Dave Shapiro’s Volcanic Ash column in today’s Star-Advertiser raises an overlooked issue.
He points out that the leading candidates for House and Senate are old enough that they would never accumulate the kind of seniority that gave Hawaii’s Dan Inouye so much legislative clout.
He points out that Hirono, if she wins, would be 65 when sworn in, the same age as Akaka was when he joined the Senate.
Akaka, who is retiring this year, was sworn in on May 16, 1990, at 65. He’s amassed only enough seniority to chair a third-tier committee, Indian Affairs, and for a decade hasn’t gotten the courtesy of a floor vote on his “Akaka Bill” for Native Hawaiian recognition.
Ed Case and Linda Lingle are 59 and 58 respectively. Younger, but not young enough to ever build up that much seniority.
Compare this to Inouye, who joined the Senate at age 38.
Shapiro, as usual, doesn’t mince words.
And as Hawaii moves toward replacing our 87-year-old Sens. Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye without taking age into account, we could be setting ourselves up for a generation of impotence in the upper chamber of Congress.
I think Dave has put his finger on a very real issue. But where do we go from here? Any options?
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
initial thought: Akaka’s and Inouye’s eventual replacements need not rely on securing a similar lifetime guaranteed job once elected. for Inouye’s position in particular, a similar 50-year term in Hawaii’s most powerful political spotlight seems highly unlikely compared to the post-statehood era, even if Inouye’s replacement is in their 30s.
second thought: The median age of taking office for currently serving Senators is 50 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_Senators_by_age
third thought: I agree with Shapiro as well, but for mathematical reasons of US seniority only.
per the usual, the discussion will end there. Winning candidates are going to be in the same age bracket as the voting population:
Older people.
Seniority is relative. So if 1/2 the Senate is over 70 and will retire in 6 years, someone coming is at 62 years could be in the top half in a short period of time. Likewise, perhaps Akaka was voted in on the tail end of a large group of similar age. Then it wouldn’t matter how long he stays. So while absolute age is part of the equation, relative age is just as important. A fuller analysis would have included this. Although i know he’s limited in space. And Dave, any chance you get back to blogging?
It says a lot about Hawaii’s ossified political culture that there’s not even a single young mainstream democrat running for the US House this year, let alone the Senate (Gabbard Jr. certainly doesn’t count). And it’s a shame because there are some bright young lights like Billy Kenoi, Brian Schatz and Shan Tsutsui who could credibly run and serve us well in the long-term.
PS When is Dave Shapiro going to re-start his most excellent blog? I miss it.
The teabaggers who insist on term limits for their states are also wiping out their seniorities.
I have problems with the notion that political office is a lifetime position.
With more senators dropping out because of the gridlock and incivility of the chamber, seniority may come sooner rather than later for anyone entering it now.
I repeat (in thought if not wordage), at the high risk of injuring someone’s, anyone’s sensibilities of their delicates….
Interesting issue.
But even if we wentbig time for this consideration, and elected young buckaroos, there’d be no guarantees of longevity. Irrespective of mortality tables, they could retire, die in office (officially, that is) be voted out or just quit (again, officially, that is).
Reminds of the poor representation of “term limits.” While we do actually have term limits – they’re called “elections”- instituting nominal caps & limits tends to favor those lacking in seniority, takes away much comparative power of “small” states (ex. Hawaii that could be blessed with long term reps), and is a dupe to any passing fad, like the tee party.
Dave, “t,” and Curious George all make very useful points, even as they do not completely agree. Excellent!
I am not familiar with the conditions surrounding the election of youthful senators in other states. Inouye got in as a leader of a youthful surge of newly organized voters, a combination of returned AJA veterans and mobilized plantation workers. That speaks to t’s observation:
Winning candidates are going to be in the same age bracket as the voting population….
Younger people today not only do not vote, they tend to be ANTI-political and deeply skeptical of the whole enterprise. Because they see (some aspects of) the face of the future better than their parents, they see the environmental threat as existential, they recoil against the corporate sponsorship of politicians and they are more egalitarian, less racist, less homophobic, than older folks. But they don’t vote.
