Would I vote for an 80-year-old U.S. Senate candidate? I don't think so. (Not without grave reservations, anyway)

We know that Senator Dick isn't going to get his six more years. My question is, should he even have asked for them?

by Ken

I understand the conventional wisdom about Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar's Republican primary defeat Tuesday by Teabagging thug Richard Mourdock, until recently a classically unelectable "joke" candidate in his home state. Even though I find it hard not to still think of Dick Lugar as Richard Nixon's favorite mayor, when he was mayor of Indianapolis, I understand that he is what passes today for a Republican "moderate." Heck, even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says so.

As CNN expresses that conventional wisdom, "Lugar's loss further polarizes U.S. Senate." And I'm not here to challenge this wisdom. I even have enough curiosity about the Indiana situation to have read Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake's Tuesday-morning washingtonpost.com "Fix" blogpost, "Dick Lugar is going to lose. Did he have to?" (If I may encapsule the verdict: If he had recognized the Teabag peril and acted early on to crush it, and if he had been willing to do absolutely whatever it took to hold onto his seat, he might have been able to -- leaving open the question of whether either of these conditions applied in the real world.)

Of course we'll never know whether Senator Dick (a) could have obliterated the Teabag challenge with prompt action, or (b) whether he could have turned himself into a sufficiently Teabag-preempting candidate to withstand the challenge -- the indications from his own statements are that that he wasn't prepared to present himself as a frothing extremist lunatic. My own hunch is that he wasn't as clueless about the political shape the race would take as is generally being assumed, that he wanted a seventh Senate term provided he could secure it on the same terms he had the previous six.

But on the whole, no, for once I'm not here to quarrel with the conventional wisdom. I just want to throw something out.

On April 4, Lugar turned 80. In Tuesday's primary, he was presenting himself for reelection to another six-year term in the Senate. Is it possible that this was a factor? I can't imagine that this hasn't been discussed. I just don't happen to have encountered any serious discussion of it. Of course, I wasn't really paying that close attention. Still, I confess that I'm surprised.

I realize I will be thought of as "ageist" for daring to suggest that the senator's age should perhaps have disqualified him from that elusive seventh term. So let me take this into the realm of the hypothetical. Is it ageist to ask: Would you vote to give a hypothetical 80-year-old candidate a six-year Senate term? Even this is arguably too presumptuous, so let me ask instead: Would I vote to give a hypothetical 80-year-old candidate a six-year Senate term? And the answer, I think, is I don't think so -- quite possibly not even if he or she was my all-time favorite pol.

Now I'm assuming that our hypothetical 80-year-old candidate is in manageable physical condition and still-alert mental condition. (At least for now.) Otherwise what is there to talk about? And I certainly don't assume that he won't be able to serve out a six-year term, still in manageable physical and alert mental condition. There are certainly many such 86-year-olds dwelling among us.

Not that many, though. And I would like to think that even our hypothetical candidate would be realistic and honest enough to recognize that in making ongoing commitments, it's prudent to be realistic and honest in how far ahead he or she projects. I am certainly not proposing that we automatically declare anyone unfit for further service to the public weal based on reaching a particular age. We already have too many mandatory retirement ages in place in our society which don't take into account the actual condition of the mandated retiree.

The stark reality is that we all age differently. Goodness knows, I cheered Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on for as long as he felt competent to serve, trusting that he would know when his time came. And I'm delighted to see that he still seems to have a fair amount of juice left in him now that he's retired. That's a lot of responsibility to put on an individual, to know when it's time to hang 'em up, and I suppose we have all those mandatory retirement ages because by and large we don't trust workers to know when it's time.

I don't think there's any question that there are all sorts of commissions, boards, and what-all on which Senator Dick would have been welcomed and where he could have made a real contribution, for as long as he cared to and was able to. But again, an 80-year-old Senate candidate? I would have to know way more about the voters of Indiana to know whether this played any significant part in their thinking. But I think it probably would in mine.

As it happens, my own congressman, Charlie Rangel, is in sort of this situation. Not identical, mind you, but similar. Congressman Charlie is almost two years older than Senator Dick, and as I was writing last month, something in him seems just unwilling to let go. But in his case, at least he's only presenting himself to the voters in his congressional district for a two-year term.

I don't know. I'm just asking.


A REAL-WORLD HYPOTHETICAL POSTSCRIPT:
MIGHT I HAVE VOTED FOR SENATOR DICK?

Yes, of course, I myself might have voted for 80-year-old Senator Dick on Tuesday if I was an Indiana Rerpublican and if I was faced with the choice between him and the Teabagger assclown. But that's a couple of more hypotheticals than I'm comfortable hypothesizing.

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