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The spectacle of Senator Arlen Specter surely had nothing to do with Justice David Souter's timing—if indeed reports of his retirement plans are true. But it's a pointed, and also rather poignant, contrast. The almost-80-year-old guy who's got every reason to hang it up just can't let go—and hogs the spotlight by grabbing the chance to shift the balance in the Senate. I'm with you, June and Emily, in thinking the time had perhaps come for the gentleman from Pennsylvania to go potter in the garden. Meanwhile, the justice who hasn't yet hit 70 (at 69, Souter's the average age of those now on the bench) reportedly can't wait to head for the hills—and he is giving up a historic role. Maybe the two of them should have had lunch and swapped career advice, though as Souter chomped his apple I somehow doubt he would have changed his independent mind (assuming it is now made up). That's one of the many reasons he will be missed.
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Well, gals, if we're talking about old senators, we MUST mention the oldest of them all: Strom Thurmond, who more or less died in office, age 100. I remember watching TV, mouth open, as his aides moved him across the Senate floor. Honestly, the dude looked embalmed. It was awe-inspiring to watch him not break. (I would've been terrified to be one of those aides. Imagine killing your boss accidentally!) If he could be senator, well heck, Specter has another 20 years of useful public service in him!
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June, I admit once you read the litany of illnesses Specter has dealt with—two brain tumors, recurrent Hodgkin's, cardiac arrest—you've got admire his self-proclaimed "vim,vigor, and vitality" (which as Slate's Andy Bowers observed are three adjectives which mean, "I'm really old"). However, I totally agree with you that we are strangely lacking a discussion about the fact that an 80-year-old man with this medical history should be willing to step aside and let someone new run for a job with a six-year term. It surely says something about the life-enhancing effects of power that jobs that come with it are clung to like life-support. While most Americans would probably love to hang it up in their 50s, we have the specter not just of Specter, but of many others, like the infirm Robert Byrd, 92, from the state of Robert Byrd—I mean West Virginia, who will have to be carried out. I was amused by the recent congressional battle in which the 83-year-old John Dingell lost a chairmanship because whippersnapper Henry Waxman, who will soon turn 70, was tired of waiting his turn.
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So, one day after Sen. Arlen Specter transitioned from R to
D, the consensus seems to be that he gave President Obama the best
100-days-in-office gift ever. For all the reasons Slate's John Dickerson pointed out, it's a canny move for
Specter, who knew he faced real trouble in Pennsylvania's 2010 Republican primary. But
here's what I don't get: Why is Specter, who'll be 80 years old by the time
next year's races roll around, so determined to serve another six years? He has
famously survived several serious illnesses, including cancer—twice. Perhaps
it's because I can't imagine working until 80, much less vying for one of the most
competitive jobs in the world at that age, but I just don't get why Specter finds
the prospect of pottering and porch-swinging so unattractive.
Clearly, in a democracy, the voters get to decide if they're
comfortable electing an oldster to represent their interests. Just as clearly,
the seniority system puts a premium on experience. Still, some of these guys
are too old to drive cars—yet we're happy to have them drive the ship of state?
Between the senior citizens on the Supreme Court and the
geezers in Congress, I'm starting to wonder if there's something in the D.C.
air. But we're in a recession: Let's open up some jobs for younger people.
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Emily you’re wondering why you're loathe to throw a ticker tape parade for Arlen Specter? E.J. is right. One does want to credit him for the good stuff as well as the bad, and he’s been willing to push back over the years. But I keep getting stuck by that lofty speech he gave in 2006—opposing the Military Commissions Act—which included a provision that stripped courts of their power to review the constitutionality of enemy detentions.
Remember when he stood up and announced, "I'm not going to support a bill that's blatantly unconstitutional...that suspends a right that goes back to [the Magna Carta in] 1215." And added, "I'd be willing, in the interest of party loyalty, to turn the clock back 500 years, but 800 years goes too far."
And then he voted for it?
Good times.
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I'd love to respond on everyone's Regnerus essay comments, and to
Bonnie on spinsterhood, a word derived from the spindle—spinning having been assigned to an unmarried woman, back in the traditional days when the average age of marriage
for women ran between 27 and 29. Getting promoted from being a spindle-wielder to being the shop's mistress—running the shop, rather than doing the day labor—was a promotion earned in part by having spent
all those years saving up money as a...spinster. Only from your years of labor would you, oh working girls, become a good catch,
someone who could help your husband invest in a shop that the two of you could
call your own.
That late-twenties average age of marriage was called the "Western model," since it took hold in Western Europe, not southern or eastern. Some historians have suggested that the relatively high traditional average age of
marriage was one of the economic engines behind western Europe's success. People in eastern and southern
Europe married their daughters off at comparatively young ages, with correspondingly
damaging effects on fertility (high), maternal and child mortality (high), and
female productivity (low). If you wait to get married, and both parties save up
their pennies to invest in the shop and the kids, it's good for you, good for economy,
and good for society. It's ahistorical to suggest otherwise. So there.
BUT I can't pause to write that paragraph because like Emily
B, I am absolutely gobsmacked by Specter switching parties. Yes, the Republican
party has moved sharply to the right (and to the south—the olde New England
Republican, capitalist, fiscally moderate, and socially liberal, is on life
support) since he was first elected. Are Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe next?
Like you, Emily, I have the image of Arlen Specter attacking
Anita Hill's credibility—and doing it hatefully, misogynistically—seared into my retinas. I swore back then never to forgive, as I suspect did hundreds of thousands of women, appalled by what we saw. But waiting right
beside that image is another one: of Ted Kennedy sitting limply on the same Senatorial
panel, silent and powerless to defend Hill because of his own mottled history. Politicians
are imperfect, much like the rest of us, albeit with more power and more media exposure.
I suppose—like the rest of us—they must be assessed by the totality of
their deeds, not by the worst of their televised moments.
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Sen. Arlen Specter is switching parties, from Republican to Democrat, Chris Cillizza reports for
the Washington Post. I am flamboozled. I understand the calculus—the
word from my family in Philadelphia was that he really was going to lose the
Republican primary to challenger Pat Toomey. What's throwing me, as a
native Pennsylvanian, is all my years of Specter despising. For his
prosecutorial strafing of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas
hearings, first and foremost. Yes I know the right hates him, but I hated him too! Even if he did upbraid Alberto Gonzales over wiretapping without a warrant, and vote against his (former) party almost 40 percent of the time. But now he is lecturing about rolling back executive power in the New York Review of Books and joining Obama and giving the democrats a filibuster-proof 60 senators once Al Franken is seated. What if he gets health care reform through, and good Supreme Court justices, and more immediately ends the confirmation block of Department of Justice appointee Dawn Johnsen? I'll have to eat all those votes I cast against him. Or just appreciate the spectacle of political metamorphosis.
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