DAMMIT: I write my posts ahead of time and schedule them to post later. So this sort of thing happens.
Luckily, I happened to check the news before I left for my car.
Hey, if people are knocking an old guy who decides it's time to retire, let's consider an even older guy who intends on putting his hospital bed in the Senate Chamber:
WASHINGTON — As he approached his 89th birthday this year, Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey was finally considering retirement, an option he had tried a decade earlier and hated so much that he jumped at the chance to return to political life.
Now he was the oldest member of the Senate. His family was urging him not to seek a sixth term. Polls were showing that voters might not give him one, and he had never liked fund-raising.
Then came Cory A. Booker, the 43-year-old mayor of Newark, whose 1.3 million followers on Twitter and robust presence on television had given him a reputation as a rising star in the Democratic Party, announcing that he would run for the Senate when Mr. Lautenberg’s term is up. He made his declaration nearly two years before Election Day, and, notably, before Mr. Lautenberg, a fellow Democrat, had announced his own intentions.
If Mr. Booker was hoping to nudge Mr. Lautenberg toward the door, his announcement has had precisely the opposite effect. Mr. Lautenberg, a fighter dubbed “swamp dog” by a past opponent, has embraced his job with new vigor. He has taken a leading role on the issues of the day: fighting for recovery money for his hurricane-hit state and pushing for gun control after the shootings in Newtown, Conn.
Well, I did a look at mortality of popes, and while most senators don't die in office, let's take a look at similar data. Look at this handy document the U.S. Senate provides: Senators of the United States, 1789 – 2012. Looks like they update this every so often. They've also got a handy list of longest-serving senators, and senators who have died since 2000. Wikipedia has a list of current senators that you can sort by age.
Alas, nobody has provided an easily-stripped table with all the senators' dates of birth (and death, if applicable), so I'm just going to look at Lautenberg, and give you some probabilities.
OH WAIT
My mortality table isn't credible past age 85 for calculating probabilities.
But I can do calculations anyway with HEAVY DISCLAIMERS. The following graph is probability of survival to specific ages, given the person is currently a male age 89, using two different mortality tables, which are less credible at the highest ages.
The one with higher survival probabilities are from an annuitant mortality table with a generous mortality improvement factor (for the actuaries out there, I'm using A-2000 with a simple 1% per year improvement). For the lower one, I'm using Social Security's 2010 calendar year mortality table, no mortality improvement. I figure this brackets a reasonable range for mortality, though Lautenberg is probably near the higher end, as many people his age are much more impaired than he is.
So I had to delete a bunch of stuff in my original post, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone had approached Lautenberg with a similar graph saying: chances are much worse than 50% that you'd survive another term. Do you really want to spend your last years with these bozos?
Or perhaps they were more tactful than most actuaries.
Local news coverage of Lautenberg's announcement.
Dan Collins on February 14, 2013 at 7:00 pm said:
But . . . but . . . I've got a gold-plated health plan!
Mike G. on February 15, 2013 at 10:57 am said:
Why should Lautenburg be any different from Strom Thurmond, the esteemed,( harumph), Senator from South Carolina, where they had to hold a mirror in front of his face to see if he was still breathing.
Seriously, there should be an age limit on serving members of government. 80 yrs old would be a good limit, since we did have a President who reached that age while serving.
meep on February 16, 2013 at 7:02 am said:
if the voters are so idiotic as to elect someone too decrepit for office, seems to me they brought it on themselves
Starless on February 16, 2013 at 7:21 am said:
The trouble with an age limit is that it could be applied in the other direction also. How young is too young? 30? 40? 50? Better, IMO, to limit their ability to linger in office by reducing their ability to bring home the federal pork (a la Robert Byrd)..
Mike G. on February 16, 2013 at 10:58 am said:
There already is an age limit in the other direction. 25 to serve in the Congress, 30 to serve in the senate and 35 minimum to serve as President. And I was wrong…Reagan left office at 78 years of age, the oldest serving President.
Meep on February 17, 2013 at 12:08 pm said:
I was going to say… we already have age minimums, and I find it somewhat amusing as they're a little tied to old Imperial Rome's age requirements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum
Quaestors had to be at least 30, Aedile 36, Praetor 39, Consul 40/42 (depending)
Seems the Founders were a little looser with the requirements, considering
Starless on February 16, 2013 at 4:23 pm said:
Huh. I'm not even sure if I ever knew there was a lower age limit for House and Senate seats. Thanks, public education!
Berry interesting:
I have to agree with James Wilson's argument. If you are old enough to take on all of the responsibilities of an adult citizen and you can convince your fellow citizens that you are qualified, you should be old enough to serve in the House or Senate. Likewise, if you are a hundred and eleventy years old and you can convince your fellow citizens that you are qualified, then so be it. I object to people serving for a billion years because they keep taking money from the citizens of other states to keep their constituents happy and re-electing them.
Maybe term limits is the answer but I'm not convinced that solves the problem of pork.
Mike G. on February 16, 2013 at 4:58 pm said:
If there were no federal subsidies to the states for education, infrastructure improvements and such, there would be no pork to fight over. But since there are, it's the responsibility of our elected Representatives to fight for every slice of the pig they can get for their respective states.
Members of the House of Representatives making careers of political "service" is a recent phenomonon, maybe the last hundred years or so. The founders never invisioned that people would make a career out of it. They thought that a person would serve at the behest of their constituents for one or two terms at the most, then move aside to give someone else a chance.
As far as term limits go, I believe if a Representative can't fulfill the promises they made to their constituents in three terms, they should move aside. Likewise with the Senate in two terms. We already have a term limit on the Presidency.
I also believe we need term limits on the Supreme Court Justices…say twenty years.
Starless on February 16, 2013 at 6:11 pm said:
I agree. Except for maybe the SC term limits.
I would also add some sort of "no political dynasties" rule.