They're Too Old!

This is not a political post. I do not align myself with either Team Red or Team Blue. This is not a political post but it is about politicians. Read on.

The leading candidates for the next presidential election are 80 and 77. You have Biden who seems to be completely senile and is always falling down and you have Trump who comes across as your cranky, deranged older neighbor who is always yelling at the children who dare linger on the sidewalk in front of his house. It’s not just current and former presidents; Senator Feinstein is like some broken relic that gets wheeled out for votes and Senator McConnell recently got caught in the middle of the mother of all fugue states. We are led and represented by men and women far too old for the job. You see the consequences of this all over the news as Biden makes another gaffe, complimenting a leader of a nation who has been dead for fifty years or Trump bellows like a walrus caught in an escalator tread about some plot that came to him as he played another embarrassing round of golf.

The truly elderly used to not be a common thing in politics. I remember this old coot named Strom Thurman who was in his 90s when he finally went up to the filibuster in the sky. People talked about him because he was an anomaly, not anymore. You look at the Senate or the House these days and it’s like taco night at the retirement home. We need new blood. Not too young, we need someone with maturity and life experience but still young enough that they don’t yell “I took my medication, mommy!” when someone mentions TikTok. I believe the maximum age for any office should be 65 and both the Senate and Congress need term limits. Seriously…I think McConnell and Feinstein have been in office since cobwebs were invented. Conversely, I think the minimum age of 35 is too young to be president, not enough life experience and maturity. The sweet spot seems to be between 50 and 60, where you have enough acquired wisdom but you’re young enough that you’ve never known the taste of Ensure or the feel of a sturdy mall walking shoe.

But, Izaak, I imagine you saying, even if we could get a constitutional amendment making such a change it would take years.

Actually, we have the power to make such a change in the next election with our votes. Stop voting for these biddys and codgers and crones and fogeys. Want to make the “45 to 65 rule” a thing? Vote in a manner that reflects these beliefs.

Izaak, what does this have to do with the whole American Outback thing? With bettering my life and the world around me??

The American Outback brand is about making a better world starting with you and me. To do that, we need to stop electing wealthy, old people to represent our interests. We need representatives, senators, presidents, governors, and mayors who know what it’s like to keep a family fed and housed on $70,000 a year in California (or $60,000 in other states). We need people who first had a cell phones in their twenties and not middle age because our current leaders are just too old, they’re falling off bicycles and bellowing at clouds that they are convinced are spy balloons. They have a hundred yard stare and visible diaper lines in their expensive suit pants. No, we need to change this and we can.

The American Outback non-fiction series and all my other books are available on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Izaak-Diggs/author/B00EG7OKUY?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true