his politics. But he may be onto something here with maybe it's time for our generation.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you're concerned about the health of your nation's democracy, one of the things you have to take a look at is how do you transition from the existing leadership to younger leaders so that the young people can be invested in their country? Because if they look at elected officials and they don't see themselves, do they get turned off in regards to politics, governing? That doesn't even mean that they run for office. If they stop paying attention to politics and governing because they don't see their concerns being represented.
N. Rodgers: Then they stop voting, they stop doing even the basic democratic things.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's right. Participation suffers, trust suffers, and that's never good for a nation's democracy.
N. Rodgers: No, because right after that comes a coup. Yeah, so prevent a coup, retire now. That should be the tag line that we start getting out there, the hashtag, prevent a coup, retire now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. By the way listeners, if Nia and I ever do go forward with our merch line.
N. Rodgers: That's going to be on one of our T-shirts.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's going to be on one of our T-shirts.
N. Rodgers: Prevent a coup, retire now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, we'll have three or four options. Arbitrary and capricious, of course, has to be one.
N. Rodgers: Because the commerce costs said so.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has to be one. Prevent a coup, retire now. Did you see how I went ahead and turned that around from the, we're ending an episode about coups to hey, that could be a great slogan. Hey, let's put that on our merch.
N. Rodgers: If you're a politician out there and you want to use that slogan, we're okay with that. But they don't even have to give us the attribution.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Just go forward and do your thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: But if you want to go ahead and give us royalties, please contact.
N. Rodgers: We will take it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because we're both looking at retirement.
J. Aughenbaugh: Please contact our Virginian staff that puts on this podcast, which by the way, listeners, there's not a Virginian staff.
N. Rodgers: That's right. It's just the two of us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Anyways Nia, thank you.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
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