The Obama campaign led to an influx of younger voters who were charmed into suspending their disbelief. But once in power, Obama failed to exhibit any of the “audacity” he preached during the campaign and any Hope people had that he would be the “transformational figure” which had been promised to them, slowly faded away. SO rather than leading to a permanent rejuvenization of Democratic politics, it left a lot of young people feeling like they had been “suckers” for daring to believe.
There exists a POTENTIAL for a new social mobilization of younger voters around “green energy,” sustainability, clean elections, reduced militarism, equality, reinvestment in education and job creation, but it is waiting for smart, dedicated and honest activists to take this project on.
SOme of us had hoped the Obama and Abercrombie administrations would nurture such a movement. The inclusion of those young staffers in positions of leadership in Neil’s office had the potential for this to happen, but they were “gagged out,” coughed up by Neil’s network as a foreign body it was unable to digest, to assimilate.
I still see signs of energy in networks like Kanu and among “techies,” though the Kanu people, like “young people” in general, are hobbled by a reflexive non-partisanship. And the techies tend to be under the sway of a Libertarian, small-business ideology which chains them to the Republican Party, putting them into a alliance with corporatist and authoritarian forces which are hostile to environmental concerns, equality and the rights of employees. Hard to build anything more than a micro-movement with those encumberances.
Oops. I turned on the italic mode to highlight t’s quote, but forgot to turn it off. Sorry.
Seems to me that politicians who stay in office too long are the problem. Term limits would level the playing field.
As a voter in the Second Congressional District, the most attractive candidate in that race is her age plus her intelligence. The other core issues such as her belief system(s) and her positions make it difficult to accept her as my choice.
Unfortunately, the other candidates in this race have as much chance of winning the nomination – and the General Election – as one of my cats.
However, the most important long-term concern that I need to address is Mufi Hannemann. He is morally & ethically challenged and no more acceptable to me than any of the TeaPartyTypes currently sitting in office. He may have a (D) after his name, but he is not in my coarner of the Big Tent.
Ran into Brian Schatz the other day and asked him what he plans to do over the next several election cycles. His response: A second term as LG and then a run for Governor. He made it very, very clear when I asked him that he has no interest whatsoever in going off to Washington.
I guess we’re stuck with Mufi – maybe Colleen and her replacement if she decides to run for Big Dan’s seat will work with those of us here in the Second District who are puked out by The Big & Tall BullyMan.
I have a 9 month old grandson. Maybe we should run him. He has no political baggage and could get mega seniority, maybe 80 – 90 years!
Seriously, I agree with Richard above. Political office should not be a lifetime occupation. Long service in office gets you seniority but it also gets you arrogance, corruption and feelings of entitlement. I like the example of some of our founding fathers who, if I remember my history correctly, served rather reluctantly and when their term was over went back to being gentlemen farmers.
Is it seniority or the fact the Inouye is on the Appropriations committee? When Akaka was in the House, he sat on the House Appropriations Committee — made for wonderful earmarks provided by the two Dan’s. Although earmarks aren’t so prominent today as they were a few years ago, we stand to lose considerable federal funding when Senator Inouye is gone from the committee. Just ask Alaskan’s once Ted Stevens was gone or West Virginian’s once Robert Byrd died. Even Massachusetts when Ted Kennedy left the scene. Seniority is important but seniority as an appropriator is “priceless”.
WELL it’s about time a member of Hawaii’s mainstream media address the issue of Dan Inouye’s age. I always assumed it was only us crazy bloggers who recognized the Dan Inouye tsunami a mile way. Way to go Shapiro!
When Inouye retires who will be around to protect jobs at Pearl Harbor? Bring in federal construction contracts? Grants and other “pork” items directed at UH?
The list goes on forever.
Another factor in this is the attitude prevalent in Hawaii that one must “wait your turn.” The problem of both senators aging out was apparent six years ago. When Ed Case decided to make a run in the primary he was handed his head for being uppity.
Politics in Hawaii has long been a waiting game….
