Air Date: 7-25-2026

Today we look at the idea that America has become a gerontocracy, a country run by the old, and then interrogate the premise a bit. The wealth, the politicians, and the voting electorate really do concentrate at the top of the age ladder, and benefits for the old tend to stay protected while younger people wait their turn. But several of our sources argue age is the wrong name for the problem, that it is really a story about money and who the whole system was built to serve.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we look at the idea that America has become a gerontocracy, a country run by the old, and then interrogate the premise a bit. The wealth, the politicians, and the voting electorate really do concentrate at the top of the age ladder, and benefits for the old tend to stay protected while younger people wait their turn. But several of our sources argue age is the wrong name for the problem, that it is really a story about money and who the whole system was built to serve.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

Takesâ„¢ by Jamelle Bouie

The NPR Politics Podcast

Today, Explained

Civics 101

What Next

and This Is Hell!

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 3 sections;

Section A, THE MCCONNELL & GRAHAM MOMENT

Section B, THE GERONTOCRACY CASE

And Section C, HOW CONGRESS ACTUALLY WORKS

And now, on to the show.

HOST: If Lindsey Graham were nothing other than a warmonger, someone eager to spill foreign blood on behalf of American interests, someone who never saw a war he did not like, who was an eager cheerleader of the war in Iraq- 

CLIP: So knowing what you know right now, Senator Graham, and knowing what Senator McCain knows right now- Right

even though there were no WMD, even though there were no links between Saddam- Absolutely ... and Al-Qaeda or 9/11- Yeah ... you still think it was a good idea to go to war? 

Absolutely. I am glad that the Saddam Hussein regime is over. I'm glad that a democracy's beginning to emerge in the heart of the Arab world.

HOST: A long time cheerleader for war in Iran, and subsequently a massive supporter of the current war in Iran. 

CLIP: Now, President Trump, thank God he was there. He's the right guy at the right time. And when he heard they were that close to 10 weapons, he acted. And you know what? When this is over, we're gonna obliterate their nuclear program and there's gonna be a new dawn in the Mideast.

President Trump, you did the right thing. God bless you. And Steve and Jared, you literally saved the world from terrorism. 

HOST: If that was Lindsey Graham's entire legacy, and you can maybe throw in his shameful performance at the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018- 

CLIP: I would never do to them what you've done to this guy.

This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics, and if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy. Are you a gang rapist? 

No ... 

HOST: if that was it, if that was all Lindsey Graham had done, he would still be an ignominious figure, someone who we would say, "Good riddance.

Glad he's no longer in the Senate. Sorry for his family, But as a public figure, no one who you're necessarily sorry to see go, leave the stage. But that's not all Lindsey Graham was, as we know. Lindsey Graham was one of the Republicans early on who understood what Trump was. Graham ran in the 2016 Republican primary, dropped out pretty early, but saw then that Trump was trouble.

But Graham, who never had much of an independent streak, who was always looking for someone to latch himself onto like the natural born follower he was- Graham ignored his own misgivings, ignored his own statements, and became a loyal supporter of Trump through that first term. He even assisted Trump in the president's effort to undermine and overturn the Georgia presidential election in his failed attempt to make himself president against and above the will of the voters.

Graham participated in that. Loyal soldier, a toady you might say. But then came January 6th, and soon thereafter, Graham announced that he was done with it all, that he had followed Trump, and this was a bridge too far. 

CLIP: Trump and I we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it.

From my point of view, he's been a consequential president. But today, first thing you'll see. All I can say is, count me out. Enough is enough. 

HOST: Of course, it wasn't a bridge too far. Not long after that, Graham was once again firmly behind Donald Trump. And as Trump made his political comeback, Graham was right there, loyal follower, eager to suck up to daddy.

Last month, Graham yet again won his bid in the South Carolina Senate primary, and in his victory speech, he thanked two people: God, and not far behind, in his words, Donald Trump. 

CLIP: I wanna start with a bunch of thank yous. I wanna thank the big guy, God. Trump comes later.

HOST: Mr. President, you're not far behind God, but we're gonna start with Him. And so with Lindsey Graham's passing on Sunday, 

how should we remember him? I'd say as a warmonger, and then also as someone who was an eager assistant, an eager aide, an eager supporter of Donald Trump's efforts to subvert and destroy American democracy, 

an eager supporter of, over the last 18, 19 months, Donald Trump's effort to replace American democracy with a personalist autocracy led by him and his array of courtiers and family members.

How should we remember Lindsey Graham? As someone who knew better, who told us he knew better, who understood what Trump was, and yet who, out of venal self-interest, out of some deep psychological need to attach himself to a powerful man, whatever it is, and yet, for whatever it is, and whatever reason, Lindsey Graham decided that he would join up with Trump as Trump waged war against our democracy, against our birthright as Americans.

The most fitting thing about all of this, of course, is that for all of his devotion to Trump, Trump couldn't give a shit. When asked about Graham's passing, all Trump had to say is, "It'd be harder to pass the SAVE Act now." 

CLIP: And he, calls me about the Save America Act. he thought we were gonna get it passed.

Do you remember 

the very- This is a big- Yeah. This is a big, this is a big blow to the Save America Act. 

HOST: No remarks about Graham's life, no comments about his support or companionship or friendship or whatever. Nothing human, just a cold calculation about the votes. Graham gave everything to Trump.

Graham sacrificed what reputation he had to Trump. Graham behaved in such a way so that when he is remembered, he's not remembered for his own right, not remembered for the things he did, which again, not that much, not very much that was good, but is remembered primarily as Trump's little assistant. 

And we are recording this at 12:37 PM Eastern Time on Friday, July 10th, 2026. Sam, I wanna start with Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, longtime GOP leader, already planning to retire at the end of his term.

He's been in the hospital for about four weeks now, and the rumors and conspiracy theories just really got wild this week. What do you know about his situation? 

GUEST: Tam, we know really little about what's going on with Senator Mitch McConnell right now. We've had some statements occasionally from his office saying things along the lines of, "The senator continues to improve.

He's working closely with his staff. He's keeping tabs on what's happening in the Senate." But beyond that, we really don't know why he's in the hospital or how long he's expected to be there. There were a couple calls supposedly earlier this week between top Republicans in Congress with Senator McConnell, but we haven't seen video of him.

We haven't heard tape of him. And so that has sparked a lot of questions about what is going on with the senator. 

HOST: Yes, and e- even the governor of Kentucky has sent a letter asking for the senator's status. You've been reporting on both McConnell, but not just McConnell, this issue of members of Congress taking prolonged medical absences, uh, in some cases without much explanation.

GUEST: Right. That's why this McConnell episode has really stood out, because it comes just a couple of weeks after a Republican member of the House, Congressman Tom Kean of New Jersey, he'd been absent for almost four months with no explanation. He came back and in a speech on the House floor said that he had been hospitalized for depression.

But many people were still really critical, not of the fact that he was dealing with depression, but the fact that his office didn't say really anything about where he was for such a long period of time. And you can point to all kinds of examples where you've had people in high public office kind of obfuscating about their health, uh, from former Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, to questions that were raised both about President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump in terms of their acuity for office.

And so this all kind of plays into preexisting notions that a lot of voters have about whether lawmakers, presidents, justices are being fully transparent about their ability to do the job when it comes to their health. 

HOST: So Mara, how much transparency do lawmakers owe the public? 

GUEST 2: A heck of a lot more than they're giving them right now.

We know that a recent NPR PBS Marist poll showed that an overwhelming majority of voters wanted an age cap for members of Congress, and what's interesting about that is you've got two giant issues colliding. One is this idea of generational change. People really want younger representatives. We've got a real gerontocracy in Congress and in the White House.

But also, there's tremendous cynicism about politicians. And when there's no transparency, it's one thing if you're old, it's one thing if you're infirm, but if you're not gonna tell voters about it they get angry and cynical, and they were already cynical to start with. 

GUEST: Yeah, there's a former attending physician to Congress named Dr.

Robert Krasner who has told this story about two former Supreme Court justices who were under his care in this position, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, and he said that they asked him to tell them when it was time to step aside, when they could no longer do the job. And he says that when that time came, he did tell them that and helped them write their retirement letters, but- Wow

what his point is here is that that is not a system. It worked out because there was a doctor who was willing to be candid and a patient willing to receive the advice, but that is not going to happen in most of these cases, and that is a problem, and there's really no good way of dealing with this except for elections 

GUEST 2: Sam, I have a question.

There are some people who leave before they're infirm. Nancy Pelosi is an example. But why do you think that members of Congress hang on by their fingernails for so long? 

GUEST: Yeah. I was talking about this earlier this week with Adam Jentleson. He's a former Democratic Hill staffer who worked for Senator Harry Reid, for Senator John Fetterman, and he says that one of the problems is that lawmakers need to make these decisions while they still can, while they're still in their prime, well before they need to step aside and can no longer do the job, and they often do not do that.

And one of the reasons for that is because there are a, a lot of perks to being a member of Congress, not just the ones you would expect, but perks that are very particular to being helpful as you're getting older. Here's what he told me. 

GUEST 3: It mimics aspects of a senior living facility. You've got a attending physician right down the hallway, and lots of people just, catering to your every need.

It is hard to walk away from. 

GUEST: Yeah. You've got drivers. You've got catered lunches once a week. Jentleson told me you have interesting, tantalizing topics on intellectual issues, the kinds of events you might see in a senior center, except this case it is, a hearing or a confirmation, for an important issue that you're voting on in Congress.

HOST: I think it's also just really important to say that it is not mandatory that the President of the United States reveal everything that's in his physical that he gets. It's not mandatory for members of Congress to be honest with their constituents about their health. These are public figures, who are elected by the people who are there to represent all of us, and yet there's no legal obligation, and I think some of them would question whether there's a moral obligation.

GUEST 2: But maybe in this case, the, members of Congress need to look to the public, because the public is pretty clear about what obligation, members have. They want them to serve only until they are no longer able, and they want them to be transparent. 

HOST: And as we've seen with that Mitch McConnell situation, a lack of transparency can really give fuel to conspiracy theories.

GUEST: I talked to a political science professor at the University of Louisville, Adam Enders, who studies conspiracy theories, and one of the things he told me is that the reason so many of these have been sparked online around McConnell and around Kaine is because there's an element of truthiness to them, as Stephen Colbert used to say, that there's already this public perception that lawmakers are not maybe being fully transparent about their health, and it is not the worst thing in the world for constituents to be monitoring this and asking questions and having a level of skepticism about whether their elected officials are fit to serve.

And especially in a really narrowly divided Congress, that can matter when these votes are often decided on the flip of one or two members. 

GUEST 2: Yeah, and that's why sometimes you even see members being wheeled in a wheelchair or from a hospital room to cast a vote. 

HOST: Which is wild, but has definitely happened.

When did you first hear that something was wrong with the former Senate majority leader? 

GUEST: So his team actually put out a statement the day that he was hospitalized on June 14th. It was a very short statement, and all it said was, "Senator McConnell was admitted to the hospital this morning.

He is receiving excellent care." That short statement set off a firestorm of trying to figure out more because we learned so little from just that one sentence. 

HOST: Yeah. Why does this become a big mystery if they were transparent about it from the jump? 

GUEST: Because I think it's one thing to alert people that the senator's been hospitalized, but to go on for so long and not say why he was hospitalized initially or what is keeping him in the hospital just led us to continue to ask more questions, 'cause we were getting no answers.

HOST: And when you say so long, we're talking on the morning of Tuesday, July 14th. And I think we got proof of life on Sunday, July 12th. Was there almost no communication, or was there actually no communication between that near month? 

GUEST: So throughout that month, a couple things happened. First, there was EMS audio that came out that showed that emergency responders went to McConnell's home on June 14th, and were responding to somebody who was unconscious, who needed CPR, and who was under cardiac arrest.

CLIP: EMS to respond for cardiac arrest. EMS to respond for cardiac arrest. 

GUEST: And that really turned this story because it showed that this was a really serious situation, and that was much more severe than what the simple statements that we were getting from McConnell's team were. After that EMS audio, McConnell's team put out another statement, but again, it didn't really address the larger concerns or the questions about why he was hospitalized, why he continued to remain there.

It just said that, the senator was continuing to recover in the hospital. the mystery around all of this just continued to build. And then I spoke to one of McConnell's neighbors who witnessed the morning of McConnell being taken to the hospital on June 14th. This person witnessed emergency responders carrying somebody out of McConnell's home on a stretcher.

This person was wrapped in a blanket, and their feet were exposed, and somebody else remarked, "Oh, that's Mitch McConnell." They saw their face. And the person I spoke to also captured a short video of this moment. 

CLIP: Not riding with him. 

GUEST: If we had known the circumstances around McConnell's hospitalization earlier or in more fulsome detail, how he was transported to the hospital might not have been that big of a deal.

But because we were dealing with such little amounts of information, the fact that he was transported to a hospital on a stretcher was important for this story to fill... 'Cause we were just trying to fill in any blanks that we could and try and provide that transparency in a moment when we were getting very little from the senator and his team.

HOST: So while you at CNN are trying to figure out what exactly has happened to one of the most powerful political figures of our era, people online are also trying to figure out, and a lot of them believe him dead. 

CLIP: Mitch McConnell is dead. that's what all of us think. 

Is this a full-on Weekend at Bernie's situation 

with Mitch McConnell?

Everyone is lying to you about Mitch McConnell, and the reason they're doing so is because it's a soft launch for the eventual announcement that the commander-in-chief, the orange guy, will eventually also be gone. 

The cockroach just, vacated the skin suit, and they're like, "Oh my God, there's this skin suit left over."

HOST: How weird is it for a politician of this stature to kinda just ghost? 

GUEST: McConnell has a very busy day job. He is supposed to be in the Senate voting. he serves on the Appropriations Committee, which is in charge for funding the entire government, and he's specifically the chair of the Defense subcommittee.

Now, the Defense Department, kinda busy right now, in the middle- ... of a major war with Iran, needs more funding from Congress. 

HOST: How long do you expect this to take? And what's the legal 

CLIP: basis- Take what? Take what? The 

HOST: war. 

CLIP: I think it's going very fast. 

GUEST: And McConnell has a major role to play in all of that.

Republicans also have a very narrow majority in the Senate, and where every vote counts, and with such slim margins, not being able to count on McConnell's vote is a huge problem for Republicans as they try and navigate their very narrow and unruly majority. And even, some of McConnell's colleagues have said that transparency is always better.

For example, Republican senator John Cornyn from Texas told our team yesterday that, quote, "I think we need some transparency. I wish Senator McConnell and his team had done that earlier. I think it would have resolved a lot of questions." So that just shows you that even some Republicans are aware that the way that McConnell's team handled the situation didn't necessarily help things when senators know how much is at stake, how much that goes into their day job.

And for him to just not be there for so long is not normal. 

HOST: In these weeks where Mitch goes dark, goes quiet, is anyone talking to him? Is anyone communicating with him? Is anyone vouching for him? 

GUEST: When the firestorm online really started to take off and the conspiracy theories were at their peak, the majority leader in the Senate, John Thune, Republican, said that he spoke to Senator McConnell for about 20 minutes.

They talked about a variety of topics, and that was supposed to quell the noise online. Another Republican leader in the Senate, Senator Barrasso, also said that he had spoken to McConnell. 

CLIP: Leader Thune spoke with Senator McConnell yesterday by phone. They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.

Senator Barrasso and Senator McConnell had a lengthy conversation early this afternoon. Their phone call lasted roughly 20 minutes. 

GUEST: I think people wanted to hear from the senator himself.

They wanted a photo, a video, a statement that was more fulsome than one sentence to really understand what was going on. And even though there were Republicans in the Senate trying to vouch for him, I don't think it was until Sunday that people started to understand more what was going on.

