I agree with the NR editorial put out today calling for Mitch McConnell to step down from leadership of the Senate.

A great deal of the Right has spent much of the last year (or longer, in my case) questioning President Biden’s fitness for office based on his age. The same questions have been justly put to Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. If she is no longer competent to have her own power of attorney, she is almost by definition not competent to serve as a senator, making laws for all of us.

All institutions in the Western world are facing the problem that medical advances, and the decline of smoking, mean that our elders are much more typically living long enough to experience severe cognitive decline, moderate to serious forms of dementia, senility, or Alzheimer’s.

Just over a decade ago, the papacy experienced its first modern “retirement” to handle an anticipated mental decline. So too other institutions will have to find rules, or just norms, for telling people that there is a time in life beyond which it is dangerous to hold grave responsibilities. A set of norms like that ultimately respects us, acknowledging that we are more than our public selves, and that there is a time when we can do little else but be cared for by those who love us, and prepare for the end.