The Old Folks at Home

To its great credit, the national media did not focus on the somewhat comical aspects of two elderly Senators collapsing during the Inaugural Luncheon at the Capitol.  To my everlasting shame, I couldn't help but think of all the Mel Brooks and Woody Allen movies I have seen where such a tableau would have fit right into the story line.  I have great respect for Senator Ted Kennedy, I know he has fought tirelessly on education and health care issues, but it's not altogether surprising that a man who will be 77 next month might have some health issues of his own.  As for Robert Byrd, who is now 91, I guess West Virginia may seek at some point a Constitutional Amendment allowing posthumous reelection.

I'm not an agist, I hope, especially as I kind of get up there myself; I know one 91 year old guy living in South Florida who could take Byrd's seat and revitalize the whole Senate. Nevertheless, I think the injection of new blood into any organization, of members whose education is a little closer to their current careers, who are a little more up on what's going on in society in general, is salutary. Crucial, even.  The average age of the U.S. Senate is currently 62 years old; one must count down 59 Senators before you get to a Senator, in fact, who is younger than 60, and then you reach a group of Senators in their late fifties.

The talk these days is how to avoid another Great Depression.  A lot of the current Senators might have first-hand knowledge, because I count 29 of them who were born prior to 1940.  A group of about 4 of them will cross the age 70 Rubicon this year, including Mr. Mumbles himself, Harry Reid of Searchlight, Nevada, who allows the small Republican minority in his House of Congress to block any piece of legislation the Republicans don't like by handing him a note saying they would filibuster if the bill is introduced.  Mumbles rolls over for this; I suspect that a younger, more ambitious Democrat with fire in his/her belly who wanted to make a name for him/herself, would force these obstructionists to stand up at the podium and read the Manhattan telephone directory for weeks at a time instead of thwarting the nation's will.  But gentle Harry likes comity, collegiality, reelection. Once, in the entire history of the Iraq War funding debate, Reid made the Senate pull an all-nighter; then they rolled the day beds away and Reid went back to rolling over for the GOP.

It's a commonplace observation that one of Barack Obama's keys to success was his superior mastery of the new world of Internet communications.  He knew how FaceBook, MySpace, networking all fit together in the national grid.  He raised hundreds of millions of dollars and organized the country down to the block level.  It was a kind of below-the-radar virtual universe that Hillary Clinton and John McCain just couldn't get the hang of.

Barack is now the leader of a country which absolutely has to make some paradigm changes in housing, farming, autos, the electrical grid, photovoltaics and wind power, desalination, and passenger rail in order to revitalize the economy. We have to go from the old system of a corporate growth economy to a steady-state ecological economy, in order to (a) be prosperous again and (b) avoid destroying the natural world.  President O knows we are not going to be successful at "jump starting" the old consumer nonsense.  The serial bubbles have all popped, and you can't get people to spend when they don't have the money anymore.

Barack must sit at those conferences, with a vast frieze of gray hair arrayed around the giant oval table, and think to himself: oy vey iz mir. Thanks to his father, he may know how to say it in Swahili.  He has to work with a Senate Majority Leader who thinks the opposition of Arlen Specter (78), Jim Bunning (77), Richard Lugar (76), Chuck Grassley (75), Bob Bennett (75), Orrin Hatch (74), Richard Shelby (74, but dyed black), James Inhofe (74), among other senior citizens, should carry the day.  Well, the soon-to-be 70 Reid is just respecting his elders, I guess.

I have serious doubts that this ancien regime is going to be equal to the task at hand.  Maybe it's not that funny, but I bet Woody Allen could make a kickass movie out of it.