HOST: Because on Sunday, we get literally a proof of life photo from Mitch McConnell. it's got Mitch and his wife, and he's got his hand on a copy of the Sunday sports section from the Washington Post. Is that how you thought this story would come to an end? 

GUEST: I didn't know how this story was gonna come to an end, and frankly, I don't know if it's over.

We still need to see McConnell return to work, and he is no longer hospitalized, but he is in a rehabilitation center and unable to come to the Senate. And there's one quote from his statement that I wanna circle back to because I think it just, it was his way of indirectly addressing, I think, why it took so long to share what sent him to the hospital last month.

And he said, quote, "You all know how folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older. Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct. I can't help it." He's essentially saying there that he wanted to maintain his privacy. He felt that he didn't have to share more than what was, than what his office was putting out there.

And that's sort of the balance that lawmakers are grappling with right now, is what level of transparency is required while still protecting personal health and sensitive matters?

And I think what we learned from the public response to this is people want transparency. People are invested in this. They wanna know what their representatives are doing, if they are able to work, what their status is. And lawmakers who get to make their own rules about this, there is no mandate of you must show up for work after X days or explain why you've been gone for X number of days.

There's no protocol here. It's totally up to each member how they do this. And how McConnell and his team handled this situation was one way, and we clearly saw the response to that

HOST: Give us a quick primer on the Articles of Confederation.

HOST 2: All right, absolutely. we have a link to an entire episode on this in the show notes, but in brief, the articles were our first constitution. They outlined our government initially. So right after the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five to write the Declaration of Independence, they also appointed a committee of 13 to draft the articles.

HOST: And? 

HOST 2: And they were a disaster every state for itself, barely any centralized government whatsoever, no executive power to speak of, and they were nigh impossible to amend. So when we were creating a new constitution, our goal was in part to fix our mistakes. 

CLIP: For starters, one has to assume, particularly if you look at things from James Madison's vantage point, what you wanted to do in the wake of the effective collapse, the framers would have said the imbecility of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation was you wanted to create a national government that would be fully empowered to enact, execute, and adjudicate its own laws.

And once you get to the matter of legislation, the conventional wisdom was you need to have a bicameral legislature. 

HOST 2: All right. Why was a bicameral legislature conventional wisdom? 

HOST: first off, the vast majority of colonies, now states, they already operated under a bicameral legislature, which by the way, is two chambers of Congress.

Not to mention, it's what we did in the old place, the Parliament of Great Britain, where we had the House of Commons and the House of Lords. 

CLIP: That raises interesting questions about if you have two houses, what is each one going to represent? And Madison in particular, and along with his allies, people like James Wilson and Robert Morris, Governor Morris in Pennsylvania, Rufus King of Massachusetts and so on, they were committed to the idea that you needed to have some form of proportional representation in both houses of Congress, that you had to absolutely get rid of the one state, one vote rule, which had been the model of decision-making in the Continental Congress going back to 1774.

So that absolutely had to be abandoned. But that leaves open the question of what rule of apportioning representatives across the states or among the states in two houses would you apply? Would it be strictly population? Would it be population plus property? Madison felt that legislative power by itself was very difficult to define, and define in the sense of limiting.

There was a phrase he uses later in life is the plastic faculty of legislation. 

HOST 2: The plastic faculty of legislation 

HOST: Yeah, plastic, as in bendy, changeable. Madison talks about this in Federalist 48 and in other places later in his life. The thing is, when you constitute a government, especially a national government, you wanna be really specific about who has what powers.

CLIP: But theoretically, Madison felt that was actually quite difficult to do because legislative power is by its nature so subtle and so complex that legislatures could always, in a sense, manipulate or mask sort ... Their more, their, their ambitions through devising complicated techniques of developing laws.

HOST 2: So basically, the legislative branch is the most difficult to pin down because that branch makes the laws, and those laws can be complex and technical, and the legislature can nudge the rules one way or another, potentially to grant themselves more power. 

HOST: Exactly. So now we're gonna talk about some plans, Hannah.

Two famous plans come out of the arguments to determine how our Congress is gonna be constructed, the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. So Madison drafted the Virginia Plan, which has in it a bicameral legislature, and it is determinant on population. And representatives from smaller states are like, "Oh, man, no way.

That means we're not gonna have any people in there." And so small states back the New Jersey Plan, which says we should have one chamber of Congress, and every state gets the same amount of representatives regardless of population. The, 

CLIP: the decision of July 16th to give each state an equal vote in the Senate, we call it either the Great Compromise, or for reasons I don't really agree with, the Connecticut Compromise, 'cause I don't think Connecticut played any special role here, although the Connecticut delegates were quite active, but they weren't the decision-makers.

But, th- was not a compromise in its own name. That's to say, the vote on July 16th, which is when you get the equal state vote in the Senate, was five states to four states, with one state, Massachusetts, divided. So they said, "Look, we, we support most of the legislative outcomes you want, but we're not gonna, we're not gonna agree to this without preserving the equal vote in at least one house."

So it was always about the second house. It was always about what would happen in the Senate. And Madison's position was, "No, we're just gonna use a placeholder." 

HOST 2: Now, do the small states come out ahead here? The Senate is an extremely powerful body, and each state gets two senators no matter how many people live there.

HOST: Yeah, they did, and Madison thought so too. And to that point, Jack asked me a very interesting question. 

CLIP: I used to ask my students, and you could ask, whoever your listeners are, and this is a trick question, Nick, so pay attention. Do we ever vote on the basis of the size of the state in which we live?

HOST: So do we, Hannah? 

HOST 2: I don't know if I know what that means. Can you repeat that? 

HOST: Do we ever vote for a candidate because of the size of our state? 

HOST 2: I comprehend the words that are coming out of your mouth, but I do not understand their meaning. 

HOST: This exact same thing happened to me when Jack asked me, and I was like, no, I don't think so."

But think of it this way. The main reason people are gonna vote for one candidate or another is based on where they stand on certain topics. Big ones, right? Speech, immigration, war, taxes, healthcare, et cetera. What on earth does the size of the state have to do with it? 

CLIP: The way we vote is based on the issues we care about.

And, and they have nothing at all ... if you li- it matters a lot if you live in a city, if you live in the countryside. If you're, if you're far- if you're farming, corn or soybeans on the west bank of the Mississippi in Iowa or on the east bank in my native state of Illinois, farm subsidies or whatever will define what your interests are.

and Madison's argument is, against this ... And he felt he could wear the small sta- small states down by force of argument, and because basically he's right. If you wanna say that the states have, equal vote on the basis of the interest they represent or they possess, then you have to be able to identify what those interests are.

But the large states don't have common interests. So you compare Massachusetts with Pennsylvania and Virginia, they have very different kinds of economies. They have very different populations. If you guys could ever tell me what will bring the small states together on the one hand or the large states on the other hand, you might have a good argument.

The small states can never do it

HOST 2: All right. This is a famous small state versus big state battle. The small states are like, "If we don't have equal representation with the big states, we'll lose out on the small state issues," but there aren't any small state issues. 

HOST: Precisely. But the small states hold out, and Madison didn't wanna toss the whole thing in the mid and then start over with a new convention and a new constitution, so this is just something the guy had to swallow.

CLIP: When Madison came to the equal state vote, he said, "You can't defend it on its merits. We just have to accept it was a necessary compromise at the convention." And so we're stuck with it. we gotta defend it on principle. It's part of the package. The overall good will still be served by ratifying the new Constitution, not by rejecting or modifying it, so there we are 

HOST 2: There we are.

HOST: After this weekend, I think it's pretty fair to say that the United States Senate is not in great health. On Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham died. He had just gotten back from Ukraine. He'd been scheduled to appear on Meet the Press. Instead, President Trump came on the show to memorialize him. 

CLIP: I got a message about 1:00 in the morning from one of the people at his office that he had passed away.

I said, "You got... it... I j- can't believe it." He was like a member of the family to me. It's very tough, actually. It's amazing. 

HOST: And Senator Graham, he was actually the second lawmaker in a month to be rushed to a hospital 

CLIP: Concern over US Senator Mitch McConnell's health is growing. 

There's now been three weeks since McConnell was admitted.

We still don't know why he's there. Today- 

HOST: Senator Mitch McConnell landed in the hospital June 14th. That's when medics were called to his home to respond to an unconscious individual. 

CLIP: And according to the most recent statement from his team, which they pointed us again to today, he remains in the hospital.

His team said, 

HOST: quote, "Senator McConnell- The senator released a statement saying he fell, and he acknowledged he won't be back at work anytime soon. Some folks say they've spoken to him on the phone. None of those people are reporters

Senator Graham is the sixth member of the 119th Congress to have died while in office, and extended absences seem to have become more common, too. Sam Moyn, who is an author and professor at Yale Law School, he says it makes sense once you realize the average age of American lawmakers is rising exponentially.

GUEST: It's been a constant drumbeat, and whether it's cognitive decline or death, I think Americans are now very well aware that their politicians are very elderly. 

HOST: Sam's got a lot to say about all this because he just wrote a book called Gerontocracy in America. Spoiler alert, a whole lot of old people do not like it.

GUEST: I haven't even looked at this phone I'm sitting next to, which is full of, unsolicited voicemails. 

HOST: Sam wrote an op-ed in The New York Times laying out his case. It was titled Older Americans Are Hoarding America's Potential. 

GUEST: And indeed, the, the comments field on f- that op-ed are, worth savoring.

It's an amazing spectacle. 

HOST: But to Sam, the Mitch McConnell mystery, Lindsey Graham's death, they serve as proof that he's right. Older Americans just can't let go of power, and he wants to talk about how we correct course everywhere, but especially in Washington, where he wants to do more than kick out the old folks.

GUEST: It's not good enough to have, high-functioning 60- and 70-year-olds and block the 80-year-olds if you have one senator in his 30s, very few representatives in their 40s, and the median age is over 60. 

HOST: I feel like we should talk about the president too, because Donald Trump is still with us. but he is the oldest person to have ever been elected president.

COMMERCIAL: Yes. 

HOST: And it's weird because he was elected right after Joe Biden was driven from the race because he had an extended senior moment during a televised debate. So it was like we, we said, "Okay, we can't elect that person, obviously," but then the country went ahead and elected a very old person. It's just a strange confluence of events to me.

Do Americans love old people? Is, or is there something else going on here? 

GUEST: Amazingly, Trump even said, Joe Biden has given old people like me a bad name because we should know when we lose our mojo that we should step aside. I haven't." so I think Americans must have accepted that given the choices, that one old man was better than another. But since Ronald Reagan, we've had older and older presidents, some young ones like Barack Obama. But I think the basic issue is that we do defer to older people. 

Maybe more important is the electorate is old, so you have a gerontocracy voting gerontocrats into power

HOST: Oh, that's interesting. So it's because older people are more likely to vote, also older people are more likely to win. 

GUEST: We know for sure that o- everything else being equal, everyone wants to vote for someone their own age to represent them. It's just that older people vote a lot more

HOST: Okay. So Sam, your new book, it's called Gerontocracy in America, and in it you argue the US is increasingly becoming a country for old people, or a gerontocracy. I'm a little curious why you wanted to focus on this topic, and I also think it's important to say that your focus on this, it's not just politics.

It's literally like every element of society. You've written an article about how professors are too old. You yourself are a professor . So you're looking at everyone, right? 

GUEST: Basically. I thought a lot about this, and I'm con- as concerned about politicians as the next person. But first of all, no one needs me with Mitch McConnell's hijinks to point out this problem.

and it's bipartisan. 

HOST: How old are you, Sam? 

GUEST: I'm 54. and so I'm, middle-aged, getting to old age. but I realized at a certain point that it may not matter how old the politicians are if the electorate is old and those who control, wealth in our country in its various forms are old.

if Donald Trump should, for whatever reason, not make it till next June, the United States would immediately have the youngest president in its history because JD Vance would be, younger than Theodore Roosevelt was, early 40s, when he became president. 

HOST: That's interesting. You're saying like the older politicians are a symptom, but not the cause.

GUEST: I think they're their own problem, but they might be a more minor problem, and they're definitely a symptom because they get there through these other levels of gerontocracy. So maybe a better, analogy is not disease, but the levels of hell. you have the politicians, but then who puts them there?

the electorate. And who pays for elections in our country? the c- the donors who are extremely old, even older than the electorate. And who has money? oligarchy, leaving the tech bros out, are old and aging fast. And it seems like we're embarked on an experiment, not just in this country, of the political consequences of the extension of life, which is a good thing.

I wanna live as long as they can, make it happen, but we shouldn't pretend that there's not a dark side. 

HOST: What's the problem you wanna solve for? 

GUEST: I don't wanna attack entitlements, I actually think we have too few 

HOST: Like Social Security or Medicare. 

GUEST: Exactly. Medicare. those are the main two at the federal level.

and that means that six to seven federal dollars are spent on American seniors for every dollar that's spent on American children, which is a crime. But the answer to that is not to take away anyone's benefits, it's to add. I think we could imagine an even better welfare state. Where I have a problem is that older people monopolize elections.

They monopolize wealth. They have most of the houses. That means they control the ur- desirable urban cores. They no longer face mandatory retirements, and so many refuse to retire, and so create blockages, in, the, in sectors of the economy. So all that is gerontocratic, and that's what we should face because we should be fairer to younger people even while, keeping our generosity towards older people when they need care, even being more generous.

HOST: So Sam, to what degree do we recognize the political effects of an aging citizenry, and what do we miss in our understanding of the world today, what... the politics that are happening right now in the United States when we do not recognize the effects of an aging voting, crowd?

GUEST: Well, I think we're embarked on an experiment and it's never been tried, which is mass life extension. And I think no one's really thought hard about the political consequences. So my book is just an attempt to kinda gather together what we know so far in one country about what it means for our politics, intergenerationally to have so many more older people, absolutely and relatively.

And, I think, what I c- from what I can see, the, the outcomes are good and bad. It's great to have longer life. It also means that those who are old have more power, and probably more than they deserve, and I try to make that case. 

HOST: So is Make America Great Again a reflection of an aging society?

Is an aging society more likely to want to return to a nostalgic past, no matter how much that past has become or is in, in reality a myth? 

GUEST: Well, I think, you know, that question has to be, you know, explored on, on multiple levels. For sure in 2016, Donald Trump was put in the White House by older voters. 2024 is a bit murkier, although again, in some of the crucial precincts in, Michigan and elsewhere that, that, that determine the outcome.

Older voters played an enormous role. But I think your question is bigger than that because it's really also about what happens when the Democrats win, because they put old, an old man in power, and our most recent Democratic president is-- still has the record for, the oldest president. Trump will probably beat it.

and e- I think both of those men share a nostalgia for the 1950s, which they interpret a little differently. and, I think, y- what your question's really about is about conservatism with a small C. And I just think it's not ageist, but true that 

as we age, we become more backward-looking than forward-looking.

And why not? We don't have as much to look forward to and a lot to look fondly back on in our memories. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, said that as we age, we begin to live in memory rather than hope. And so I think it, it just has to be taken seriously that an older population will mean a nostalgic politics, and we're living it.

HOST: Do you think that explains Donald Trump's recent remarks about, that, that seemed very McCarthyist when he was, uh, talking a lot of scaremongering about communists and the overthrow of America on social media recently. Is this all a hat tip to the older voter? Is this an attempt to get the older voter to, align themselves or realign themselves with Donald Trump?

