Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Are Aging Powerbrokers Sinking the Nation?

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Shakespeare gave his audiences fair warning about advancing age and the risks of clinging to power. By the end of the play, King Lear is old and crazy, with his dominion in chaos.

There’s a lot of discussion in the popular media about political leaders who have stayed in power too long. Our recent history with Joe Biden at age 82 and Donald Trump at 79 are the most  recent cases of apparent declines in mental stamina, though, in Trump’s case, the evidence is decidedly mixed. Incompetence and dementia can look like the same thing. There is also the example of Mitch McConnell (83) in the Senate, who appears to not have had the good graces to step down when he could keep track of his thoughts. Senator Diane Feinstein of California was incapacitated before she died at 90, and the District of Columbia’s Eleanor Holmes Norton seems to be suffering through the same frailty. On the whole, these cases and others like them feed a cultural norm of impatience with those still in power and showing unusual longevity.

Interestingly, and as a matter of policy, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints picks their oldest elder to be their leader. Dallin H. Oaks will start his term to lead the church at the age of 93, one year older than the recently elected President of the central African state of Cameroon.  By contrast, many commercial airline pilots must retire at the comparatively young age of 65. And surgeons are mostly done by age 70. But just when a trend seems clear, someone like Bernie Sanders (84) comes along,  exciting the young with his articulate and impassioned rebukes of his Senate colleagues and Donald Trump. Sanders is an example for arguing that “age is just a number.” And there is the special case that is New York City, which has just elected 32-year-old Zohran Mamdani as mayor. By comparison, and with some exceptions, many of Sander’s colleagues in Congress–most in their 60s or older–lack the inclination or stamina to be effective legislators.

Shakespeare could have easily imagined the enfeebled American nemisis, King George III, who was 81 when he died. Today, some of Britain’s senior leaders end up in the House of Lords, which has a ceremonial and advisory role in governmental affairs. We have no equivalent of a body of wise old men and women who can apply their experience to intractable national problems. That’s too bad because there are leaders from both parties who could help shape some constructive paths forward for the nation. Easing out President Nixon in 1974, after the Watergate coverup, was arguably easier because of the presence of senior members in both parties who convinced him that it was time to go.

Joe Biden’s struggles to remain alert and coherent were evident at the end of his presidency. Perhaps that is one reason so many Americans are primed to consider whether Trump is able to process information and ideas and, more tellingly, to perform the very presidential necessity of staying on point throughout a presentation. Sadly, even less than a year into his administration, some of his constituents and his counterparts in other nations no longer view him as having the character needed to be a reliable partner.  The General Services Administration will want to count the silverware when he finally leaves the public housing we mistakenly assumed he would leave in tact.

I have sympathy with younger Americans who claim that the nation’s leadership should be in the hands of more nimble minds. There is a lot of grumbling about “boomers” my age who have ostensibly damaged accesibility to the  American dream. Did we give our children too much? Did we grow too isolated and materialistic? Have we sentimentalized the accumulation of wealth at the expense of more universal values? And have we allowed our media to be turned into wall-to-wall distractions that diminish real life experience?

All of these questions are timely. On the other hand, it is easy to be disappointed to discover that many current protesters responding to Trump administration policies are much older than youthful activists in the 1960s. Protests against Isreal on college campuses are an exception. But I have attended recent rallies and marches against Trump-era policies where the age of the average attender seems to be on the far side of 60. That is not going to cut it if we are going to renew this society.

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When Spellbinders Had Sway

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Was I mistaken to believe that even amidst the maelstrom that is adolescence, another person could still be mesmerizing?

A few years ago I asked my students in a persuasion course to describe some people in their lives beyond family who were spellbinders: perhaps teachers, priests or others who were incredibly interesting and transforming. Since I am a rhetorician, my bias led me to believe  that these college students could rhapsodize about some outsized influencers in their own lives. But the room was silent. I tried again, being more specific. Describe a teacher or mentor who could really hold a group in their thrall: probably someone who was a good storyteller. Silence again from a class that was usually forthcoming.

I must have been mistaken to believe that, even in the maelstrom of adolescence, another person could be mesmerizing. Perhaps the question required a response that was too personal. Then, too, after the early grades, it is apparently not so cool to see a teacher or leader as transformational.

Active Listening in the Classroom Heather Syrett.

Perhap because I am older–OK, a lot older– I have a settled list of mentors who shaped my attitudes and partly influenced what I would do for the rest of my life. These folks include a Methodist minister who reigned over a large Denver church with a thundering rhetoric of religious certainty; a devoted speech and drama teacher at Evergreen High School in Colorado who mercifully supressed her judgment that I was no actor; a youth group leader who was full of ideas for living that scared our parents; and a professor who turned me on to studying political rhetoric when there was still some dignity left in national politics.

I was a sponge for their forms of dynamic mentoring. In the years that came after I wanted my teaching to be the embodiment of the same intense engagement. In every case this meant that I would need to rise to the level of trying to perform my enthusiasm for whatever I was offering to others. This means using an emphatic style in presentation that models the enthusiasm you want from your audience. Ideally, this kind of in-the-room discourse with a group might unfold like a three-act play. Or, more accurately, a given session would develop as a set of engaging variations on a set theme. (A good presentation often unfolds in a way that Bach might have recognized.)

I saw fluent and forceful rhetoric as an energized engine for self-knowledge, as well at the tool for creating social change. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the sources of that kind of change now lie in digital realm and less in the performative mastery of one person. Just by virtue of their age, students are more predisposed to models of discourse that are a long way from older hortatory styles Martin Luther King, John Kennedy or even Professor Harold Hill. Think of this kind of presentation as a form of heightened conversation: less like Bill Maher and more like Bernie Sanders or perhaps Ken Robertson, sampled below.

The grand rhetorical gesture is in decline, or at least reduced to the 18 minutes of a TED talk or a speech as a rally. Everyday communication elements like texting are more private and ad hoc: fast whispers, but little more.

In my last years before retiring my colleagues would sometimes give me a puzzled look if I said I liked lecturing, by which I meant a session driven by the energy of rapsodizing about new ideas. But the preferred mode of teaching is now more interactive and experiential, and necessarily less directed. Professors now understand that they have less time to profess. Even so, when not driven by an effective mentor, any single session can easily dissipate the energy intensity that seeds learning.

I worry that too many students have filled their lives with inconsequential messages that has shrunken what should be time for a rapidly expanding consciousness. The heightened drama of a rhetorical challenge from an outsider is now often relegated to events like sports or concerts. Few of us are saving space in our lives for the equivelants of the old Chautauquas our forbearers knew, when spending time in the presence of a literary or academic giant had so much appeal.