--- title: The Double Standard of Reactions to Dianne Feinstein's Age description: Congress needs a nuanced discussion about the age of its leaders. The reaction to the Dianne Feinstein situation isn't it. canonical: https://time.com/6167598/dianne-feinstein-age-congress/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-04-15T18:20:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T14:08:00.942Z article:section: Politics og:title: Congress Needs to Rethink Its Obsession With Longevity. The Reaction to Dianne Feinstein Won't Help og:description: Washington is a place full of secrets that no one keeps. og:url: https://time.com/6167598/dianne-feinstein-age-congress/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbfabd220b6996351/698a30f109208fec7941910e/Dianne-Feinstein.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: U.S. Senate Negotiates Ahead Of Possible Cloture Vote On Infrastructure Bill og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Congress Needs to Rethink Its Obsession With Longevity. The Reaction to Dianne Feinstein Won't Help twitter:description: Washington is a place full of secrets that no one keeps. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbfabd220b6996351/698a30f109208fec7941910e/Dianne-Feinstein.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Congress Needs to Rethink Its Obsession With Longevity. The Reaction to Dianne Feinstein Won't Help  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Apr 15, 2022 6:20 PM UTC  Sen. Dianne Feinstein steps out of the Senate Chamber after voting at the U.S. Capitol on July 21, 2021. Sen. Dianne Feinstein steps out of the Senate Chamber after voting at the U.S. Capitol on July 21, 2021.Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Apr 15, 2022 6:20 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ Washington is a place full of secrets that no one keeps. One is that the Senate is a gerontocracy, where age is currency and longevity is strength; when the 116th Congress began last year, the average [age](https://guides.loc.gov/116th-congress-book-list) of the Senators was just shy of 63\. There are seven members on the far side of 80, including its oldest member, 88-year-old Dianne Feinstein. Which brings us to a second secret that seldom stays quiet: once a dam breaks, the flood in Washington comes quickly and with little mercy. And yesterday, the Hoover Dam of Senate decorum came crashing down the Colorado River, sweeping away the civilized silence around Feinstein. Feinstein’s hometown newspaper, The San Francisco _Chronicle_, published on Thursday a damning [report](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/dianne-feinstein-senate-17079487.php) about her reputation and perceived shortcomings in her job, which she has held since 1992\. Based on public events and anonymous sources, including three of Feinstein’s Democratic colleagues in Congress, the newspaper describes a series of incidents that suggest the veteran politician is, at best, a beat slower than she was in her younger, trailblazing years. At its worst, the story casts Feinstein as an aged woman well past her prime, so much so that Senators now preemptively introduce themselves to Feinstein to spare her the awkward moment of having to ask their identities. Once it becomes open season on a story like this one, everyone seems eager to chime in, rushing out from their silence or whisper campaigns onto the public square to shout stories that confirm the initial crack. It’s hard to imagine now that it was a [non-story](https://www.axios.com/durban-feinstein-judiciary-committee-aece64cc-6627-4e44-b05d-4db1bac7aa4d.html) when Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois—age 77—took over the Judiciary Committee in 2020 instead of Feinstein; no one then wanted to insult its top Democrat when she was quietly deposed. But D.C. can become a vicious den. Feinstein declined to be interviewed for the story, but she couldn’t stop it from ricocheting around the Beltway. On Thursday, other news organizations were either repeating The _Chronicle_’s anecdotes or adding their own. By nightfall, Feinstein had [called](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Sen-Dianne-Feinstein-defends-her-job-17082280.php) The _Chronicle_’s editorial board, defended herself, and declared that she would serve at least until her term ends in 2025, at which point, she will be 91 years old. She has already filed the paperwork to run again in 2024, a mostly performative act that lets her to continue meager fundraising. But Washington, in its own perverse way, often rewards longevity. Since the mid-twentieth century, the Senate’s _pro tem_ role has been passed to the most senior member of the majority party. If Democrats can defend their majority this fall, that role would pass to Feinstein next year after 82-year-old Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont retires. Or, if Republicans are able to pick up a seat, while defending their incumbent ones, the role as third-in-line-to-the-presidency would fall to 89-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. He would come behind Vice President Kamala Harris and 82-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the line of succession. (Though Pelosi may lose the gavel after this fall’s elections.) Put simply: the longer someone stays in Washington, the more difficult it is for them to leave. If they wait long enough, they’re literally heartbeats away from the White House. Some simply refuse to exit. No one can credibly [argue](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/report-dianne-feinstein-memory-rapidly-deteriorating) that Sen. Robert [Byrd](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1975/09/the-man-who-runs-the-senate/308168/), Sen. Strom [Thurmond](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/27/us/strom-thurmond-foe-of-integration-dies-at-100.html), or Sen. Thad [Cochran](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/12/29/thad-cochran-the-last-southern-gentleman-089917) were writing their best chapters by the end of their services. (For an absolute scorcher on Cochran’s ability, [read](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/thad-cochran-the-last-of-the-naive-republicans/372084/) Molly Ball’s legendary profile written at _The Atlantic_ before she joined TIME.) Few are rushing to hire these once-high-octane octogenarians as lobbyists. The lawmakers who didn’t cash out in their prime for jobs on K Street face uneasy retirements out of public life. Which brings up one final Washington secret that everyone knows: women are held to a different standard. [Byrd](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1975/09/the-man-who-runs-the-senate/308168/), a West Virginia Democrat and the Senate _pro tem_, died in office at age 100; by the end, he was [voting](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/us/politics/24byrd.html) with simple hand signals. Thurmond, too, retired just a year before his death, at 100\. While [not always](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-12-05-0212050114-story.html) on