GUEST: I think, I'm not claiming that age is the explanation for everything, but it's amazing when you start thinking in the way you're thinking that it explains a- an extraordinary amount. And I agree with you that not just the politicians but their constituents, are s- are so old compared to the American past that it wouldn't be surprising if politicians imagine their audience as their fellow senior citizens.

and so they have co- a common stock of memories. And in, in the case of those guys, it's been Cold War memories when life was good, threats were clear, and everyone agreed what they were, and not climate change, but some like, enemy barbarian at the gate. and it's not just these guys. When you look at, polls about youth versus, age as d- a- as they bear on our political preferences, younger people say the biggest problem f- to solve is climate change.

Older people say it's terrorism. And so I think you're get-- you're onto something, but I wouldn't wanna pin everything on explaining any one statement 

HOST: So how new is this gerontocracy, and is this uniquely American, or is this happening around the world and possibly a factor in, the rise of, global far-right movements?

GUEST: It's a great question. it's certainly global. 

more than half of humanity now lives under political leadership over the age of 70. That's largely because of Narendra Modi in India and Vladimir Putin in, in Russia and Xi Jinping in China, all of whom have aged, beyond 70.

when these guys meet, they talk about life extension. That was revealed, uh, for, the other week, in when Sh- Putin and Xi, hooked up and talked about organ replacement. I think i-in the longest view, and I argue this in the book, gerontocracy is old school. It's probably the most common form of government that humans have had, basically living under councils of elders.

and yet there were age and term limits that mortality built in, in the old days. And our form of gerontocracy is new because our older politicians now, and very much including women like Dianne 

Feinstein and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, can plan on indefinite high function, or at least what they think they can, and, think of death as something that will happen much later because it generally does.

and then maybe more important, our politics is based on elections and money. and, of course it matters if the politicians are old, but it may matter less now when the voters and those who hold wealth, including, as your intro emphasized, housing are so up in years. And so I study gerontocracy as a kind of blast from the past that has been renovated, and it has specific American characteristics, even though it's a general problem.

I think the be-best explanation globally is that everywhere but Sub-Sa-Saharan Africa is, involved in this experiment with the demographic pyramid In the old days, the younger, the, the hu-humans, the more of them there were. and that was true in every society, including American until recently.

Now there are fewer young people, and many more old people surviving longer. They can count on surviving, and that has political consequences of various kinds. 

We've just heard clips starting with

Takesâ„¢ by Jamelle Bouie eulogizing Lindsey Graham after his passing as a lifelong warmonger and Trump loyalist who knew better yet helped subvert American democracy out of venal self-interest.

The NPR Politics Podcast examined the four-week hospitalization of Senator Mitch McConnell, where a lack of transparency fueled wild rumors and broader questions about lawmakers hiding health problems from voters.

Today, Explained detailed how McConnell's team offered almost no information for nearly a month after his June 14th apparent cardiac arrest, leaving reporters, colleagues, and conspiracy theorists to fill in the blanks.

Civics 101 explained why Madison's Virginia Plan clashed with the small-state New Jersey Plan, arguing there were no genuine "small state issues" to justify giving every state two senators regardless of population.

What Next traced how America's aging politicians reflect a broader gerontocracy of old voters, old donors, and old wealth that puts and keeps elderly leaders in power.

And This Is Hell! explored how more than half of humanity now lives under leaders over 70, thanks to India, Russia, and China, and what indefinite elderly power means for our politics.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections.

But first, as you may have heard by now, the show is going through some financial troubles. We've taken a big hit on ad dollars drying up since the beginning of the year and I'm still working to turning things around. Our members supporting the show are the main thing getting us through right now but it's really been the people signing up more recently who have been helping to fill the gap that opened up.

So, if you haven't signed up yet but are thinking about it, just know that the emergency hasn't passed and we could still really use your help. Don't worry if you can only afford a few bucks a month, it's the collective contributions of people stepping up that has always gotten us through tough times like this.

So, if you get value out of the show and want to get it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.

We're also working on reincorporating audience feedback into the show. If you want to encourage others to leave messages, start by becoming the change you want to see in the world.

To spark ideas, here's today's question.

A piece of this episode is about a system that's been hampered so that it's effectively impossible for representatives to be responsive to their constituents. I'm sure it won't be about congress but tell us about the last time you felt you had a real say in a decision that actually affected your life, at work, in your town, wherever. When was it, and what made it possible to make an impact, or if you're drawing a blank, tell us that instead.

I'm planning on talking about congressional reforms today but Truman beat me to it with his recent voice message.

Hey, Jay and the rest of the Best of the Left team. it's Truman. I'm leaving this voicemail to highlight some reforms I'd like to see progressives advocate for. there are a lot of obvious policies like universal healthcare, higher minimum wage, wealth taxes, et cetera, that we should of course demand from our politicians.

But I'd also like to see them bring up some less talked about ideas that could meaningfully alter the political landscape. first would be, changing how we elect our representatives. my favorite idea is, uh, multi-member districts with ranked choice voting, and I believe Ireland does this to some extent.

Americans like having local representatives to go to for help or just to complain to, so I'm not sure that full proportional representation would be a great fit. But districts also aren't just red, blue, or swing. Like they're more nuanced than that. three-seat districts maybe with automatic runoffs would reflect that nuance and give third parties a real shot.

Maybe a Libertarian would win a seat in rural Montana, a Green would win in urban Portland, and uh, Congress would get more proportional without necessarily losing local representation. Second would be, uh, expanding direct democracy at the federal level and also the state level. right now we're kinda stuck with elected officials until each election, and people forget in between.

And so there really isn't a check on what they do while they're in power. And it would be nice to have recall elections for Congress members acting against their district's interests, referenda on major decisions like wars and trade deals. And I'd also like to see some form of participatory budgeting so people could have a direct say in some aspects of federal spending.

the goal would just be to give people more institutional levers to pull between major elections that really only happen every two to four years. and my third idea, which, is kind of meant to support the first two, would be to just invest more heavily in K through 12 civic education. Uh, the first two reforms add a lot of complexity and require more frequent engagement than people are used to.

And if people don't understand how instant runoff tabulation works or what a treaty vote means, then these tools get confusing, or they can get captured by whoever's already engaged, be that, political junkies or special interests. I think that civic education is what makes expanded democracy work for everyone.

these are some ideas that I think could build real bipartisan support, at least at the voter level. And I imagine it'd be pretty easy to convince progressive candidates to adopt them. but getting mainstream politicians, and especially the right to act on it, is another story. I hope some of these ideas make their way into public discourse.

thanks for all that you do. Bye.

Thanks to Truman for that contribution. A lot of those have been in discussion for a while and some are newer but I really do have this feeling that the appetite for democratic renewal is continuing to rise and when we hit cyclical moments like that in history, there's an opportunity to make changes that otherwise feel impossible. So, we need to keep pushing to create that opportunity and be ready for when it comes.

If you have a question or would like your comments included in the show you can record a voice message - re-recording until you're happy with it - by tapping the link in the show notes.

As for today's topic,

It's widely thought that Congress is broken, and so today I want to go back to the scenes of some of the the crimes that got us to this point.

I'll start in 1995, when Newt Gingrich led the Republicans to take back control of the House running on the Contract with America. Item three on that contract was the promise to cut the number of House committees and cut committee staff by one-third. One of the agencies that ended up on the chopping block was the Office of Technology Assessment, which was abolished that year.

I find the timing of this amazing. Again, that was 1995 and for those who were there, the arrival of Microsoft Windows 95 to retail customers in August of that year is remembered as a turning point in personal computing. One month later, Congress abolished the Office of Technology Assessment. It was only three years later that internet usage via America Online had become culturally ubiquitous enough that the film "You've Got Mail" was released in 1998. From the release of You've Got Mail to the founding of Twitter, the creation of Facebook's algorithmic newsfeed, the purchase of YouTube by Google, and the founding of the Best of the Left podcast, which is how I tend to remember the year, was only 8 years. 1998-2006.

So, from 1995 to 2006 and beyond, we watched some of the fastest technological innovation in the history of humanity and we did it with a Congress that had just intentionally blinded itself to precisely that fast-moving innovation by abolishing the agency directly tasked with tracking it and explaining it to them. A relevant point is that, within the past week here in the summer of 2026, one of the most venerable and influential politicians in the Democratic Party, James Clyburn, said during an interview that he'd just learned what ChatGPT was, and looking at Newt Gingrich's Contract with America is giving me some insight into why.

When Gingrich and company came to power, they promised to cripple Congress's ability to function and then made good on that promise. So, when you feel the sense of frustration that Congress seems incapable of getting anything done, just know that we're living with the promise-come-to-fruition that the Republicans made good on back in 1995 with timing so bad that it feels like a Greek tragedy.

They couldn't have fully foreseen what was coming, so the timing was somewhat incidental, but I'm sure there were some people working at the Office of Technology Assessment who knew the internet was about to change everything and would have been happy to explain it. So, their ignorance is only slightly excusable but it mostly highlights the inevitable downside of adhering to the kind of anti-government neoliberal ideology that has been the default of our politics for decades. Regardless of what the future holds, no one should be in favor of undercutting the ability of the government to react to it.

Because, of course, lobotomizing the government doesn't change anything about the fact that it's still the institution that all of our laws flow through. In the absence of independent funding for research dedicated to the benefit of all people, that gap gets filled with lobbyists and trade associations with their own motivations and no responsibility to the public interest.

This wasn't the first time that Congress had put restrictions on its own ability to get things done, and it wouldn't be the last. The influence of the Tea Party in the early 2010s caused another round of cuts to Congress's ability to function. There was already a statutory limit on the number of staffers a member of Congress can have dating to the 70s, but funding limits have ensured that most members of Congress don't even have the number of staffers they're allowed.

Given that the number of representatives doesn't go up and the number of staffers doesn't go up, but the population does, it makes it pretty easy to understand why members of Congress are structurally unable to be responsive to their constituents. They simply don't have the capacity.

If you're a political nerd, you might know that there are 435 seats in the House of Representatives, but it's far less known that that number didn't used to be as static as it is today. At the founding, the House started at 65 representatives. The number of members grew every ten years, after each census to keep pace with the population, until 1920, when the until-then routine procedure of expanding the House hit a wall.

If you're familiar with the era, you won't be surprised to learn that racism was at the heart of the issue. The 1920 census was the first to show that the country had tipped over into being more urban than rural. Cities had been increasing in population, driven largely by immigrants and Black families leaving the South in the Great Migration. Reapportioning after that census would have meant a shift in power toward those cities. We can basically thank Jim Crow-era racism for the fact that the size of our House of Representatives stopped growing to meet the needs of a growing population.

Originally, a member of Congress represented a little more than 30,000 constituents. By 1910, it was over 200,000. And today it's nearly 800,000, making our representative-to-constituent ratio a real outlier that's several times larger than the average democracy.

In each of these cases, reforms were created that hampered Congress's ability to get work done for its constituents. They either limited their capacity by restricting the number of members, by restricting the number of staffers, by restricting necessary funding, or by fully abolishing agencies that helped them do their work. Now we're sitting around wondering why Congress can't get anything done and doesn't seem to know anything about modern technology. But this problem is frequently treated as the failure of individuals or of the nature of aging politicians when the structural and historical view demonstrates that we used to give Congress more capacity and more resources to do their jobs.

So, if subtractive reforms that put constraints on Congress helped get us here, maybe more subtraction like term-limits and age limits aren't the way to go and we should instead be looking at additive reforms. Here's a starter list. Uncap the limit on the number of representatives to again keep pace with the population and go back to fully funding and staffing the offices so that members could genuinely be more responsive to voters. Rebuild the research agencies dedicated to giving unbiased information to inform members of Congress, particularly on things like the development of new technologies. Move to the public funding of elections and switch to multi-member districts and ranked-choice voting to increase the diversity of candidates and party affiliations.

In the 90s, neoliberalism was ascendant and the idea of tearing down the government was fashionable, in theory, but the consequences of those actions have fully landed now and people are as pissed off at the dysfunction as they've ever been.

Trump is a gold-standard bullshit artist but the bullshit he was peddling was the populist message of making the government work for people again, which many of his supporters took seriously. They were in for a rude awakening, of course, but the desire for an active, responsive government is real and the pressure has been building for 100 years. This is what the age of neoliberalism coming to an end looks like. The party that spearheaded the anti-government mantra with an anti-Democrat veneer has completely flipped. Now, wielding government power is seen as normal and good and naming Democrats as the enemy is the only part that survived.

Neoliberalism is dying and contract campaigns, candidates promising to accomplish specific goals, have come back around. It's time for the left to run on the explicit promise to make government functional to a degree it never has been before. What we've had has always been insufficient for our needs, which, ironically, adds fuel to the anti-government fire that occasionally gives the right the political capital to break it even further. Now is the time to build a level of representation and responsiveness we've always needed but never had.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 3 topics today. First up;

Section A, THE MCCONNELL & GRAHAM MOMENT

Followed by Section B, THE GERONTOCRACY CASE

And Section C, HOW CONGRESS ACTUALLY WORKS

HOST: But before we go into any of this, what d- what do you see as the legacy of Lindsey Graham? I would argue probably one of the more important political figures of the 20th and 21st century, for all of the wrong reasons.

Every single wrong reason. What, looking back, what is your... he's been a punching bag of yours for a long time. You hate Lindsey Graham. I hate Lindsey Graham. How's it feel that Lindsey Graham has now departed this mortal coil? 

HOST 2: it, the wrong senator passed? Is that what my first impression was?

Or- 

HOST: Oh, don't worry everybody, we're gonna talk about the McConnell proof of life photo. that's coming up next. Yeah. But yeah. 

HOST 2: and listen, w- as long as, McCain was by his side, we could say, all right, Lindsey seemed to have his heart in the right place. But I just goes to show you how, how can I say this?

'Cause, we've talked about this before, and I, I have no interest in, Okay. You, with a guy, with enough power, right? You are blackmailable. we've said this before. And, I just feel like people like that c- are... It's dangerous because they're manipulable. For whatever reason you wanna say he was manipulated, in the last 10 years, he was manipulated, I believe, to be the person he became, which is some sort of Trump-loving guy, even though it was clear to him how, how d- des- destructive Trump was going to be, and he's on record a, a couple times saying that back in 2015.

that's his legacy. The, here's a guy that you had, they had probably dirt on, and they were able to, threaten him with that, and he w- f- he fell in line. 

HOST: see, I don't actually agree with that. I think that gets Lindsey Graham off the hook. Oh. I don't think he was blackmailed.

I don't think that he was manipulated into doing anything. I think what got exposed with Lindsey Graham was something that was very observable, which is that this was a weak, sycophantic, bootlicking asshole who sought attention and sought power, particularly through his proximity to other people who were more dominant men with more dominant ideology and personalities.

And, it, Nick, I don't wanna talk about the three amigos, with him and Mitch McConnell and Joe Lieberman, but this was a person who was... he reminds me a lot, I've talked about on this show, like a, a little small bully who runs around with packs of larger guys who maybe they'll start a fight and then larger guys will finish the thing.

I think Lindsey Graham's ideology was always malleable, and I think who he was with John McCain and who he was with Donald Trump, I think there were moments where he spoke what he believed was the truth, which was that Donald Trump, was a disgusting figure. But the moment that he found safety and shelter around Donald Trump, I think he fell in line.

I think that this is a really despicable person who I think embodied maybe the worst characteristics of the United States Senate, which was he was more than happy to hurt people, he was more than happy to... God knows how many people have been killed because of Lindsey Graham's warmongering, right?

And how many of these things that he pushed forward, how much damage he did to regular people on a daily basis, and all of it was worth it because he was a United States senator. He got to hang out with other senators, he got to slap people on the back, he got to be part of the larger club, and that's what mattered more to him than anything else.

I don't... I think it's, I think it's actually more detestable not that Lindsey Graham was blackmailed, because it was an open secret who he was in Washington, D.C. Everybody knew about it. Everyone kept that secret because he was part of this larger club. I think it makes him more detestable that he did this for proximity to power and for public exposure.

