This photo was taken in 2018, when they were both in their 70s, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is now 82, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is 80. Most of our Founding Fathers were younger than 45. (Associated Press)
By Burt Constable
Now that the Independence Day fireworks are over, we Americans can get back to the business of keeping our nation going.
When the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1789, Elizabeth Powel, a prominent Philadelphia socialite, asked Benjamin Franklin if our new country was a republic or a monarchy.
“A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” replied the Founding Father, who worried a bit about our future.
“The first man put at the helm will be a good one,” Franklin said of the U.S. presidency, aware that George Washington was assured of being the first to hold that title. “Nobody knows what sort may come afterward. The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.”
Maybe we, the people, should look to the younger generation to stop that from happening. We have the oldest president and Senate in history, and the House isn’t far behind. President Biden will be 80 this year. speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is 82. Minority Leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell is 80. Our average senator is older than 64, while the average member of the House is older than 58.
While people tend to think of our Founding Fathers as old and wise (with a few glaring flaws, especially when it comes to enslaving people and treating women as property), our nation basically was founded by the Generation Xers and Millennials of that era.
Washington was 44 when he signed the Declaration of Independence, and that was the average age of the signers, according to the National Archives. Franklin, at 70, was the oldest to append his signature to that document. Thomas Lynch Jr. and Edward Rutledge both were 26, and 20 more were younger than 40 when they added their signatures. At age 35, U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood of Naperville is the only Illinois member of Congress younger than Washington was at the signing.
Read on here.
Leave a Reply