the right side of history, he mostly got a pass for his evidently declining capacity at the end of his term. As _The New Yorker_ [quoted](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/dianne-feinsteins-missteps-raise-a-painful-age-question-among-senate-democrats) a former Senate aide in 2020: “For his last ten years, Strom Thurmond didn’t know if he was on foot or on horseback.” He, too, died in the _pro tem_ role but [received](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/biden-will-need-partners-to-restore-our-institutions-where-will-he-find-them/2020/10/27/11f3f506-186d-11eb-befb-8864259bd2d8%5Fstory.html) a hero’s funeral. And a 2007 _Politico_ [story](https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/thad-cochran-says-not-retiring-senate-243918) on Cochran, under the headline “Frail and Disoriented, Cochran Says He’s Not Retiring,” had this as the second paragraph: “The 79-year-old Cochran appeared frail and at times disoriented during a brief hallway interview on Wednesday. He was unable to answer whether he would remain chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and at one point, needed a staffer to remind him where the Senate chamber is located.” Cochran [retired](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/us/politics/thad-cochran-retire-senate.html) mid-term at age 80, and [died](https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/30/thad-cochran-dies-mississippi-senator-remembered-service/1285123001/) a year later. But Feinstein? If the scenes as reported by The _Chronicle_ and others are accurate—and not even Feinstein’s fiercest defenders are denying them—they come at an uncomfortable time. There have been enough public moments of her making mistakes to merit the reporting, such as [repeating](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article248666375.html) the same question verbatim at a hearing, [delivering](https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2022/04/dianne-feinstein-88-senate-memory-report/) a eulogy for a decades-long friend without mentioning the deceased’s name, and [praising](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/16/feinstein-hug-graham-hearings/) the Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Republican, for [running](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/16/feinstein-hug-graham-hearings/) “one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in” for Justice Amy Coney Barrett—an assessment that sent Democrats groaning. The _Chronicle_ story concludes that “it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.” In an accompanying [editorial](https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-If-Feinstein-is-mentally-unfit-17082252.php), the paper urges her Democratic colleagues to force the conversation. That may be appropriate, while not necessarily feeling fair. It’s worth remembering that Feinstein’s aging male colleagues were mostly allowed to leave the Senate on [their terms](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-17/skelton-dianne-feinstein-retirement-calls-senate). For instance, Sen. Johnny Isakson had been serving in the Senate with Parkinson’s Disease, and no one seriously pushed him to leave against his will. The Georgia Republican’s health remained his news to discuss when he was [ready](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/28/755054723/citing-health-challenges-republican-sen-johnny-isakson-to-retire-at-end-of-year). He didn’t [disclose](https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/johnny-isakson-been-diagnosed-with-parkinson-disease/US8IRvzCDuyjJ1AyJSNExM/) his diagnosis for two and a half years, in 2015. Arizona Sen. John McCain’s more public [fight](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/obituaries/john-mccain-dead.html) with brain cancer brought a national conversation about the disease. The same when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts [died](http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2009/08/26/senator%5Fedward%5Fm%5Fkennedy%5Fdies%5Fat%5F77/) a decade earlier from the same hellish brain cancer. But when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020 at age 87, it didn’t take long for liberals to [rage](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/ruth-bader-ginsburg-retirement-question.html) that she should have [retired](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/magazine/ginsburg-successor-obama.html) when a Democrat held the White House so they didn’t lose the seat to a conservative. No one on the Hill has so far denied that Feinstein has slowed down. She is no longer among the fiercest legislators on her side of the Capitol. So legendary is her tenacity that Annette Bening portrayed her in a film about Feinstein’s [persistence](https://time.com/5725001/the-report-movie-true-story/) in investigating the CIA’s enhanced interrogation programs and producing what is widely called “The Torture Report.” But rare is the 80-something today who has the same edge they had in the mid-2000s. But it’s also true that seniority remains, for the most part, the unwritten law of the Senate; longevity begets privilege. But a juicy story opens the door for the pile-on, and no one on this side of the Atlantic understands _schadenfreude_ better than Washington’s insiders. Yet those same clucking beaks would do well to remember that showing too much glee lands can land you one ill-worded observation away from acting like a sexist. In that, Feinstein and her backers still have power, even if the Senator herself doesn’t always remember to deploy it. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6167598/dianne-feinstein-age-congress/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6167598/dianne-feinstein-age-congress/"},"headline":"Congress Needs to Rethink Its Obsession With Longevity. The Reaction to Dianne Feinstein Won't Help","datePublished":"2022-04-15T18:20:45.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T14:08:00.942Z","description":"A report about the longtime Senator's ability to serve is prompting a vicious set of reactions","url":"https://time.com/6167598/dianne-feinstein-age-congress/","keywords":["The D.C. Brief","feature"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbfabd220b6996351/698a30f109208fec7941910e/Dianne-Feinstein.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Philip Elliott","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbfabd220b6996351/698a30f109208fec7941910e/Dianne-Feinstein.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"U.S. Senate Negotiates Ahead Of Possible Cloture Vote On Infrastructure Bill","caption":"U.S. Senate Negotiates Ahead Of Possible Cloture Vote On Infrastructure Bill","creditText":"Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/the-dc-brief/","name":"The D.C. Brief"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6167598/dianne-feinstein-age-congress/","name":"Congress Needs to Rethink Its Obsession With Longevity. The Reaction to Dianne Feinstein Won't Help"}}]}] ```