HOST 2: okay. I guess you can also, I can then shift my point to then, when you have a certain degree of self-loathing, I suppose could be it, you are then, apt to make decisions that are lashing out at people like, because of the inner t- turmoil that you're going through.

And so perhaps that would be part of it as well, that was troubling. And certainly the LGBTQ community vilified him as well because he would punish them, with his votes on a lot of different stuff that, is, very troubling, for a lot of reasons. But that sort of sums up the entire GOP as they exist.

Because we've talked about this before, there, there's a distinct, unwell, mentally unwell section of this party that causes all manner of torque, in there, that, that causes all manner of strange deci- decisions that are, tend to be destructive for people on purpose, sometimes.

that's where we're at and, it's a, it, it's a legacy that, yes, that will be, hopefully, not followed and used as an example of what, we cannot have that again. but we... I- Can we cut to... Did he die, in, in America, do you think? 

HOST: yeah, think he did die in America. I don't think that he died in Ukraine and was shipped back.

I think he ca- That's another thing, by the way. I think it's very telling that Lindsey Graham sold his soul to get in line with MAGA after criticizing it. He then died, and what did they do with him, Nick? They immediately turned him into an object of conspiracy theories, right? Yeah. Because it, it's not enough that you work with these people, it's not enough that you dedicate your time and energy and resources to what it is that they wanna do, they're not...

They're going to dehumanize you, right? They're going to take you, they're gonna fit you into some sort of a conspiracy that fits whatever worldview they have. But yeah, I think he was back in the United States, and I think he simply had a heart attack. 

HOST 2: and by the way, w- now the i- the irony or the coincidence that he happened to be like, in Kiev of all places, right?

Is, was what also fuels that. And then certainly, if anyone's curious out there what the root of it ends up being, the time doesn't, the timeline doesn't fit, but we don't have enough of the public reporting, so that's part of the reason why we, he, I'm sure could be explained. Because, you don't just fly back, there isn't a direct flight from Kiev to South Carolina.

you have to take a train to Poland and then fly back to probably you know- ... DC or something, and then South Carolina. I don't know. I just find it hilarious sometimes when it comes up like that and then all of a sudden it becomes, people are... There are some people who are very, convinced, of these things.

And either way, the one thing that does stand out about that is that he was still in favor of supporting, Ukraine. which also flies in the face of basically what Trump's position has been and what they did, which, again, can fuel all sorts of interesting things about how, okay, that's the one thing he stayed true to, the whole time.

HOST: and that- I think that goes back to one of the things we've talked about with the Republican Party and politicians in general, which is they tell themselves a story, right? Lindsey Graham forwarded all of these wars, and by the way, I think it's wonderful that he spent most of his public life pushing for a war with Iran, and he lived long enough for that war to take place and to watch the United States of America humiliated and defeated in that war.

There's almost nothing that Lindsey Graham ever stood for that he was on the right side of history with. And when it comes to MAGA, it also disrupts this idea once more that it's a homogenous group, that they all believe the same things and they all think this. In fact, Lindsey Graham was hated by a large section of the MAGA-supporting base because not only did he support Ukraine because he was all about national security, he was all about America's alliances, even as he supported the guy who destroyed them, they also hated him because he was a stalwart in support of Israel.

Yeah. So he was actually loathed by the group of people that he sold his soul to, which it just goes to show there's no reason to ever get involved with these people, not once. 

HOST 2: Yeah. A- again, y- we keep seeing it. He's just, get in line, add him to the list of, people who will prostrate themselves to Trump and then end up getting, humiliated, over and over again.

And, yeah, it- it's, it, good riddance in- as far as the Senate goes. It makes it a little bit harder for the Republicans to get some stuff done 'cause the margin sh- shrunk and, McConnell's not coming back for a little bit. talk about him in a second. I... It's interesting.

the, the Democrats are doing a lot to torpedo themselves with the Senate race, but the GOP seems to be also helping the Democrats somehow either as well, or there seems to be some loosening up there that might, might benefit them. 

HOST: we'll talk more about the midterms here in just a minute because there's news there.

But I think, speaking of the Democrats torpedoing themselves, Nick, I also wanted to talk about how one Democrat after another just absolutely fell all over themselves to post moving tributes to, their fallen, colleague. Elizabeth Warren got in on it, Adam Schiff, Amy Klobuchar, disgusting shit from her.

Personally, for me, the most cringe-inducing one was Cory Booker, who was just like, "Oh, I'm gonna miss my friend, and I hope he's basking in God's love right now." Nick, I, I would love to hear what you think the reasoning for this was that Democrats felt the need to go out and defend and even laud this monster who has hurt so many people.

I have my own personal thoughts about it, and I actually think it was one of the more telling things we've seen in a long time. 

HOST 2: I, listen, somebody passes away, a coworker, the, the, the, the thing you're supposed to do is, yes, honor them. yeah. So I... They're doing what they're supposed to do.

There's a script there, and you say that. And I have no doubt in the room, in the cloak room of the Senate, I'm sure Lindsey was a really nice person, and I'm sure they did like him. He probably was funny and, good to be hanging around with, right? I suppose they focused on that, part of the memory of it and then did, just did that script we're supposed to do.

unlike, what Trump. Trump would just shit on the guy, whenever they, someone on the other side passed away. so that's what they're trying to do, probably trying to separate themselves and show that they're above it all and all that stuff. So lay it on me. 

HOST: Yeah, but if you had a colleague who had murdered multiple people and they died, would you then be like, "Oh man, the times that we had business trips where we had dinner and yukked it up together"?

Yeah. Because Lindsey Graham has literally played a role in killing people all around the world. Wait, like 

HOST 2: we're talking like bachelor party murders? Are 

HOST: we talking... What kind of murders are we talking about? We're talking about just going out and random... we, there's no telling how many people have died because of Lindsey Graham But it's that, it's that sort of projection away from it, it's the distance.

Because the project that Lindsey Graham served, including murdering people through US military interventions and wars, including illegal wars and atrocities, that feels at a distance, right? Because he's just playing a role in this project

Burgess, I know you cover the Senate, but over in the House of Representatives, there's also someone who's gone missing. Could you tell us about that person? 

Tom Kean missed, weeks and weeks, months even, of votes over in the House.

He's a congressman from New Jersey, a Republican. 

CLIP: A congressman is missing. 

This photo is actually the last public sighting of the man, and he has since missed more than 100 votes in Congress, and he's provided no explanation beyond, quote, "a personal medical issue." 

Republicans need Kean's seat to hold the House in the midterms.

He didn't explain why he was gone. He kept saying he was gonna be back and offer an explanation. 

CLIP: I understand the need for transparency on this matter and I look forward to sharing my experience with the public. 

Finally, he did. He was being treated for depression. 

CLIP: Now, when people hear the word depression, many people think simply feel it means feeling sad, but depression is so much more than that.

It is physical, it is emotional, and until you experience it yourself, it is difficult to fully understand how powerful this illness can be. 

This is an interesting one, though, because this is a battleground House seat. He hasn't been in the House that long. So I could see his race, turning into a referendum on his health and whether he was transparent enough about it for his constituents.

He didn't wanna talk about it. He didn't wanna disclose it. It seemed like he was prioritizing his own health over, transparency for his voters. But the conflict there is, of course, that they get to weigh in on whether he was transparent enough. So it's gonna be really interesting to watch, how people in New Jersey respond to the way, Tom Kean handled this illness.

HOST: What rules are there in Congress to deal with situations like these, with Tom and Mitch? 

There, there's no rules really on this. Gov- Congress governs itself, the House governs itself, the Senate governs itself, right? So if somebody's doing something that other members find inappropriate, your options are pretty limited.

You could try to expel them, or the ethics committees can investigate them. we really haven't seen that translate to health. This is, tho- those committees are usually more about, investigating scandals, corruption- ... things like that. So there's really no accountability measure other than these elections.

HOST: Why not? Why aren't there rules in place that say "Hey, the people pay your salary, and you owe them, I don't know, showing up or explaining why you're not showing up"? 

It's really the same reason that Congress doesn't do a great job policing its own stock trades, right? who likes to put more restrictions on themselves?

They'd ra- people would rather say, I, I'm gonna do the right thing. You can trust me on this," because they don't wanna put those guardrails on themselves, if they can avoid it. and we'll see. I'm having a hard time seeing Congress ever moving to put those rules on itself regarding health, but I do think this is gonna become more of a political issue.

I, to me, in my personal experience, it started with Dianne Feinstein and the questions about her fitness to lead the Judiciary Committee. 

CLIP: Yeah, just say I. 

Okay. Just I. 

She's representing 40 million people in California. We ex- need someone who's going to be on top of the job. 

I do think that if it is impacting her ability, to do the job, then, I would support a resignation.

I think John Fetterman had an election after having a stroke in which he had a terrible debate performance. 

CLIP: I, I do support fracking, and I don't... I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking 

And he still won handily. There's gonna be a bunch of this in Lindsey G- this race to replace Lindsey Graham, because I think it's gonna be fresh on voters' minds that, Lindsey Graham just died in office at 71.

are they going to choose to send somebody older or perhaps, younger to replace Senator Graham so that they can have more confidence that person will be able to serve longer? 

HOST: Okay, so part of the reason we don't have rules is because who likes to create rules that, restrict themselves?

But also is part of the issue here that our politicians are, one, living longer and certainly sticking around in Congress longer than they used to? 

I think it's easy. There's always recency bias when it comes to these sort of things, and he was around before I covered the Senate, but Strom Thurmond served in office until- he was 100, right? Classic. And, e- everybody told me that he, by the time he was done, he was very diminished. and I think there's a lot of examples of that in recent history, people hanging on as long as they can.

I think, the best example is Chuck Grassley, who's the oldest senator. He's in his 90s. 

CLIP: When I started farming in 1960, the saying was, "Corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July." 

I was one of the first senators to get a fax machine when they were so useful. 

Much older than Lindsey Graham has... and, I do think when he won re-election, I, to me, there were questions about his health.

I went out and covered his re-election race, and he challenged me to a push-up contest, which- ... makes you laugh, right? But it's also okay, this guy's trying to meet this challenge of are you too old to serve in office? And here we are. it's 2026. He's still there. He's not even ruling out running again for a six-year term.

I'd be surprised if he does, but, I do think, until you put term limits on members of Congress, how long they can serve, it's extremely hard for me to imagine any other way to make people leave office because of age.

HOST: What happens when your elected representative isn't showing up to work? Can they still call in a vote from, their hospital bed, their death bed, their rehab facility, whatever it is? 

The Senate is more antiquated even than the House. There's not even a voting card, for example. So you gotta go in there and give a thumbs up or thumbs down.

So if you're not in good enough shape, to get to the Capitol with all of your staff, with your drivers, with all of these, these, extras that the government gives you to do your job, then yeah, you can't get a vote. You can't represent your constituents. I will say, though, even right now, there's good, experienced people working in Lindsey Graham's office who are probably taking constituent phone calls, helping people with their Social Se- getting their Social Security benefits, whatever, the things that we don't really talk about on a day-to-day basis.

Those are still there even when the member dies or is otherwise incapacitated. 

HOST: you're talking about politicians not wanting to disclose their health issues because they may seem weak, the optics, whatever it might be, a reelection, coming up. but is part of it also This razor-thin margin situation that we have right now where they maybe don't want the party to look weak or vulnerable?

Well, I think with Senator McConnell, I think he's a... E- everybody has their own story, right? And, for him, he's a polio survivor. He's always taken his physical health kind of, seriously in the sense that he doesn't wanna project weakness, and he wants to say, "I beat this disease, and I became the Senate majority leader."

What that has meant is, there's been times when he's walked when he shouldn't have. He probably should've been in a wheelchair or with a walker or a cane. but he doesn't like that, and so I know his staff had asked him for years to be more cognizant of his physical safety, and he didn't do it, and he's fallen a bunch, and that was how he ended up in the hospital, this time.

And I think for him, he doesn't wanna go out resigning in July of his last year. he takes his Senate Appropriations chairmanship of the Defense Spending committee very seriously, for example, and I'm sure he's got a few legacy things that he wants to tie up. So I think to him, he doesn't wanna go out like that.

But w- if his ad- absence were to hamstring Republicans' ability to do X, Y, or Z, I do think that there's some rabble-rousing Republicans who would let you know that they didn't like it. 

HOST: Mitch McConnell, 84 years old. Chuck Grassley, the senior senator from Iowa, is infamously 92 years old. Former Senator Mitt Romney recently said he would not run for president in 2028, not that anyone was asking him to, per se, but because he'll be 80 years old by then.

And he, I think, even cited research saying that your brain capacity shrinks by the time you're 80. 

GUEST 3: 20% smaller. Wow. Just the size of the brain itself. So I basically think people who are 80 and above really should not be, running the world or running the country. 

HOST: Is anyone out there, I don't know, renewing calls for upper age limits in the Senate or in the House?

it's something we see in presidential campaigns usually, but it's, a talking point you use to get elected. And then once you're in office, you don't really- ... get much traction for that. And I don't think Congress is gonna pass a constitutional amendment on term limits until a president is in office whose entire platform is based on that.

HOST: Maybe President Ossoff in 2029. 

Well, yeah. he was the youngest senator when he came in. He'll, if he runs for president, he'll be one of the youngest, presidential candidates. So it'll be interesting to see. I do think, I do wanna sh- shout out some of our representatives who have been leaving on their own accord at more reasonable ages recently, people like Tina Smith, Gary Peters, Jeanne Shaheen.

They could have run for other Senate terms, and they've decided to step away. And, those were surprising at the time, but the more I've digested it, the more I can say, hey, they're, like, kinda normalizing the idea that you don't have to be a senator forever. And I think that's probably a healthy thing.

HOST: Hours after Lindsey Graham kicks the bucket, rest in piss, what a piece of shit, everybody's like, "Hey, we kinda thought this was gonna be Mitch McConnell." We all thought Mitch McConnell was the next one to shuffle off of the mortal coil, and then it becomes a question of, weird, Mitch McConnell hasn't said anything.

And then Mitch McConnell's team is "We probably need to say something. Mitch has been gone for over a month at this point." And then Mitch McConnell's social media account, I don't want to say that Mitch posted it, 'cause I don't think Mitch is posting much of anything right now, they post a picture, and the picture is reportedly, allegedly, purportedly, of the senator from Kentucky who's been missing for over a month in a hospital bed.

his wife is sitting next to him. By the way, Nick, I'm not gonna say he looks good. He doesn't look great. He's dressed. He's wearing a button-up shirt. He's wearing jeans. And then, wouldn't you know, just randomly, 

I'm sure nobody did this on purpose, there is an, an issue of The Washington Post from Sunday, the sports section.

it's just in the picture, Nick. It's just accidentally in there. Nobody did that on purpose. And for people who don't know this, this is what's referred to in the jargon as proof of life, which is when you kidnap somebody and you want to show that person is still alive as you're asking for a ransom, you make sure that a picture of that day's newspaper is in the frame.

So Nick, I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I want to underline all of it by saying I have gotten so much joy out of this picture and the fact that this is what they released and that they had to put that in there because this man is so close to death and so obviously dying that they had to put this out there.

And obviously conspiracy theories, is it AI-generated? Was it doctored? All of these things. What was your reaction? And obviously, we're wishing Mitch McConnell the absolute best. I, we hope you're out, out there real soon. big fans 

HOST 2: Yeah. he already has said he, he's not coming back. He can't come back just yet.

he's still not feeling- 

HOST: Yeah, he's not feeling good enough to go to the Senate 

HOST 2: right now, Nick ... 100% dude. Doctors thought, maybe he needs some more time." y- the other thing that you do is it just reminded me of the Manhunter movie where, they put a little clue, in the Tattler to lure the serial killer, the Tooth Fairy, out into the open, right?

