Why are American Politicians Geriatric?

17 comments

1. No term limits and personal branding. It’s also a long path to national politics, usually going through state legislature first which can be a 10 year cycle.

2. Because most people are too busy fighting left vs right that neither take the time to see their side for what bullshit they pull so it’s the same person elected constantly with the combination of a lack of term limits.

3. I try to vote for younger candidates, like my councilman who is 44. Many of them lack things such as money, name recognition, and institutional support. In addition House members have seniority and have advantages such as the franking privilege.

4. The vast majority of national level politicians are in very safe seats, which means perpetual re-election combined with no term limits

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6. Lack of term limits or mandatory retirement age.

   It is important to point out that the largest voting block is old people; and for them they are getting the candidates they want.

7. They aren’t.

   EDIT: We have more politicans than POTUS and US House/US Senate leadership. I’m not saying there aren’t old politicians, but there’s plenty of not-old politicians as well.

8. Of course, the reason is always:
   PEOPLE VOTED FOR THEM

   By the way, your assumption is not universally true. The average age of house members declined from last year to this year.

   It is true that the American population is aging due to boomers aging and being a large generational cohort. Seniors vote.

9. It takes a *lot* of time to build up the connections and brand needed to get a seat in Congress or the presidency; that’s the fundamental reason politicians tend to be on the older side. There’s also the fact that seniors vote in far greater numbers and far more consistently then the youth, and most people tend to vote for people similar to them.

10. If you go back to 2010, you wouldn’t really consider US politics to be geriatric. Obama, W, and Clinton were all relatively young when they were elected, and a lot of the leadership wasn’t all that old relative to what you’d normally expect. Only in the last several years has it started to become geriatric with Biden, Trump, McConnell, and the entire democratic leadership in the house up until this year being 70 or 80+. That would all suggest it’s just a temporary thing, as most of the up and coming figures in both parties are in their 40s and 50s.

    The Romans had this concept of the “cursus honorum” which was a specific ladder of elected offices a politician had to climb to reach the top. Although entirely unofficial, this exists in the US to a large extent. You have to start by making a name for yourself in your local party (either through campaign work, local party leadership, or donation) and then you run for a localized race (either local office or as a state representative. From there you might jump directly to a larger race, but often you then run for something like state senate, or maybe even a down ballot statewide office. From there you might run for congress in your district when there’s an opportunity, and usually from there you may run for a statewide high profile race like senate or governor. Then, after all of that, which may take 10-20 years if you’re lucky and things go great for you, you can start really laying the groundwork for a future run for president (which would likely take several years) or you build up seniority to try and get into leadership.

    If you started when you’re 30, you’ve done well if you’ve accomplished these goals by the time you’re in your 60s. And with all that, you’ve had to have incredible luck, with seats being open for you to run in your party at all the right times. Some state senators wait decades for their congressional seat to open up for them to run for example.

11. They aren’t. It only appears that way because high level federal politicians make the news. The ones who make the most decisions – state and lower level – tend to be around 40-60.

12. Because we have a corrupt 2 party system that runs exclusively on nepotism and the most senior members have the most power.

13. The Average Joe primary voters isn’t going to vote for some random unknown 20-something for Congress, you have to build your brand and that takes years and several political cycles

14. Americans don’t like change. As a group, we are very “go with what you know”. Which is why once a congressman/senator gets elected, it’s extremely likely they’ll get elected over and over. They’ll keep running too. They like the money and the benefits. When a newcomer upsets an established politician in an election, it is almost always viewed as shocking.

    It’s the same reason we haven’t switched to the Metric system (even though we did try a complete system overhaul in the 70’s).

15. There are tons of young politicians.

16. If you mean on the Presidential level, it’s because it takes that long to build up seniority inside a political party to get to be in the running. There’s this “it’s (their) turn” mentality that sometimes acts as a buffer, but sometimes just gives us a compromise nothingburger of a candidate.

17. In the local governments you will see a much higher portion of people under 40 holding elected offices.

    At the national level it is much harder to be elected, especially if you are running against a more established politician.