JACK KENNEDY TOOK UP THE TORCH.

The last World War II veteran president left office in 1992.  The young assistant-tos who started showing up during the New Frontier are still there.  As Mike Lofgren complained,  "It is difficult not to conclude that for at least several decades, the Silent and Baby Boom generations have sat atop the rest of society like a monstrous stone idol that demands worshipping."  I've long not been a fan of this political class.  "As Young Democrats, [the House leaders] were likely caught up in the cult of the New Deal. The people have changed over the years, but the cliches, and the faith in Governance by Wise Experts, is still the same."

Are we going to have to pry that torch from their cold dead hands, or will their failures lead to a reckoning in the near future?

I am not sure how we became a gerontocracy, but it needs to end. Term limits and age limits are problematic in various ways, but in any event they would require a constitutional amendment that isn’t going to happen. Clearing out the dead wood, in a democracy, is a task for the voters. If a few superannuated incumbents lose, maybe the parties and activists will become more realistic about nominating candidates who are capable of fulfilling the duties of their offices.

That can't happen too soon, either.

It's not an accident that the two biggest spending programs for the 2022 fiscal year are Social Security ($1.196 trillion) and Medicare ($766 billion)—entitlements for seniors, both of which are on track to insolvency in the coming years. America's senior benefits are the biggest drivers of long-term debt.

And then there's just the general lack of fresh thinking in politics. When someone has been in the same role for decades, they tend to fall back on old habits, and it shows. Biden first entered the Senate in 1973. Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress since 1987. There's a reason that American politics today feels so bereft of new ideas: Too many of the people at the top pretty clearly haven't had one in a very long time.

A lot of them never had any new ideas, it was all warmed over Herbert Croly and Harold Ickes, but they sure clung to them for a long time.

The crippled governing class goes beyond the Washington politicians and their hangers-on in the press, to the so-called debate commission.

No matter what may occur tonight, or who wins the election, suffice to say this geriatric and outdated Commission on Presidential Debates is done. They have shown themselves to be partisan, unprepared, out of touch, and obsolete. John Danforth, one of those geriatric members of the Commission, and a Republican, took to print and the airwaves to rebuke Trump for his criticism of their methods, to emphasize how important this Commission is to the national conversation, and to let you know what an august and truly bipartisan body they are. Yeah… right.

That was from October 2020, when the commission's selection of moderators and topics again made it clear that Washington process worship and insider priors were more important than a frank and open exchange of views.  It is time for them to go, all of them!