And that's another reason why you do it, right? There's like a s- there's a clue. I can't remember the exact clue. So now I'm trying to think about, what that was. 'Cause then, yeah, all sorts of sleuths. I think he had five fingers and not six in the vid- in the picture, so either AI's getting a lot better or it was a real picture of him.

they somehow got Elaine Chao back into the country, you know- ... even though she abandoned him for, three days after he was in the hospital. Nick, 

HOST: she went to China. And by the way, as he's convalescing and probably dying, she goes to China. And I don't know if you saw this, they were refinishing and repurposing the floors in their home as he's in the hospital.

it's incredible stuff. 

HOST 2: you g- she's gotta get prepared. It's, it's not an easy transition to a single life. 

HOST: you gotta get the turtle out of the house before they come in and take care of the floors. Am I right? 

HOST 2: Yeah. then, and then by the way, she's worried 'cause, they might have to bring him back and he's gonna have that, that bed from the hospital with the wheels and it's gonna, it could scuff the floors.

So yeah, might maybe she'll have to hold off on that. By the way, the- we... I don't know if it's even a thing, but, there's a whole thing now with w- all the, repairs and everything that, that Trump is doing is totally destroying the White House. I don't know if you've seen this. Gosh. All these terrible, they're doing a really bad job with everything because it's, they don't know who to hire for all this stuff.

but speaking of, so getting back to Mitch, I, I'm willing to believe that he's alive. it probably would've been nice if they had some sort of video, like really. But I'm willing to believe he's alive. I'm willing to believe that, the miracle of modern medicine, got him back, right?

'Cause it sounded like he didn't have a pulse when they got there, right? There, there was some reporting now of that. by the way, I... it's really impressive. We could talk about the whole conspiracy thing. There was video that was released, right? Somebody had from across the street of them loading him- Yep

into the, the ambulance that came out, recently. And, you have EMTs out there, who are, like, weighing in on what they're seeing and, the slightest details. It's fascinating because in theory, if you wanna take some of those words, it was like, yeah, the guy, they... he wasn't moving at all.

they put him on the special thing that they use for people who are, like, dead or whatever they are, or, i- immobile. and at any rate, so yeah, so I, I guess I don't even know if that was answering your question. The bottom line for me is yes, I'm willing to believe he's alive. and you know what, who knows?

He, he might recover. He might end up making it, wheeling back in the Senate. We- the same thing with, Feinstein.

HOST: I, you know what? Actually, what you're bringing up I think has a lot of possibility that, he will be rolled back into the Senate. And, it might... It actually, the evolution of these things, it might actually be even worse than the Dianne Feinstein situation. You know what I mean? that is the, the perfect in for Mitch McConnell.

HOST 2: but it couldn't... Hang on, real quick. it couldn't be worse. She was on death's d- Like it w- it was so bad she couldn't even, see, I don't think. And 

HOST: that- But I think, I think what you just said has a lot of possibility of happening. I, and for the record, I wanna say If he were dead, the conspiracy that would be necessary in order to keep that out of the press, I don't buy that.

I think at that point, every time people talk about conspiracy theories, it just becomes so large and it becomes so complicated and so many people are implicated in it and have to play roles. I think this goes to Occam's razor. I think he is not dead, and I think that he's in really bad shape. Everyone has been saying to me, obviously this, this thing is generated, it's AI generated.

I don't think it is. That doesn't mean that it was taken yesterday. That doesn't mean that, it wasn't doctored. But it very well could have been taken yesterday, right? They might have cleaned him up and put him up and did this or did that. I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility that it's an actual photo.

I think it's also important, Nick... I saw people, 'cause I said something about this when I posted this photo, and I wanna get to the actual important situation here. People were like, "Oh, this picture in the paper, like it's supposed to be a baseball player, but it's got an Adidas logo on it. MLB players don't use Adidas, and, the College World Series didn't have anybody in it that had Adidas."

And it's like you're looking for clues in everything, right? That's the environment that we're in, where we're just... I keep talking about this and I've talked about it for years, Nick. I've talked about mystification. 

The more that power moves behind walls, the more that we are left looking for signs and wonders and clues, right?

And everybody's always doing this and always doing that and trying to come up with these big intricate stories. And what does it take away from? It takes away from the main problem here, which is that this country is run by a gerontocratic group of wealth class, 

volunteers and signifiers, right?

We ha- W- this is, it- it's like the Soviet Union before its collapse. You look around and it's a bunch of people who are corrupt, who are just staying in office and doing all of this stuff, and it becomes sclerotic. The problem isn't that Mitch McConnell has died and they're hiding his death. The problem is that we have a political class that i- it is staying so long because they're getting rich and because they're serving the interest of a wealth class, and that creates this larger issue.

So it ge- it moves away from the actual problem, which is Mitch McConnell should not be in power right now He should have been gone a long time ago. And a lot of these people should have been gone. and quite frankly, you called it out when we were talking about Dianne Feinstein, that's elder abuse.

Yeah. She shouldn't have been in that situation. No. And Mitch McConnell, as many minutes as he has left on the Earth, he shouldn't be dealing with this shit. he's an evil person and he's caused incredible evil things, but quite frankly, we should not have this political class that's still grasping onto power by their fingernails, and all of these people around him, 

around them, who are using them to keep serving the same benefactors who've been paying their bills and making them rich.

HOST 2: and just to make you more upset, when they wheel him into the Senate chamber, they're all gonna applaud for him, left and right- 

HOST: 100% ... on both 

HOST 2: sides. 100%. they're not gonna, sit there. And but I think that part of the thing that you... I thought the point you were gonna make about the conspiracy thing isn't necessarily the geriatric nature how all these things...

It is the fact that it's not transparent. They con- Yeah ... consistently withhold information across the thing that, that, has to be filled. The void needs to be filled with something. And okay, conspiracy that he was dead is a conspiracy, but, what about this notion that they're trying to, just run this out until after the, deadline for the special election?

HOST: August 

HOST 2: 3rd. 

HOST: Yep. 

HOST 2: Yeah. th- is that a conspiracy or is that... That's probably real. And we, we- That's probably real ... come up with more real things, that, maybe they can e- all right, he's not gonna die before then, but he can, step down after that and then that still triggers the same thing.

but either way, I would like to say yes, the elderly abuse thing is real and, there, there's no reason why anybody should have had to be forced to do this. And Biden's probably in that same realm as well, and then, here we are.

HOST: one of the things we've been talking about is that ageism winds up being, I think in political discourse, less of This kind of pat generational conflict story, that we've heard endlessly.

We have had a show about generations and how they're marketing ploys more than anything else. There has long been young versus old, old versus young discourse dating back to ancient Greece, ancient China, everything, right? But that all this winds up being useless, right? It doesn't account for class, it doesn't account for racism, for oppression, for anti-LGBTQ currents, other modes of suppressing people's voices.

And once one accounts for that, perhaps it can be useful to talk about ageism as part of that, but this winds up being pat. It's just, vague claims about, as you said, "Okay, boomer," right? Boomer oppression without really qualifying which boomers maybe we're talking about or the real power analysis here.

So Windsor, I'd love if you could just discuss a bit how ageism and this idea of gerontocracy winds up being a really good way to flatten questions of power by shoving it into this generational discourse, but avoiding the real issues that are at stake. 

GUEST: Yeah. So what started me on this issue was just seeing some of the vitriol directed at older people.

generations aren't a monolith, and there are lots of lovely boomers and lovely older people, and it just was really indiscriminate. And I think that's what started me on it, but I really got a lot deeper into it when I was researching the article, and I came across Elon Musk's take on it. And Elon Musk, not only the richest person in the world, but someone who inveighs against the woke mind virus being a threat to human civilization.

And his take in his interview in Business Insider, which, he talked about a lot of things. But he was basically saying that people don't change their minds, they just die, and that older people are suffocating our society, they're holding back progress, and that the answer to that is to prohibit them from holding office I think the limit that he gave was 70 years old.

And that totally crystallized what was going on for me because as you pointed out, Musk is the richest person in the world. He is the very definition of the establishment. And I think 

the framing of our problems as stemming from gerontocracy and not something like plutocracy or patriarchy or white supremacy serves three main functions, and I think they're connected.

And the first is that, as you say, it misdirects from those things. It takes attention away from them. The real sources of our problem are the structures of capitalism, their neoliberal ideology, there's racism, sexism, and the role of the ultra-rich in all of this. 

So it misdirects away from that, but then once that anger is taken away, it's undirected anger.

And then I feel like people like Musk and people like Peter Thiel, who has similarly criticized the gerontocracy, I feel like that they can then harness that undirected anger to make themselves seem like outsiders. 

HOST 2: To support Blake Masters. The guy who's running for Congress who acts and looks just like a school shooter, but yeah, who's like, what, 40-something.

GUEST: Yeah. I think they take that and they harness it for their own purposes, and they're the consummate insiders, and they're using it to draw a distinction between themselves and the people, other people in power, and there's really not much difference there. 

HOST 2: Right. Right. 

GUEST: The final thing that I think is connected is that it divides people, and it...

I think there is something to be said for, the generations being pitted against each other. I think that's a lot of what's happening, and it obscures the fact that I as a millennial share a lot of interests with another boomer who's situated similarly economically. But when you frame it as gerontocracy or, our leadership is too old, and there is a kernel of truth to that, but when you really get into the stigma and the hatred that's attached with those ideas, that separates me from the other people I might unite with to undertake the collective action that's necessary to actually challenge the problems we're facing.

HOST 2: Yeah, 'cause one of the things that bothers me so much about it, 'cause I've had this argument with people a lot on social media, is they'll say, older people have a tendency to be richer." Now, of course, there's a really good New York Times article about why that is, which is that poor people die younger.

GUEST: Mm. 

HOST 2: So by definition, right? But of course, a lot of people who live in poverty are old as well. 

GUEST: Yeah. 

HOST 2: you're railing against this kind of vague cohort- 

GUEST: ... 

HOST 2: where if you eliminate the standard deviation, I'm sure it's not much different. And, part of me's like, come on, are you really gonna act like we don't live in a society that absolutely obsesses over, fetishizes, gives credence to, and loves young people over old people?

look, especially when it's gendered, right? you can't go five seconds without Some Hollywood star becoming irrelevant or some professional person being told to go out to pasture because they're too old. Like our society in many ways hates old people. 

HOST: Mm-hmm. 

HOST 2: And it strikes me as a little daft.

To be quite honest, what I think a lot of it is like fairly moderately wealthy middle class white people who want like a vector of oppression And they latch on to, not being old as, their form of oppression, which strikes me as tedious 'cause they need, an oppressive identity, and it's come on.

really? Yeah. That's maybe a little unfair, but I d- I do think that's a part of it. And it strikes me as something, you It's such a weird concept to live and eat and breathe oxygen in this world, especially in the United States, and not see the sort of systemic contempt our society has for old people.

Even if, again, people who are old disproportionately are in power, disproportionately may have more money 'cause everyone who was poor died off, that strikes me as someone who doesn't really live in the world that I live in because it's everywhere. It's everywhere you see it, There's the lame olds.

They suck. They're irrelevant. They tell old war stories and blah. people just hate old people in general. It's similar to how s- our society hates fat people or hates anyone who isn't deemed attractive. 

GUEST: Yeah, I think that's a 

good point, first of all, that poor people die younger. I think the other factor with both power and wealth, like financial capital and social capital, they both accumulate over time.

That's just how they work. It takes money to make money, and compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. So I think that's true with not just wealth, but power as well. And it's not that age doesn't generate those things themselves. there are no intrinsic benefits to growing older.

What you're going to get is more health conditions to deal with. And then as you point out, socially, it's not perceived positively. 

HOST 2: Mm-hmm. 

GUEST: What age can do for you is if you have been born into wealth or have been lucky enough to acquire it, it can grow that wealth over time. So I think, wealth obviously has intrinsic benefits.

You can buy stuff with it. You can control people with it. Race doesn't have any intrinsic benefits, but you're more likely as a white person, for example, to be born into a positive economic circumstance, and you're more likely, if you're not born into a positive one, you're more likely to be able to get into one.

Age I think, has none of that, but it can magnify those differences. 

HOST: Yeah, one of the things that I keep thinking about as we're talking is the common arguments we hear, and I, I think, as you pointed out, there are some on the right, some on the left, some in the what may nominally be called the center.

I don't know if there's a center, but, center as in ideology, not a middle of the road notion of kind of playing both sides. But, there are these common things, right? So we hear that our political class is too old. They're out of touch. They don't have to live with the consequences of their policies or their votes, right?

So therefore, climate chaos is not so much a concern. So these are, like, common things we hear. But at the same time, this seems to totally ignore That there are plenty of shitty young people, right? There are so many young people who vote for terrible people, who have bad views of the world based on the, communities they grew up in, the narratives that are flowing through our media and our pop culture.

this is rampant. So where do you think this divide happens? are politicians too old at this point, a- across the board, and are not taking urgent issues seriously? Or is this, again, just as you said, misdirection away from what we're really talking about, which winds up being about class, about racism, about wealth inequalities, about ideology as a whole?

GUEST: Well, I think it's a fact that our leadership is disproportionately old, and I think that's the kernel of truth in the propaganda of the idea that we live in a gerontocracy. 

HOST: Mm-hmm. 

GUEST: I agree that it obscures more than it elucidates, for sure, and I think the answers that people are coming up with are the wrong answers.

I see a lot of talk about age limits. It's not just Elon Musk. There was a YouGov poll that found that 58% of people supported an age limit, and the majority was between 60 and 70. So a lot of people are keen on basically disenfranchising older people, and that's not going to solve any of our problems.

I think the only way that we can s- solve these problems is by finding like-minded people who are in all generations and trying to convince them of the best way to go about things. And I think, again, this logic of gerontocracy, it really does... I think it makes it very hard for older people to be open to new ideas.

it buttresses the basis of the criticism in the first place. 

HOST 2: Right. 

GUEST: The idea is that older people are unable to adapt to new ideas, but when you attack people, and especially aspects of their identity that they can't change, they will shut down, and they won't be willing to listen to you.

HOST 2: Mm-hmm. 

GUEST: So I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Next, Section B, THE GERONTOCRACY CASE

HOST: So nobody knows what's happening with Kentucky senator, Mitch McConnell, other than that he's in the hospital. People have been trying to get information about his condition to pretty much no avail. What do you make of the weird shroud of secrecy around the senator's health?

Yeah, clearly if they had evidence that he was doing well and actually participating in l-lengthy conversations about matters of state, I think that they would have released that information. So my, my assumption based on the fact that there's no information that's coming out is that things are not going so well.

And, it's generally not a good sign when you hear nothing about a politician, particularly after we have a report that they've been in cardiac arrest, which is what's happened with McConnell 

HOST: So we're gonna get into this, but Congress is old. They just are. But how common is it for a senator or representative to be literally unable to carry out their duties for health reasons, and everybody's like, "This is fine"?

It's incredibly common, incredibly bipartisan, maybe the one bipartisan thing that we have left. 

Dianne Feinstein was allowed to remain in Congress for a while when it became clear for months, that she was unable to really perform her duties. Eleanor Holmes Norton has, also, receded, as well.

There was a congressman, congresswoman, I believe, who was checked into a memory care facility while also simultaneously serving in Congress. So this is incredibly common. you know the phrase that Congress is the world's best, nursing home I think sadly has, has more and more evidence, with every passing year.

HOST: Is this new? I'm aware that people are live- living longer, and what it means to be 75 is different than when LBJ died at 64. But I don't remember this kind of thing happening, 20 years ago when I first was thinking and following politics. 

