The astonishing thing about this is that there isn’t even a requirement for senators to have served in government for a certain time before. It is common for people who don’t know anything about municipal, state, or federal governance and who have been lawyers, business owners, or financial advisors their entire lives to become senators right away, without first being a civil servant or at least serving in the house of representatives. In terms of merit, you could take random 18-year-olds from the street and have them fill all the senate seats, and in fact they’d most certainly do a better job representing the interests of the majority of US Americans.
There’s nothing wrong with someone running for office without being a tenured politician. A primary or general election will weed out any woefully unqualified candidates, and if that doesn’t, anyone truly terrible will be replaced in the next election cycle.
Senator Patty Murray of Washington famously campaigned as “a mom in tennis shoes” and had only been a teacher beforehand.
That’s not what he meant. You don’t need to be a tenured politician, but you need some, at least ANY civil service expertise and experience.
Imagine if you “elected” a doctor who never went to medical school, or a solider who never went to training, or a lawyer who never went to college.
They would all be fired on their first day, if they didn’t kill someone first.
Also a general election will not weed out woeful applicants. Charisma, and an experienced team will get you very far.
Potential choices should be heavily vetted and thoroughly trained.
Imagine if you “elected” a doctor who never went to medical school, or a solider who never went to training, or a lawyer who never went to college.
Doesn’t the US do exactly that with cops, prosecutors and judges? Fuck, what a shithole.
can we just set the cutoff at 60 please?
I feel the problem is less the age of the senator (or representative) and more so how they have no term limits. Why do we have people serving 30, 40, 50+ years?
The longer they serve, the more likely they are to take bribes lobbyist money and donations from people that don’t represent their constituents.
I can understand the argument of wanting knowledgeable and experienced congressmen, but there has to be a limit when their net worth is way more than their salaries.
Like Parenti said, they’ll be in until 2030-2040. We don’t even have to actively remove them from office. We just have to wait.
You don’t think that they have heirs lined up? This is carefully planned and prepared, and they have been grooming successors for decades now.
It is a perpetual system.
I really don’t think this is true because we can also see how incompetent these people are when it counts. They didn’t turn the Ukraine into their own next Vietnam (only in the humiliation sense) because they wanted to.
Although it is a bit of poetic injustuce that the “progressive” who unseated Pelosi’s second in the house is also vying for the Speaker’s chair with no better intentions. The cruel twist will come from the fact that she’ll supposedly spurn the capital interests, get her funding from poor people, and still do the exact same shit.
