(When Leadership Stops Turning Over)

The current aging body politic in the USA is holding power with a death grip. Congress now resembles an institution on life support.

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 had an average age of forty-two. They were young men arguing passionately about ideas that had not been tried. Today, the median age in the Senate is sixty-four. In the House, it is fifty-seven. The 119th Congress could have children the same age as most of the founders who wrote the document they now swear to uphold. (Desilver; Quorum)

That is not a knock — it is a fact worth sitting with for a moment.

Take your time. They certainly have.

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THE SENIOR BUFFET OF DEMOCRACY

Congress is beginning to look like the early-bird special crowd at a retirement home, except with one cruel twist: they all kept working well into their golden years.

I will say it plainly: I am in this demographic. These are my people. I have no quarrel with age. Experience matters. Institutional memory matters. A long-serving legislator who has spent decades navigating the architecture of power can do things a freshman simply cannot.

But there comes a time.

Supreme Court justices routinely serve into their seventies and eighties — an age at which most Americans have long since retired, or, lacking access to elite healthcare and a lifetime government salary, passed on entirely. The Constitution imposes no term limits on Congress, no mandatory retirement for judges, and only a two-term ceiling on the presidency. This framework assumes that voters will naturally cycle leadership over time.

That assumption has aged about as well as the leadership itself.

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WHEN POWER MEETS SOMETHING IT DOESN’T UNDERSTAND

There is a revealing dynamic that plays out whenever Congress holds hearings with technology executives. It has become something of a national spectator event. Legislators — many of whom came of age without the internet, without globalization in its current form, and without the social and economic realities that now define daily life — sit before some of the most powerful tools in human history and ask questions that make C-SPAN viewers laugh and wince at the same time.

This is not cruelty. It is a structural problem wearing a human face.

Research on the psychology of power suggests that as individuals gain and hold power over long periods, they can become less attuned to perspectives outside their own experience and more inclined to assert control over unfamiliar systems rather than adapt to them (Gruenfeld). In governance, that tendency matters. When the tools shaping society evolve faster than the people regulating them, the result is often policy that lags behind reality — reactive instead of responsive.

The technology moves on. The hearing footage does not.

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THE SELF-PERPETUATING SYSTEM

Incumbency advantages are not subtle. Name recognition, entrenched fundraising networks, and institutional party support create formidable barriers to entry for challengers. Over time, this produces continuity — but not necessarily renewal.

In 2024, roughly 95 percent of incumbents nationwide were re-elected, with congressional incumbents approaching a 98 percent win rate (Ballotpedia). Over the past several decades, House re-election rates have rarely dipped below 85 percent and have averaged above 90 percent in recent cycles (Ballotpedia; OpenSecrets). Whatever this system is, it is not one that turns itself over naturally.

The issues that younger Americans identify as urgent — student debt, housing affordability, climate change, and the regulation of technologies that did not exist a generation ago — are not abstract policy concerns. They are the structure of daily life. When decision-makers do not reflect that urgency, the responses tend to feel delayed, diluted, or disconnected.

Critics of term limits make a fair point: forced turnover could deprive government of experienced leaders and shift power toward unelected staff and lobbyists who never leave and answer to no one. It is a legitimate concern.

The influence of staff and lobbyists is already deeply embedded in the legislative process.

Clearly our current congress requires tech support navigating the nuances of cyber legislation.

Institutional knowledge can be lost in many ways. Turnover is only one, cognitive decline is another.

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THE PERCEPTION PROBLEM

Public trust is not only eroded by bad policy. It is eroded by the appearance of a closed system. When citizens watch the same faces appear decade after decade — the same names, the same fundraising circuits — confidence in the system’s responsiveness does not just waver. It debilitates.

Democracy is not only about representation. It is about the perception of responsiveness. A system that is technically open but operationally frozen risks losing the thing that legitimizes it in the first place: the belief that it belongs to the people it governs.

When participation does not produce change, disengagement follows.

Voter turnout among younger Americans declined for decades before rebounding in recent elections. That shift did not happen in a vacuum.

Since the 1980s, younger generations have accumulated significantly less wealth than their predecessors did at the same age — falling from roughly one-fifth of national wealth to closer to one-twentieth. (Pew Research Center. “Chapter 1: Wealth Gaps by Age.”)

At the same time, institutional barriers — including stricter voter ID laws and registration requirements — the erosion of civic infrastructure such as unions, local organizations, and community networks, and growing distrust in political systems all contributed to disengagement.(CIRCLE “Youth Voting and Civic Engagement in America.” Tufts University).

The pattern is not apathy. It is response.

The circle closes neatly. The torch stays where it is.

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WHAT DEMOCRACY IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE.

At its best, democracy is not a monument. It is a mechanism — one of continuous reinvention, drawing its strength from the regular infusion of new ideas, new energy, and new perspectives. Not because youth is inherently superior to experience, but because renewal is inherently superior to permanence.

A torch is not meant to be hoarded. It is meant to be passed.

Term limits — carefully designed to preserve continuity while guaranteeing turnover — are not a radical intervention. They are a structural correction. Public opinion has already moved in this direction, with large bipartisan majorities consistently supporting limits on congressional tenure (Program for Public Consultation; Ipsos).

The question is no longer whether current leaders have served faithfully. Many have.

The question is whether a system designed for rotation has quietly become one designed for retention — and whether that shift will be addressed before it becomes permanent.

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Works Cited

Section II — Age Gap & Policy Bias

Desilver, Drew. Age and Generation in the 119th Congress: Younger, Fewer Boomers, More Gen Xers. Pew Research Center, 16 Jan. 2025.

“Average Age of Congress.” Quorum, 14 Mar. 2025.

Wong, Scott. “24 Members of Congress Are 80 or Older…” NBC News, 18 Jan. 2026.

Section III — The Self-Perpetuating Cycle

“Election Results, 2024: Incumbent Win Rates by State.” Ballotpedia, 11 Dec. 2024.

“Reelection Rates Over the Years.” OpenSecrets.

CIRCLE. “New Data: Nearly Half of Youth Voted in 2024.” Tufts University.

Movement Advancement Project. A Silenced Generation, Jan. 2024.

Section IV — Term Limits as the Solution

Program for Public Consultation. “Five-in-Six Americans Favor…” University of Maryland.

Ipsos / Reuters. “Americans Want Upper-Age Limits and Term Limits…”, 17 Nov. 2022.

U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995).

Additional Sources

Gruenfeld, Deborah. The Psychology of Power and Influence.Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Pew Research Center. “Chapter 1: Wealth Gaps by Age.” The Rising Age Gap in Economic Well-Being, 7 Nov. 2011.

CIRCLE (Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). “Youth Voting and Civic Engagement in America.” Tufts University.