There were people like Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd who got close to 100 in the Senate.

But my, my sense is like yours that, it was not quite as common. I think if you plot just the average age of the US, Senate over time, you see that it's gotten older and older, as well. And, the fact that we've made strides in cancer treatment, healthcare, et cetera, means that, the thing that's, that we haven't made as many strides on are dementia, Alzheimer's, these kinds of things.

And we have this kind of perverse system where, politically there are great incentives to remaining in Congress. You get more seniority, you get better, committee placements, and it's great. You get a staff, all of these kinds of things, and incumbency is such a great advantage in terms of your ability to get reelected.

So there's really no incentive to move unless you are voluntarily, going to do that, and a lot of people clearly on both parties, find it very hard to move on. 

HOST: What gets me is that every cycle we hear voters say that they want young and fresh candidates, but in reality, they keep electing the same people long after they start qualifying for AARP membership. Chuck Grassley won re-election back in 2022 at 89 years old.

Why does this keep happening? 

It's a really good question. people like incumbents as much as they say that they don't. it's a bit like, in polling when you ask people, "What do you think about education?" "Oh, it's terrible." "What do you think about your kids' school?" "Eh, it's not that bad." "What do you think about healthcare in America?"

"It's pretty terrible." "What do you think about your health insurance?" "It's not that bad." I, I think that there's something similar that happens to politicians. The abstract people think, "Okay, we wanna vote the bums out. We don't like them." But you think about your local politician, whether it's, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassley, politicians in small states that have established kind of long ties to the community and, and there it goes, he's not so bad.

I'll vote for him." I think something like that is going on here as well. 

HOST: I think we also have, and you wrote about this, older voters are wealthier and they vote more often. So is there kind of this feedback loop where you have politicians who are just serving older generations because they're the ones with money and influence, and the older generations are then re-electing those politicians?

It, they definitely play an outsized role in primary elections, and they play a big role in the campaign donation system. So the median campaign donor is 68, I believe. the median primary voter is quite old as well, in their 60s. and in a lot of ways politics is geared around service to older voters.

That's why, Social Security and Medicare are treated as untouchable entitlements, and I think one of the genius moves that Donald Trump has made, and he made it back in 2016, 2015, was to say that Republicans are no longer going to be the party about reforming those programs. and that was a play for older voters.

It was successful, at the time. and I think that particularly in the early stages of campaigning before the general election, the, early money game, the primary game, really taking a stance against the AARP, taking a stance that's seen as disfavorable to older voters 

definitely pays a political, uh, penalty.

HOST: Is this part of the reason, in your view, that young people are struggling right now, that our government is built to serve older people? 

So it's a complicated question because, America is simultaneously a place that has, problems, economic problems, a lot of economic discontent, but if you look at the living standards, they're very high.

They're higher than they've ever been. If you look at actually individual earnings, for people by generation, you see that Gen Z is earning more than millennials, who earn more than Gen X, who earn more than baby boomers. So why doesn't it feel that way if the economists and, my spreadsheets and these kinds of things show the opposite?

and I think that is, There's an argument that, we're much more generous to elderly Americans than younger people. That's indisputably true. Social Security is a, very generous entitlement. At the very, very maximum, it could be $100,000 per couple. compare that to what we spend for children, to alleviate child poverty, obviously much less.

I think the disconnect that a lot of people feel is due to basically the cost of housing, the, the cost of, things that are regulation constrained. So I think that, people look at the system and they say, "Yeah, I might be making more in real dollar terms, than my predecessors, but also a house is four times as expensive."

And that's where I think the blame game of, what went wrong with previous generations, where it all gets a bit more complicated. 

HOST: We've talked about how, um, basically our, our Congress, our Senate are very old at this point. But you talk about how this oldness Actually may be baked in. Like, you talk about how the Constitution, you think, is a gerontological document, which I just love that phrase. I wanted to say it aloud. Um, can you explain why?

'Cause I don't think people think of it that way necessarily. 

GUEST: Well, the American Revolution, which we just commemorated, was conducted by relatively young guys. I mean, Ben Franklin wasn't that old. Uh, you know, and th- then he was still around in 1787 when the Federalists got together and crafted our Constitution, and I think it's impossible not to, like, see them as, as gerontocrats.

Uh, they, they thought that giving power to the elderly would make everyone better off. They believed that they were embarking on an experiment in having a republic. You know, a, a lot of people could vote, but only a few could have property, and their perquisites needed to be protected. So when there were very few examples in the world, the first thing they did is create a Senate, which is literally named after old men, and for all federal office, they institutionalized age minimums.

HOST: But not maximums. No maximum. And, 

GUEST: uh, famously, in the other council of elders beyond the Senate, the Supreme Court, they said there's life tenure. Uh, and that means you can't force a ju- a federal judge to retire absent, you know, horrendous conduct that's impeachable 

HOST: This sort of goes hand in glove to m- me with the fact that the founders, they didn't love the idea of democracy.

They wanted to have controls on democracy so that it didn't get too, quote-unquote, "out of hand." Is that what they're doing here with this age minimums to enter public service? 

GUEST: I mean, I'd say they didn't want to have democracy at all. There's no word democracy in the Constitution. There's no right to vote in the Constitution.

And we, we know the, the sordid stories, not just of the Senate, but of the Electoral College, uh, which really was about transferring power to an elite caste of notables. And it was absolutely because they thought everyone would be better off if the people didn't rule in the United States. And so surprising that th- that they had these views, but what I was shocked by is just how much faith they put in the elderliness of the ruling class and baked that into the Constitution. 

HOST: You wrestle a lot with voting and, um, I think this is probably one of your most controversial takes, where you talk about whether votes should be weighted differently based on somebody's age. Like, you toy, um, with all sorts of ideas that would give certain people more power. Um, I think this would be so hard to do.

Um- 

GUEST: Well, we've done it because, I mean, the voter in Montana is, has a much weightier vote than I do. So- Right ... like- But 

HOST: it's in- We've done ... it's, it feels invisible, I think, to most voters. I don't think we're saying it out loud as much. You and I are. 

GUEST: I think you're totally right. Well, so let me just concede that ma- many things I propose, because I'm a spitballer, are unlikely.

But the response to a problem can't just be that it's insoluble. So let me just get, like, very clear that I offer many modest solutions, much more modest ones when it comes to voting, things like stopping how we punish young people for mobility through the kinds of registration requirements that we have, which systematically benefit older voters.

Uh, institutionalizing mandatory voting and/or providing a holiday for voting because older people either have retired or have power in their workplaces to leave to vote, which younger people do not. One more example of systematic discrimination. 

HOST: Yeah, one idea I've heard, and I'm curious how you feel about it, is like, for instance, I think a lot of people who are interested in democracy talk about primaries, how primaries r- you know, warp voting, and if you just had a primary day- Yes

a national primary day- 

GUEST: Yes ... 

HOST: it would make things so much easier, and I think it would solve some of the problems you're talking about, which is like the, everyone would know when it is, and so younger people would come. It wouldn't be confusing, all sorts of things. There really are fixes like this that exist that I just think we're not talking about 

GUEST: I think most people actually would be open to having fewer elections because our best political scientist shows that America has way, way more.

And the predictable effect of that is that younger people will show up once, but not eight times. And when you look at the eighth election, the median voter is over 60 or 70. And so it's really the rules which be-because of these like effects need to be changed. Now it's true, I flirt with this more edgy idea and say, "Well, wait, w- I'm for equality, but equality of what?

And if I have 80 years left to live and someone else has 10 Why should equality mean we get the same vote where the elderly voter gets to dictate a future I will see and he will not? 

HOST: Yeah, it's interesting because, um, what you're articulating is really-- It's a bigger idea that the project we're doing in government is building towards this future, um, where right now we're in this, this place where we're building towards the past, right?

We're making America great again. What you're articulating is really that we need to be building towards something, something we probably won't see, and I think that's actually a beautiful way to think of the project of government. It's just we're in such a retro place right now that it feels impossible.

And, um, yeah, the one thing I, I struggled with in your writing is that I feel like we have an entire cultural system built up around people growing up, people, you know, from birth to age eighteen going through a K through twelve system. You know, we ha-- It's about civic engagement. Here's what you're about to do.

You're gonna get a job. You're gonna do a thing. We have no step-down system. We have, you retire, you fall off a cliff. Maybe you have money, maybe you don't. Things get bad because you get sick. It just-- it-- There's nothing akin to that, and I think that's a real problem because if you're asking people to really reckon with the fact that they're older and they need to kinda give some of their stuff up, they have to also feel safe, and safety comes from those cultural systems that just don't exist right now.

Your piece looks at the US as somewhat of a gerontocracy. Is that ... W- what does that mean for the long term for the US? Do we have historical examples of other, developed nations that became gerontocracies?

Because we're not alone. a lot of developed democracies are getting older and older. 

So there, there are a lot of contemporary similarities. Europe has very similar, dynamics as we do where we had a, a, a baby boom, and now the baby boom is getting older, and we have pension systems that were also

So you know, a lot of things happened in the last 100 years, right? People started living longer. They started having fewer kids. We set up these welfare states. great. And now we are at a point where fertility's low, people are living longer, they- health costs are high, and, there are demands made by voters to keep these systems, uh, generous and arguably more generous than they have been before.

And so what we see in America is replicated in the UK. In the UK they have something called the triple lock, which, is an amount that the, annual benefits, for elderly, uh, residents are increased. And basically it is the highest of inflation or wages or a number. And so basically it's always mechanically going to be higher than, than inflation.

and France has a similar kind of debate about, every time there's an attempt to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, there are a lot of protests. And one thing that's also happening that's causing, uh, these commitments to be made, these commitments that are consuming a greater share of GDP that, if you extrapolate and look at the actuarial tables for 10 years from now, there's no mathematical way that these, this is possible to, to continue to give.

O- one reason that it, that governments aren't really changing anything right now is that, older voters are a bigger share of the electorate, just mechanically, right? And the cost of going against, uh, these programs, is too high for any politician to play. That's true in America with the change that Trump made to the Republican Party.

It's true in the UK, right? So Nigel Farage might be willing to be iconoclastic about so many things. He's not willing to touch the triple lock. Andy Burnham, the incoming prime minister, we assume is not gonna touch the triple lock. No one wants to touch it, because it's just a loser. And that dynamic, that political dynamic is replicated in basically every country that's going through this right now.

HOST: So to that point, if older people hold the most power and money, and they're holding onto that power and money, and they're using that power and money to keep each other in power, and no one wants to go against them, how do we change this? Because, to your point, it's ... It can't last, and it doesn't feel good for the future of the country 

the way of all things is that there will be a transition at, at some point, right?

So there will be a, a transition of power, to, to younger people in, in time. I don't, like the heir to Donald Trump, right? Is going to be someone like JD Vance. and there will be a transition in terms of wealth going on to, to people. So there's a kind of argument of just wait for it to happen.

It'll happen. there are others who have more radical ideas, ideas about l- literally, reducing the weight of the elderly vote, mechanically increasing the weight of the young vote. And I, I It's provocative, but I, I don't subscribe, to that idea. But, there are more neutral grounds that are, I think more palatable.

But one thing is that the rise of the elderly as a share of the population has also corresponded with an increase in their share of the wealth of this country, right? To an astonishing degree, like more and more dollars are held by older people. and if you t- if you just tax income at higher rates, you will reduce that inequality, in, in wealth terms.

Political inequality I think is much harder to deal with, right? Because there's one person, one vote. you can imagine taxation scheme that actually, equalizes the playing field. And then I think there are also, if the root of discontent is people, young people's inability to access housing, and other, constraints.

There are things you can do to increase, the accessibility of housing that I think, don't require a kind of generational warfare settlement in order to get to. but would be, beneficial to the young and also for the elderly 

HOST: your book is deeply researched, and I was really shocked by the imbalance of how many, quote, old people are in the United States overall, as, as a percentage of the overall population.

But then, of course, in politics, that's even more intense. So I wanna jump to what I consider the most radical proposal, which is to abolish the Senate. You argue that the Senate is a gerontocratic chokehold on the democratic process. So I think this is not maybe obvious to most people. How does the Senate specifically function as an instrument of gerontocracy, and how would we go about abolishing it? 

GUEST: Great question. Just as background, most of humanity has lived under gerontocracy, and it used to be quite open. Like most people around the world for most time have had councils of elders rule them And of course, there were kings, and there could be even young kings. But before that, and alongside monarchy, there were systems of gerontocracy.

And when our founders met in 1787 to draft the Constitution, they decided to reboot gerontocracy in various ways. One way was through saying in the Constitution that you had to be a certain age to serve for federal office, and that excluded a gargantuan percentage of the people alive in 1787. the 35-year-old age minimum for president excluded upwards of 70%.

But then they did something else, which was very literally to create an American council of elders. And of course, it's called the Senate, which is named after old men. So we have a branch of government that's named after old people, and that was intentional. There were very few senates in the world at the time, like one or two, and now there are a lot on the American model because the American founders wanted to get older people in office on principle.

Now, the Senate has played a pretty baleful role in the couple centuries since, and the astonishing thing is that it seems impossible to abolish on paper, because Article V of the Constitution, which talks about how it can be amended, actually says you can't get rid of the Senate. It's like the one thing you can't change about American democracy, 

gerontocracy is hardwired into our culture, but I think it can change. And one thing we could do is just say, all the cool stuff the Senate gets to do, 'cause it has special powers, is just gonna be reassigned, and we're not gonna abolish the thing." Maybe we keep the old guys around, old women, too, in our day, for a kinda consultative role.

But like all the other ways of confronting gerontocracy, we would be saying we shouldn't let age be correlated with power anymore. Maybe if you think older people are wise or older people's bodies, like the Senate, are wise, they can consult, they can give advice, but they can't tell us what to do. And so we could kinda make an end run around that provision in the Constitution, and it would be pretty easy if there were political will.

HOST: Yeah, that's always the question, political will. sticking with politicians serving- Yeah ... you also discuss campaign finance reform as a solution for getting younger people to serve in office. And again, I think this is not maybe super obvious in a way that age limits are. So what's like the 60-second crash course on why money in politics specifically advantages older Americans?

GUEST: as everyone knows, we have a pretty private way of funding elections, and that's so out of step with the global democracy. So on a podcast about saving democracy, I think the biggest thing we have to do is move to public funding, which means the government organizes the funding of elections on fair terms.

Having a privatized system, especially in the age of Citizens United, means that you are out looking for funders if you wanna run, and that privileges older people because as we can discuss more later, it's astonishing how disproportionate the control of wealth is by older Americans compared to everyone else.

And so it's natural that then those who are funding campaigns are gonna be relatively older, and the data is pretty stunning. In some elections, the donors on average are in their 60s or even 70s, and some of the most famous donors, like Donald Trump's, one of his lead donors named Timothy Mellon, was up there.

So I think there's an easy fix for that one if we decided to do something about campaign finance, about Citizens United, about the equation of money and speech, and above all, about our big mistake in this country, which was to let private individuals be the funders of elections. 

HOST: notably, New York City has a new young mayor- True

in large part because there is public matching dollars- Absolutely ... eight to one in New York, and I think a lot of people don't know that. It made it possible for a young person to run. 

GUEST: Absolutely, and it is possible 'cause we have some kinda democracy for ordinary people, small donors, to circumvent our system, and that was famously the case even in producing a then not as old candidacy of Bernie Sanders in 2016.

But now he's, pushing it, but we know we can publicly fund election through, in a sense, a huge number of private donors that's closer to something that's more democratic. But it's rare, and most elections end up being controlled by older people and that's why I'm-- my main message is actually, let's get beyond politicians because it may not matter how much the politicians are if they're serving old money 

HOST: Is gerontocracy, like everything else under neoliberalism, a class project in that only senior of wealth benefit from gerontocracy in America? 

