Has America lapsed into a gerontocracy?

Although I write at high summer, by the time you read this another school year will be upon us. I wonder: do students still read T.S. Eliot? They should. A lot of what he wrote continues to reverberate with significance. Consider, to take just one example, these lines from his poem “Gerontion.”

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving.
Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion.
Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

Pondering the confused mélange that is our contemporary social and political life, I nod my head sadly over the spectacle of history’s “cunning passages,” its manifold deceptions, and the recognition that its lessons often come either too early, or too late, or in a grammar we cannot fully or usefully decipher. We see plenty of “unnatural vices”: where is the corresponding heroism? The sorry sense of encroaching desiccation, exhaustion, of a hollowed-out, nearly posthumous culture, was something that Eliot’s nervous genius excelled at expressing. “The Waste Land,” “The Hollow Men,” “Gerontion” (Eliot’s coinage from γέρων, “old man”): the very titles bespeak the ashen futility of a civilization at the end of its tether. We in the West used to snicker at the stolid clump of doddering old men presiding over military parades from their balconies in Moscow. Those seedy gray-on-gray factota were the leaders of a great power? But here we are in the United States in 2023. Have we lapsed into a gerontocracy?

Think about it. Senator Dianne Feinstein, born in 1933, lives in a porous tent of garbled syllables. At a recent roll-call vote, she began reading a statement about defense spending until an aide leaned over and whispered “Just say ‘Aye.’” “OK,” quoth the aged one, “Just aye. Aye.”

Then there is Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, born in 1942. At a press conference in July, he managed to squeeze out a few words before the cognitive curtain fell and he stood, utterly mute and staring, until alarmed colleagues intervened and led him away. And what about the leader of the free world, Joseph R. Biden? More and more, he appears lost and confused in public. Which way is out? Who am I waving to? “God save the Queen, man.” Never eloquent, Biden can now barely make it to the end of a short sentence. His accelerating habit of stumbling and falling down has his entourage scrambling for remedial expedients. The short stairs into the plane, thank you very much, and where are the notecards telling him whom to call on and what to say?

It will be pointed out that Donald Trump, born in 1946, is only four years younger that Biden. True enough. But the paralyzing mists of decrepitude and tenebrous mental twilight have yet to descend upon Trump. Instead, he regularly holds rallies at which he extemporaneously addresses twenty, thirty, fifty thousand supporters. Trump’s rhetorical style on these occasions is brash, repetitive, simple — if not, indeed, simplistic. It is also, to judge from the response of his audiences, unusually effective.

Should voters be concerned about Trump’s age? Yes. Is it a disqualifying consideration? Not so long as he exudes the energy and vigorous engagement with the issues that have characterized his activities as a politician. Like some mythical creature, he seems to thrive on abuse, a living example, as few are, of Nietzsche’s dubious contention that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

It used to be said that America was a young country, naive, perhaps, but bristling with youthful energy and optimism. That sense probably came to an end with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Ronald Reagan, seventy when he took office, nevertheless managed to imbue his administration and the country at large with the feeling that once again it was “morning in America.” Neither of the Bushes nor Bill Clinton managed that trick, nor, despite his élan, did Barack Obama. Donald Trump came close with his catchphrase “Make America Great Again.”

The point is that youthfulness is determined not only by the amount of time elapsed. Also important are the outlook and spirit maintained. I’ll end as I began, with Eliot. In a lecture he delivered to the Virgil Society in 1944, Eliot posed the question “What is a classic?” “If there is one word on which we can fix, which will suggest the maximum of what I mean by the term ‘a classic,’ it is the word maturity.” “Mature,” that is, full grown, ripe. My friends know that one of my highest terms of praise is “politically mature.” Following Eliot, I suppose I could substitute the word “classic.” How and to whom to apply those commendations are hares I have started but that I will leave to you, the reader, to determine. I can tell you that neither applies to Joe Biden.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 2023 World edition.