In a geographically isolated and relatively small society with few natural resources and a (necessarily) limited economy, one might expect to find a rather cautious consensus-based political culture. New initiatives and proposals would take longer to work out between interested parties because so much is at stake for all players in all matters (or at least, that’s how people would come to feel in a rather paranoid way). There might just be one dominant “big tent” political party that embraced all ideologies on the condition that those who join be team players. Career advancement would be based on a seniority system.
With a relatively small population, there is also a relatively small talent pool. For example, one could argue that all of the Hawaii candidates in the coming congressional election are basically unqualified, and range in talent from mediocre to incompetent. Moving up the ranks slowly helps to insure that candidates have some modicum of work experience, and helps to work against the “Peter principle”, in which employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence. Perhaps one classic example of the flaws of a system with open competition that promotes rapid advancement is arguably the presidency of Barrack Obama, whose only real prior political experience was two years in the US Senate (during which, it has been argued, all he did was prepare for the coming presidential election).
In itself, there would be nothing wrong with a consensus-based political system with promotion based on seniority. Even economically advanced societies like Germany and Japan are closer in political culture to Hawaii than to the US. While it would be understandable for an observer from the continental US to wonder, “Gee, why can’t Hawaii be like the last ten states I lived in?”, it’s a facile critique in the face of history and geographic realities. The US is no longer the measure of all things.
A more refined critique might be “Can one have a consensus-based political culture without a culture of ‘focus'”? By ‘focus’, I mean the kind of national culture that one finds in Japan and Germany, based on extraordinary discipline, organization and high educational attainment. In Germany, every five years three men representing the government, labor and business interests enter a room and do not emerge until they have hammered out the labor policy of Germany for the next five years, which the entire society adheres to. Those three men probably have advanced degrees from elite German universities. In fact, in Germany, even workers who seek to become waiters and taxi drivers have to spend years working on their qualifications. Can one have a proper culture of consensus without a culture of high discipline and an obsession with education? One might expect a culture of consensus that lacks rigor and intense organization to be dysfunctional (although this might be hidden during periods of economic booms).
A more troubling critique might be “Can Hawaii have such a consensus-based political culture IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?” If all a society needs to do to foster an economy is build roads and houses and hotels and fields of sugar cane and military bases and shopping malls, then having a relatively static political culture that has little open debate or deliberation is feasible. But that is a 1950s-style economy with an underlying 1950s ethos of conformity that might be out-of-step with the 21st century. The only way to advance economic diversification would be to accept a new kind of political culture, and vice versa. This is of course the chicken-and-egg dilemma — how do you build one without already having the other.
But there is also another dilemma. Who really wants to diversify Hawaii’s economy or make it’s political culture more open and oriented toward rational discussion and debate (rather than horse trading)? What plans or proposals are there for economic diversification? Aside from Civil Beat — the existence of which is sort of a fluke — what interest is there in greater discussion of public policy in Hawaii? The elimination of good reporting from the Star Advertiser in part might reflect the fact that people are generally more interested in sports.
The future might lie with relatively young guys like Ryan Ozawa who like doing cool new stuff with their technology. Also, those kind of guys would probably live in town, in the “Third City”, where they can get to all sorts of cool urban amenities on foot in all directions. But one would expect that to be far off in the future.
From a big picture perspective, the seniority system in the Senate was suspect from its inception and totally unacceptable currently.
I can’t think of another institution in society where seniority and only seniority determines positions of influence and power. (Okay, political party matters but given the cyclical nature of politics, your moment will come.)
But I also don’t see this changing anytime soon.
From the small picture perspective, I suppose if you wanted to game the system, a state would elect a 30 year old and hopes s/he serves for 60 years thereby guaranteeing the person would rise to be chair of Appropriations.
This is where the problem lies. Even if a younger person were elected, there is no guarantee the person would serve for decades. There are far more examples of senators who leave office after a few terms rather than hunker down for another 20 years in the hopes of getting a plum committee.
Face it, Inouye himself was an aberration in getting elected at a very young age. Hard to imagine someone that age getting elected today.