GUEST: I think so. now, you could have, poor old men who win elections and stay in the House, so it's not gonna be perfect. But I think the basic answer to your question, which is a really important one, is that we can't talk about class in America except by recognizing that it's, it intersects with age along with gender and race.

and so I document very, I think, grimly in the book just how unfair it now is, to have a class system in the United States that's age inflected. and of course, that has effects on older people too because if you're old and rich, you live longer than if you're old and poor. and so what I think we need to do is not, choose between the age factor and the class f- factor, but say there's no choice, and we need to figure out how age and class, go together in so many instances.

One reason is that there are a lot of formal perquisites that older people get, especially protecting their housing, especially from tax. and so that means that they've become very asset rich in the tens of millions. and if we care about oligarchy, we have to see just how far it's what I call oldigarchy in the book.

And the receipts are all there, and the info is really staggering, I think, when we just see not just how much more money, in all of its forms that older people have, acquired, but that it's gotten far worse in a neoliberal era. So the period since the 1970s i- is the one in which we've had this aging of the American population, and that's no accident.

HOST: So I've had guest after guest on this show, and going back 20, 30 years now, who, let's say it's a climate change activist who's in their 20s. I ask them, "Do you hold your parents responsible in any way for, the state of the world that we're in?" Whatever the crisis that we're facing.

And person after person have told me, "No, I don't hold my parents accountable." Why don't we hold the generation or generations before us accountable? Why must they be, for example, the greatest generation when clearly they were not? 

GUEST: the greatest generation really is associated thanks to Tom Brokaw's book of that name with those who fought World War II, and, they're all dead basically.

now boomers are dying off in great numbers, but many are still around. and I think, what I wanna avoid doing is scapegoating individuals or groups or generations because I think the boomers, in a sense, got lucky. they were around at the right time, first of all, to come into a, a pretty good life and path forward early in their lives, and then to stay around thanks to life extension, in part because, of the abolition of mandatory retirement, in part because of big real estate bubbles that they enjoyed and that have made them often very wealthy.

and yet, just like I'd say, it's no individual white person's fault that there's white supremacy, yet we should still oppose it, I wanna say the same thing about gerontocracy. The problem isn't old people, it's gerontocracy, which is a malignant structure or system. And a blame game is not gonna help us all face it.

And especially since there are fewer younger people together, for, for, there are fewer younger people, compare-- especially compared to the boomer generation. I think we can't imagine a politics of reform that isn't based on intergenerational solidarity, in part 'cause as we discussed, gerontocracy hurts, many old people as well.

And so what I imagine is not like blaming or scapegoating a generation, more saying, "This is unfair. This is something everyone should wanna change," and figure out how, the, the progressives can, seek that majority that they will need if they wanna face populism and Donald Trump and, the next, decade or two.

HOST: You write that the most common age of donors in recent elections can run as high as seventy. Finally, older Americans are backed by the best-funded advocacy group in world history, the AARP, and enjoy the most governmental benefits by a vast degree. The government is bought and paid for by those who are up in years and is organized for their sake.

Does the AARP not only lobby, when you watch the commercials, it's about promoting elder care, but, also, undermining benefits for younger generations? Are the pro-- are they pro-elderly and view social funding as a zero-sum game? 

GUEST: I think it's a cause group and it's just st-staggering how gargantuan it is in numbers and money.

Lobbying is a small part of what it does. but it's nonetheless incredibly effective. And, it's-- it has pushed through, I think, noxious reform like the abolition of mandatory retirement to-- in which it was a central player. But I think its main function is actually stabilizing the way things are, and that means the form of elder benefits we have.

It's not been very good on the way the welfare state is racialized and gendered. It's not tried to, push through a reform for the sake of long-term care, which I mentioned is excluded from Medicare. Part of the issue is that it became so big that the AARP is always divided against itself because, it has neoliberals and socialists in it.

and, the-- it, it became almost an agent of s- of stasis. and it is-- it, it needs to be understood mainly because of the electoral threat that the older voter poses to politicians. I think politicians live in fear of doing anything that would be campaigned against, by the organization.

and the, the effect is that, in a sense, the, the AARP doesn't have to do a lot because it's so fearful, in making what one scholar called the electoral bluff, that it stands for the voting power of older people, which as I document is immense. in, in one primary in New Mexico in 2024, the median age of the voters was 72.

And so the elder skew of our hashtag democracy is scandalous, and it in a sense plays into The AARP's power. Where I'm concerned is that there's no comparable organization for people under 55. And l- like we, we stigmatize youthful forms of politics like protests and call for law and order, and yet there's this gargantuan, cause group for older people that, has a good reputation.

And so I'm, I really don't think it's the responsibility of AARP to save America, but it's our responsibility to make sure that everyone's fairly represented and everyone gets advocates for their interests. 

HOST: The notion of gerontocracy, that is a society ruled by the elderly, is in many ways baked into human ideas of leadership, of wisdom and experience, and of course, in our politics, has been there for millennia.

Across human society, elders have long held prominent leadership roles in families, communities, kingly courts, and across countries. The very first book of Plato's Republic features the philosopher Socrates noting how crucial the wisdom of the aged is, saying, quote, "They have gone before us along a road which we must all travel in our turn."

End quote. 

The Romans named their most prestigious seat of small R republican government senatus. The word senatus, and in turn our own word senate, is derived from the Latin word senex, meaning an old man, and thereby conferring those ideas of gravitas, experience, wisdom. The Senate, by definition, is an assembly of old men.

Now, the US Senate and the rest of our federal political class largely bears this out. The median age of members of Congress has increased over the past four decades. Between 1980 and 1982, the average age was 47 years old. It's now over 64, with more than a quarter of sitting senators 70 years or older.

Half of all senators are over 65. The current Congress, the 117th, is the oldest on average of any Congress in the past two decades. The average age of members of the House of Representatives is slightly lower at 58 years old. But Joe Biden is the second consecutive oldest president ever elected. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn are both 82.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is 83. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is 81, a decade older than Senate Majority Leader, that young whippersnapper, Chuck Schumer. Now, Dianne Feinstein turned 89 in June. Chuck Grassley turns 89 this September. Plus, we all know older people vote more consistently than younger people.

In 2023, more Americans will turn 65 than ever before. Worldwide, the number of people 80 years or older is expected to triple by 2050 to reach 426 million. But to bring it back to the United States, according to Pew, while people over 50 make up 34% of the US population, they represent 52% of the electorate.

In mayoral elections, the median voter age is 57, despite the median age of the American population being only 38. 

HOST 2: So it's clear that both the average voter and, of course, the average representative in our democracy is much, much older than the mean of our society. That is objectively true. But of course, although it has gotten more acute of late, it is not a new critique.

It goes back many decades. Some of the earlier stirrings of warnings about an aging government began in the 1940s. Already here, you can see age was used as a proxy for politics. The Morning Herald in Pennsylvania wrote, this is from November of 1944, quote, "George Gurevitch, formerly of the University of Strasbourg, points out in detail the role of gerontocracy in the collapse of France.

France had never known the trust in young and new men characteristics of the United States. Dr. Gurevich further points out the dangers of gerontocracy, government by older men, the abyss which resulted in the proliferation of youth groups, young radicals, young socialists, young rightists, et cetera, alike only in their revolt against the faith of gerontocrats, all susceptible to the propaganda of fascist or communist.

Are the champions of the fourth term fully aware of the sinister menace of gerontocracy in this country?" 

HOST: Now, Joe Biden, who's the subject of much gerontocracy discourse that we'll be talking about later in the episode, used age critiques as a bludgeon when he was younger against political opponent Senator J. Caleb Boggs back in 1972.

As Nathan V. Laurenz noted for The Nation in a July 2022 article, quote, "Biden argued that Boggs had lost that twinkle in his eyes and was just not a fighter You can swap the names Boggs and Biden, and these attacks from 1972 would be indistinguishable from those used in 2022. Of course, such comments about age are far from a one-way street.

Biden, who was 29 when first elected senator, faced criticism for his youthfulness and was derisively referred to as a young kid by Delaware Governor Russell Peterson, end quote. 

HOST 2: Use of the term gerontocracy also accelerated in the middle of the 20th century, partially as code for governments we don't like.

At the height of the Cold War and its waning years, the word often appeared in coverage of China and the Soviet Union to portray their governments as bloated, excessively powerful, and ineffective. In this excerpt from 1976, a syndicated piece written on the death of Zhou Enlai, the former Premier of the People's Republic of China, who died at 78 while holding public office.

For some context, Mao Zedong was alive at the time, holding office until his death that same year at 82. The piece would use the politicians' ages, paying no attention to their policies or those policies' potential popularity, writing, quote, "This tendency towards gerontocracy is nothing new in China, when rulers usually have hung on till their deaths.

It has been fostered perhaps by the Chinese tradition of respect for the aged and certain institutional factors, such as a need to accommodate vast networks of personal ties, which are the cement of political power in China." The Los Angeles Times in 1983 wrote an article on, quote, "Kremlin's gerontocracy may be good for the West."

The San Francisco Examiner in 1992, "China talks economic reform. The Chinese gerontocracy is paying lip service again to free markets, but still not to political freedom." That same year in 1992, the media conversely began to characterize the newly elected fresh-faced Bill Clinton as a kind of counter to United States' own graying, out-of-touch governance.

The Washington Post wrote in November of 1992 after the election, quote, "Clinton has Europe thinking change." The piece presents Clinton's third way centrism, something that for decades had been essential to US Democratic Party politics regardless of the age of leaders, as refreshing deviation from politics as usual, writing, quote, this is the Washington Post, quote, "The generational change that Clinton represents goes beyond the biological dimensions," said Serge July, editor of the French daily Liberation.

He believes Clinton's biggest impact on European politics will be to accelerate the shedding of ideologies, to blur distinctions between left and right, as befits a man, quote, "who can so easily blend his support for feminism with support for the death penalty." Wow. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Noted feminist, Bill Clinton.

So here we see this idea that in the absence of meaningful ideological distinction, in the absence of someone who's fighting the rich or fighting for the disenfranchised, we have this very 1990s PR Pepsi marketing idea that Clinton is young. 

HOST: Mm-hmm. 

HOST 2: And they did this very, very more successfully even soon after with Tony Blair, that Tony Blair was young, and he was fresh, and the New Labor Party- Yeah, but Tony Blair didn't, 

HOST: play the saxophone on Arsenio.

HOST 2: Yeah, and they were gonna get rid of all the stodgy old Labor v- guard, and they were gonna embrace the free market as Clinton did. And so here you have the first real kinda effort to use age discourse and anti-gerontocracy discourse To flatten the ideology at work and to sell or make sexy and cool something which was basically a very similar platform to the one that Dukakis ran on in 1988, except for, of course, the, the death penalty being one of the major differences for obvious racist reasons.

But again, Dukakis ran as a neoliberal. He was in the new Democratic coalition. He was a centrist, but he was seen as being older or stodgy, and this is again, where you get this, how do we take something that is... 

has no discernible ideological positioning within the framework of the left, and is selling you a lot of, again, Social Security privatization, deficit reduction, a lot of right-wing ideas, 100,000 new police officers, whatever, what have you.

How do we make it cool to the kids- ... and for media? Well, he's young, and it's oh, young is good and old is lame, and old sucks, and young's good, right? And so let's just- 

HOST: Yeah, Clinton was with it, man. So this use of young politician versus the gerontocracy, we would see a lot more often starting in the 2010s.

In April of the year 2010, syndicated Washington Post columnist George Will cautioned that the, quote, "welfare state" would encourage what else, Adam? A, quote-unquote, "gerontocracy." Apparently because it unacceptably, of course for Will, makes life relatively comfortable for senior citizens, while singing the praises of a young Republican senatorial candidate named Marco Rubio.

Here's what Will wrote in April of 2010 in The Post. Quote, "Asked how the nation might address the projected $17.5 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities, Rubio said we should consider two changes for people 10 or more years from retirement. One would raise the retirement age. The other would alter the calculation of benefits.

Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system's unfunded liabilities." End quote. Will would go on in this article to state this, quote, "The 37-year-old Rubio's responsible answer to a serious question gives the nation a glimpse of a rarity, a brave approach to the welfare state's inevitable politics of gerontocracy."

End quote. 

HOST 2: So the old people who retire on Social Security are gonna live high on the hog- ... and create a gerontocracy unless we raise- 

HOST: And for legislating to allow people to live better lives in retirement, what are we doing? What kind of freedom is that? 

And Finally, Section C, HOW CONGRESS ACTUALLY WORKS

HOST: that allows us then to start getting into obviously the book, and I think the key place to start is with the term back channel policymaking. So can you tell us what you mean by this, and maybe walk us through an example so we have an idea of what this is in practice?

GUEST: Sure. So first, it's important to set the stage with a fact that I think is surprising to many people, maybe even some congressional scholars, and that is that 

a majority of US law is now made by federal agencies rather than by congressional statute. some scholars even say agencies is making up to, 90% of US law.

so how is that possible? So Congress over time has increasingly delegated policymaking authority to agencies for a number of reasons. One big one is that agencies often have more expertise and capacity than Congress. And actually, a lot has been said recently about the decline in Congress's capacity to fulfill its Article I res- responsibility.

So there's been, articles and books even written about this decline in congressional capacity in terms of a shortage of staff and high turnover rate among staff, the increase in demand on members of Congress and their staff from constituents and, due to an increase in policy complexity. members of Congress have also been raising these concerns themselves about the capacity issues in Congress.

So the House's Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress wrote about, these capacity issues, in their report, so things having to do with, retention issues of quality staffers. and very recently, there's actually been a rash of retirements in Congress, my former boss included. I think there's been maybe 30 to 40, retirement announcements even within the last couple of months, and several of the retiring members have complained about the difficulty of getting anything done in Congress.

They've been talking more about gridlock related to partisanship and polarization, but whether it's capacity issues or ideological gridlock, there is a clear sense that lawmakers are struggling to advance their policy priorities in Congress. the US House came to a literal standstill for three weeks in October after Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the speakership.

so Congress as an institution has struggled with gridlock, but individual rank-and-file legislators have really felt the brunt of it. there's actually this great scholar, this, Professor James Curry, so he's a professor at University of Utah, has a fantastic book called Legislating in the Dark that talks about the centralization of power under leadership and how rank-and-file legislators are often shut out of influencing policy.

so this brings us to my argument, and that is that these frustrated members of Congress are turning to the federal bureaucracy, and the federal bureaucracy, as I said, now makes the majority of law, to accomplish policy objectives that they would have a hard time accomplishing through the legislative process and I use this term backchannel policymaking to refer to the strategy members of Congress use in- to influence policy outside of the legislative process.

Specifically, members of Congress are using their direct interactions with agencies. So like for instance, when they call up an agency head on the phone or send an email, to urge or in some cases even pressure agencies to take action on a policy objective And, agencies, for their part, have an incentive to try to do what the member of Congress wants because Congress controls the agencies' budgets, and they can also retaliate in other ways, like demanding oversight or holding up nominees in the Senate if the agency doesn't do what the member of Congress requests.

and agencies actually have several tools at their disposal to try to assist a, with the lawmakers' policy goals. So there's what's known as rulemaking, which is a formal process that agencies use to make policy. there's also informal and also, less visible ways that agencies can make policy. these informal ways include what's called guidance or guidance documents.

