Rahm Emanuel has made a habit of offering audacious proposals to address what he considers to be the weaknesses contributing to the Democratic Party’s flagging brand.
The former ambassador to Japan and mayor of Chicago said recently that there ought to be a mandatory retirement age of 75 for people in all three branches of the federal government. That would include Cabinet officers, he said, as well as Supreme Court justices and other judges. And, of course, the president of the United States.
Emanuel, who is considering a run for the highest office in the land, said he understood that as a 66-year-old he could not run for a second term if he were elected president in 2028. Fine by him, he said. “You can’t say ‘here’s what I want to do to change Washington’ … but I get an exemption.”
Our former mayor gets kudos for applying his tough medicine to himself; although we cannot know what a theoretical President Emanuel would feel (or do) as a second term beckoned. Still, Emanuel touched a nerve and found some supporters among the higher ranks of the party apparatus, including former Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
Small wonder. In recent times, we’ve seen more than a few political leaders, many of them Democrats but surely not all, leave the scene well after they should have made their exit. One case in point, her years of great service notwithstanding, would be California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died in office at age 90.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg declined President Obama’s suggestion that she retire while he was in office to ensure a successor carry on with a similar judicial philosophy to hers. A cancer survivor for more than two decades, Ginsburg succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2020, less than two months before President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, allowing Trump to nominate Amy Coney Barrett and cementing a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Barrett is turning just 54 today.
And, of course, President Joe Biden was pressured by his own party to give up his campaign four months before the election in large part due to widespread concerns about age-related performance issues. To put that mildly.
So we understand Emanuel’s argument and it has its merits. But here’s the deal, as Biden liked to say.
Without any mandatory retirement requirements, the senior-citizen Democrats many in the party have cited as examples of the gerontocracy issue are leaving of their own volition. The latest and clearest example is Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington, D.C., delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives for 35 years, who after months of insisting she was running again said she won’t stand for reelection after all. The 88-year-old has slowed down noticeably and has dramatically cut back her public appearances. A recent police report on an alleged fraud against Norton said she showed “early stages of dementia.”
Other notable congressional veterans have made the same decision (with less hemming and hawing). They include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her longtime No. 2 in the House leadership, Steny Hoyer of Maryland.
The Illinois delegation is at the cutting edge of this trend. Sen. Dick Durbin, No. 2 in the Democratic leadership in the Senate, last year cleared the way for a new generation after five terms. U.S. Reps. Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia all opted to retire following their current terms after long careers in the House.
As we’ve written before, it’s hard in any walk of life to know when to bow out, especially when one has achieved a significant measure of success. That seems particularly true in politics, where experience counts and elected officials get the affirmation of being chosen by tens of thousands (or more) of their constituents again and again to take their roles.
We think it will be invigorating to see fresh faces representing Illinois in Washington, and we’re grateful to the above names for leaving gracefully and on terms in which they can be thanked for their service and given the send-offs they deserve.
We’re heartened, too, that none of these positive developments required the blunt instrument of a mandatory retirement age. Age in and of itself has little to do with ability to perform a demanding job. There are 75-year-olds whose conditions are such that they shouldn’t be in such roles, and there are 85-year-olds who are energetic, healthy and fully capable. As the nation’s demographics continue to get grayer, we are going to have to depend on more seniors to work, whether we like it or not, simply to maintain productivity.
For all their accomplishments and in Pelosi’s case a legendary career, the former speaker along with Hoyer, Durbin and many others got the message, delivered with thanks, that it was time to go without the need for deadlines not chosen by voters.
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