Disclaimer:
I am 70 years old, more resistant to change, and a wee bit out of touch with
some aspects of our modern society.
As we
prepare ourselves to be governed by the new rulers recently elected to
Congress, it may be somewhat shocking for some to learn that this “new wave”
leadership in the Senate really is just a recycling of old material.
It appears
that the baby boomers and others that just recently revolted at the polls to
forge a new direction for our country did so because they felt that the
President and Congress, which this year was one of the most dysfunctional in
American history, acted in ways which were no longer in sync with the wishes of
our modern society.
However, if
we look closely at some of the changes this “new wave” produced in leadership
in critical Senate Congressional Committees, we find that they mostly served as
an opportunity for the Republican geriatric leadership to come out of the
closet as exemplified by their ages that are listed below:
New
Agriculture Committee Chairperson- 78 years old
New
Appropriations Committee Chairperson-77 years old
New Armed
Services Committee Chairperson-78 years old
New Bank,
Housing and Urban Affairs Chairperson-80 years old
New Budget
Committee Chairperson- 70 years old
New
Environment and Public Works Chairpersons-79 years old
New Finance
Committee Chairperson -80 years old
New Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairperson-74 years old
New Veterans
Affairs Committee Chairperson- 70 years old
New
Judiciary Committee Chairperson-81 years old
Contrasting
these statistics with the fact that 1/4 of the top 100 performing companies in
the U.S. are run by CEOs 35 years old and younger, and the Harvard Business
Review’s 2014 findings that the 100 best-performing CEOs in the world
have a median age of 59, one has to wonder if it isn’t time for our U.S. Senate
to follow suit and let the younger folks take over.
Now
that’s not to say that those of us 65 and older should be put out to pasture
because we are no longer competent, but the major slogan of the recent election
was as Mr. Bill Cassidy and others put it “a time for a change and new
leadership.”
When
one thinks about the number of years a 70 plus year old has been a member of
Congress, and the number of PACs and advocacy groups that he or she has made
deals with to get political donations for continual re-election, one has to
wonder about this “new direction” put in power in the Senate.
Just
maybe the recent election was really more about resistance to change and
holding on to the past, rather than a genuine desire for new, innovative
leadership, for it appears the “new wave” has simply put in powerful positions
a different version of old ideas.
However,
we now live in a world of great turbulence and it’s important to remember that, as Peter Drucker once stated,
“The greatest danger in
times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s
logic."
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