Agencies can also use prosecutorial discretion. agencies can delay the implementation of a law if opponents of the law in Congress continue to try to fight its implementation. so for instance, the REAL ID Act was passed in 2005. and the REAL ID Act, it did a number of things, but a major one was that it banned people from boarding commercial airlines using just their driver's license, unless the driver's license was REAL ID compliant.

so the REAL ID Act, I should say, it could not have passed on its own. It could not have passed as a standalone bill. It didn't have enough support in Congress to pass on its own. But it was stuck into a tsunami relief bill that did pass, and there was substantial opposition to REAL ID even from powerful members of Congress who would have otherwise had a lot of influence over the legislation, like senior members of the Homeland Security Committee, for example.

but because of the procedure leadership used, those members didn't have as much influence as they otherwise would. So leadership essentially steamrolled it through. but after REAL ID became law, I can see in the records that I used in my book that several prominent members of Congress, like for instance, Senator Joe Lieberman, who was chair of the Homeland Security Committee, contacted the Secretary of Homeland Security and asked her, basically not to implement REAL ID or to delay implementation.

Um, and to this day, REAL ID has still had not been fully implemented. People can still board commercial airlines with their driver's license, even if it's not REAL ID compliant. to give you another example, so this was an example that I used in the opening of, the book. Senator Amy Klobuchar, representative or senator representing Minnesota, wanted to try to get the gray wolf removed from the endangered species list Rather than introduce legislation, though, she first contacted the Fish and Wildlife Service to urge the agency to delist the wolf using administrative procedures, and that's what the Fish and Wildlife Service did.

it delisted the gray wolf. And we actually have court documents, so these are available because the Humane Society later sued the Fish and Wildlife Service over the delisting. and in these court documents, they reference emails between the agency personnel, so internal agency emails between agency personnel debating whether to delist the wolf, and they even talk about the commitment that was made to Senator Klobuchar as a motivation for moving forward with the delisting.

another prominent example, though most people, probably don't know the whole story, is the DREAM Act. So the DREAM Act was legislation that was supposed to protect childhood arrivals to the US. but it never had enough support to pass Congress and never became law. There was, as some folks might know, there was an executive order issued by President Obama, commonly known as DACA, but what a lot of people don't know is that even before DACA, even before the executive order, the Department of Homeland Security had guidance or policies to protect childhood arrivals.

And I can see from my data, from the records that I use in my book, that members of Congress were contacting the Department of Homeland Security even while the DREAM Act was struggling to pass Congress. they were asking the agency, asking the secretary to protect childhood arrivals. So it's another example of members of Congress going to agencies with their policy objectives when those objectives are failing within the, the legislative process.

I use the term back channel because while members of Congress can make their communications with agencies public if they choose to, the interactions between members of Congress and agencies are actually not easily accessible the same way their voting records or bill sponsorship are. So members of Congress can engage, in this policy-making strategy largely outside of the public eye.

now, most of the time, this might not be that big of a deal or that major of a concern if members of Congress are advocating for their constituencies the same way they would on the House or Senate floor. But if members of Congress are representing interests, perhaps business organizations, for example, that they don't want the public to know about, then it becomes more concerning 

HOST: I certainly was, and here is the first thing that nobody in the 1780s would have expected, the notion of career politicians.

Here again is Madison scholar Jack Rakove. 

CLIP: Okay, now here's Madison's position, though. If you're a political scientist today, you would say the, the independent variable that drives political behavior today i- is the desire to be reelected Right? That, we assume that politics has been professionalized.

That once you're elected to Congress, getting reelected is your dominant personal am- ambition. they, they just want to stay on forever. We actually lived in an era when holding office was thought really to be avocational in nature. It wasn't your profession. It wasn't your career.

You could be a planter, you could be a merchant, you could be a lawyer, and so on. 

HOST 2: All right. So you're a professional first and a politician second. 

HOST: Yeah, and this is good, 'cause you'd come to Congress with a unique expertise. You were a wheat farmer, you sold felt hats, you made boats, whatever. 

HOST 2: And often, you were a lawyer.

HOST: Yes. That was and is true, Hannah. About 40% of members of Congress right now have a law degree. But do you know the number one prior occupation for somebody who is sitting in the House of Representatives? 

HOST 2: Like right now. 

HOST: Right now. 

HOST 2: I'm gonna guess, given that 40% of them have law degrees, lawyer. 

HOST: Something beats it out, something they did since they were a lawyer and before they came to the House of Representatives, and that is they worked in politics already.

And I gotta add, this is really new. 

CLIP: The mean term of service in the House of Representatives from 1789 down to about 1900, plus or minus, but 1900 is the turning point, was three years. Meaning, if you do the arithmetic, the vast majority of members served one or two terms. And then very few senators.

a few did, but very few senators served two terms until the late 19th century. 

HOST: And look, it's understandable that our first few Congresses in the 1800s were absent career politicians, 'cause we were a fresh, new country. But in 1979, a very lucky year for me, only 29 members of the House were former politicians.

But in 2019, 171. 

HOST 2: Huh. Is there a repercussion for that? 

HOST: I am not going to put words in Jack's mouth, but to me, it seems like the career politician is something that could lead to the much bigger problem. So Hannah, what skills would you say somebody who has worked in politics for a long time has?

HOST 2: I would say foremost they are politic. They know how to negotiate, they understand the system ostensibly, and how to maneuver it to benefit their constituents ostensibly or themselves. and frankly, I think a lot of them are pretty good at getting reelected. 

HOST: Yeah. And that last one, Hannah, that leads to Jack's primary concern.

CLIP: and so Nick, I'm doing a lot of work on constitutional failure. So this ... And from a Madisonian perspective, so I've been giving a lot of thought to this, but Madison's standard assumption, this is Federalist 51, you may or may not know this text, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of man must be connected to the constitutional rights of the place."

And so the very famous passage from the Federalists, almost as famous as the stuff from Federalist 10. Party loyalty is much stronger than, strict loyalty to one's institution 

HOST 2: Okay, so this is it, and have talked about this on the show before. Partisanship, and that includes loyalty to the party, to party leadership, resulting in Congress not necessarily acting in the best interests of their constituents, of the people 

HOST: Yes, and utter devotion to your party has swung back and forth between the two parties over the centuries, but there is a marked rise in partisanship, full stop, party over everything else, in the 1990s, and it hasn't gone down.

CLIP: This morning, through a unique test of partisanship, we are finding out that Democrats and Republicans are not just deeply divided on the facts, they may be actually seeing two completely different worlds. Unrest. Violence. What is causing the polarization of 

COMMERCIAL: the United States of America? 

CLIP: it's more profound for the Republicans than it is for the Democrats because 

if you're a Republican politician, your principal fear in life is the fear of being primaried And particularly if you cross Trump, it doesn't work in every case, but it has worked in a number of cases.

I'm gonna be making an 

endorsement today, 

in Texas. President Trump's tease early this morning turned into a truth heard 'round Texas. Trump picking Paxton over Cornyn, calling the Texas attorney general a true MAGA warrior, while ripping the incumbent senator for failing to endorse him fast enough. 

In another age before, before we lived in, an era of hyper-partisanship, you'd find legislators who worked together would, would learn how to collaborate.

If you want great examples of this, just think about the passage of the s- of the Voting Rights Act, of the Civil Rights Act of '64 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and those were collaborative efforts. 

HOST 2: one way to eradicate partisanship is to get rid of parties entirely. We have had so many listener emails over the years asking, "Why don't we or can't we get rid of the two-party system?"

And yes, there are a bunch of democracies in the world that have multi-party systems, but the way our elections are set up, there seems to be no way to stop being a two-party system. 

HOST: That's absolutely right, and I asked Jack, "Do you think there are any remedies to all of this?" And he said, "Right now, we are having a reckoning with gerrymandering in particular, states drawing legislative districts to ensure one party wins over the other, and that creates voter apathy, and that creates a lack of faith in Congress."

Anyways, here is one of Jack's potential solutions. 

CLIP: is one way to solve the gerrymandering probably, problem is let's get rid of districts. And, I, we have to write more about this. there's a big part of this if you have access to Max Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, 1787.

It's available online. Go to volume two, page f- 240, 241, and read Madison's long speech. It's a seminal speech because it illustrates two things. One is there's no obvious idea Of exactly how should you elect the House of Representatives? to figure ... remember, the decision about how you do that is left under the Elections Clause, Article I, Section 4, not Section 8, but Section 4, is left to the states, state legislatures to resolve.

Madison did not trust the state legislatures to do anything, right? Always, he was deeply distrustful of the state legislatures. But then also you might decide that there is one optimal way to elect representatives. So if you want to solve the gerrymandering problem, you say, "Okay, constitu- congressmen representing their constituents, it's valuable."

But, a whole delegation can set up mechanisms to do that. you could ... they could create staffs which res- with responsive individuals and, from, coming from different communities. You could allocate telephone calls on that basis or whatever, and you could get rid of the gerrymandering problem 'cause you're not gonna have districts 

HOST: there's the kind of obvious question of why, right?

Congressional members- ... wouldn't do this if it wasn't useful to them in some sense. So why is going through this back channel, is using the bureaucracy so mu-mu- a much more promising venue, a much more ... Like, why are they doing it? 

GUEST: Yeah. So it's important to point out that, what makes a strategy effective is the threat of retaliation.

So agencies are very risk-averse, and they want to avoid angering legislators who could retaliate if the agency is unresponsive. and as I talk about in the book, members of Congress have several ways they can make life very difficult for an agency. so agencies generally wanna keep members of Congress happy in order to maintain support in Congress for their budgets and their priorities.

but members of Congress can do a lot of different things. they can drag agency officials in front of committee hearings or demand oversight or investigations. Senators can hold up nominees, so how Senator Tommy Tuberville has been holding up the Department of Defense nominees recently over the department's abortion policy.

and agencies don't always have, they don't always have the ability to give members of Congress what they want, especially when they're receiving, conflicting policy requests from within Congress. But they want to avoid, angering legislators, especially ones who have the most kind of capacity and motivation, or drive to make life difficult for the agency.

but whether and when the bureaucracy is going to be a promising venue depends on a number of things, like who the legislator is. Are they, a member of the minority, for instance? Do they share a party affiliation with the White House? it can also depend on what their policy objective is and how contentious it is.

If the president or other powerful lawmakers disagree with the objective, that's gonna make it more difficult. it can depend on the agency and how either politicized the agency is or how insulated it is from political pressure, what the agency's mission is. and it depends on also what's going on in Congress.

If Congress is unable to pass anything, like when the House was without a speaker, for instance, it's pretty clear that the bureaucracy is going to be a more promising venue. 

HOST: Mm-hmm. So that in a lot of ways, I think to me at least, explained the scale of this, given how many different reasons this might be worthwhile for policy makers to do.

Um, but obviously they're not doing this for everything. So there's some sort of calculation going on here about, okay, I'm a lawmaker, I have multiple options available to me, which one am I going to use? Can you walk us through some of those trade-offs and f- I guess formulas, calculations in some way that lawmakers are using to determine when to choose this back channel route?

GUEST: Sure. And I should be clear that agencies can't, can't guarantee outcomes, right? And the courts can overturn agency action more easily than, than legislation. although so far courts have not been using arguments about these interactions between members of Congress and agencies as justifications, for overturning agency action.

Instead, they've actually been, saying that this is a part of a member's, job to be advocating on behalf of their constituency. but, in terms of like who uses this, so I find that nearly all members of Congress engage in backchannel policymaking to some extent. in my data, which covers the time period from 2005 to 2012, nearly every single member of Congress in my dataset contacted one of the departments in my dataset at least once to make a policy request during a Congress.

And my dataset that I use for my quantitative analysis is limited to, to select departments. So if we assume that members of Congress are contacting even just the other dozen departments at levels similar to what I'm finding, that suggests that they are engaging with departments regularly, and that's consistent with what congressional staffers have told me.

So one legislative director who had spent a decade on Capitol Hill said his office contacted agencies about policy every, every week, if not every day. So to be clear, nearly all members of Congress engage in this behavior to some degree. but I do find substantial variation across lawmakers. So while some might only contact a department a couple of times about policy, during the year, other legislators are contacting a single department or agency, dozens of times or even more.

So then what explains this variation? So I set out on this research arguing that members of Congress turn to the bureaucracy as a substitute for legislative action as a way of evading the obstacles that they face in the legislative process. So one possibility is that the members of Congress who face the most obstacles in the legislative process would have the greatest incentive to pursue agency action.

So this would mean that we might observe like the low-ranking freshman legislator who's not on the committee with jurisdiction over the agency seeking out agency policymaking as an alternative to legislative options, more so than like the senior committee chair who has more influence over legislating and has these other options, as you say, within the legislative process.

The problem is that the power and resources lawmakers have within Congress, actually aid their capacity to engage and influence agencies. So what I find is that lawmakers who are in a better position to influence policy within Congress are also engaging with agencies more and are also prioritized by agencies.

So there's a sort of catch-22 because the lawmakers who may be in the most need of an alternative way of advancing their policy objectives may also be the least capable of taking advantage of bureaucratic discretion. And I think that's one really important implication of my findings, is that agency policymaking may actually exacerbate the already unequal power distribution in Congress.

so in other words, the rich get richer. and this is partly because really all members of Congress faced obstacles in Congress. even the Senate majority leader can't push through whatever he wants. And of course, the presidency, plays a critical role as well. So what I find is that members of Congress pursue their policy objectives through federal agencies when they face constraints in the legislative process, but also have the advantage in the executive branch.

So for example, I find that senators contact agencies about policy objectives more when they're in the minority in the Senate. so they have the disadvantage in the Senate, but they're co-partisans of the president. They share party affiliation with the president. and they contact agencies then more than, for instance, when they're in the majority in the Senate and White House co-partisans.

So in that case, it makes sense for them to devote their resources to the legislative process where they have the advantage. in the House it is more nuanced, so House members contact agencies more frequently when they're in the minority and White House outpartisans. I should say the, that relationship for the House is weaker, but I think one possible reason for this could be that they're really out of options when they're, they're in the minority and White House outpartisans.

They can't depend on the accomplishments of their party leadership in either the House or the White House. but to your point, I also look at another motivation driving members of Congress to the bureaucracy, and that is the relative obscurity of admini- administrative policymaking, that I argue legislators use to their advantage.

for some time, congressional scholars have found that members of Congress act strategically when choosing how to pursue policymaking and choosing their venues, and that they avoid very public ways of doing things when they face cross-pressures, or conflicting pressures. So when they face a conflict between their party and their constituency and what I argue is that members of Congress try to use agency policymaking to represent interests that could be costly for them to represent publicly.

And I test this idea by examining the behavior of members of Congress who face cross-pressures on particular policy issues. So for example, Democrats have faced cross-pressures when they come from states like Pennsylvania, where fracking has really boosted the economy, because of the Democratic Party's conflicting position on fracking because of, the party, tend to be in favor of environmental regulation.

And so they face a conflict when they come from a state where fracking has really boosted the local economy. And what I find across two of the three policy areas I examine is that members of Congress contact agencies about policy more frequently when they face cross-pressures on an issue. And we...

This is really important that we don't see that same pattern for very public policymaking activities like bill introductions. In some cases, we actually observe the opposite pattern for bill introductions, that they're sponsoring more bills on issues when they don't face cross-pressures. so I think this finding suggests that legislators are using the bureaucracy and agency policymaking as a back-channel way of influencing policy when they don't want it to be public.

I should be clear though that members of Congress do, often publicize their interactions with agencies. they use their interactions with agencies, often the same way they use other, types of policymaking activities. They do it to take credit for benefits accrued to their constituencies and to, take public positions on issues.

The point is that they're also using the bureaucracy in this really important way that we've been neglecting and that could have implications for representation and, democratic accountability and transparency 

That's going to be it for today.

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

The Muckrake Political Podcast

Today, Explained

Citations Needed

What A Day

What Next

Future Hindsight

This Is Hell!

New Books in Political Science

and Civics 101

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