Dianne Feinstein and the Perils of an Aging Leadership

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Politics, Washington, News, Obama, Wnyc, President, Lizza, Barack, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In January, Joe Biden will become the oldest President in U.S. history. Of the leaders in the other branches, the youngest is Chief Justice John Roberts, who is sixty-five. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is seventy-eight, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is eighty. The unsteady handling of the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett by the eighty-seven-year-old Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has raised alarm among some Party members and progressive advocacy groups, who say it is time for her to retire. Jane Mayer joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the generational divide in American politics and what can be done about it.

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0:39.0	Your favorite designers, expertly authenticated.
0:42.5	Yeah, eBay. Things people love.
0:48.4	This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about politics.
0:54.3	It's Thursday, December 10th.
0:56.3	I'm Dorothy Wicenden, executive editor of The New Yorker.
1:00.3	Shakespeare wrote King Lear, a tragedy about a monarch undone by the ravages of age
1:05.2	more than 400 years ago.
1:07.8	I will forget my nature, so kind a father. But my horses ready.
1:13.0	Thy asses have gone about them. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven's a pretty
1:18.3	reason. Because they are not eight. Yes indeed. I would make a good fool. To take it again
1:25.0	before's, monstering gratitude. If that weren't my fool, uncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time.
1:32.3	How's that?
1:34.4	That should's not have been old.
1:37.4	Till thou's been wise.
1:40.4	Leading a country is never easy, and the demands are especially challenging as rulers get old.
	...

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