OPINION:
When I watched Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, return to the Capitol earlier this month, I did not see a Republican lawmaker. I saw a patient.
After three months away from the Senate following a fall, hospitalization and pneumonia, Mr. McConnell returned in a wheelchair. He acknowledged that he is “not quite back to 100%” and said he would continue physical therapy while trying to be present for important votes.
As a physician, what concerns me is not the wheelchair. Many people who use wheelchairs are capable of performing demanding jobs. My concern is that Mr. McConnell took a serious fall, was hospitalized, battled pneumonia, underwent months of rehabilitation and now faces the physical toll of recovery.
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I have not examined Mr. McConnell, and I cannot diagnose his condition from a television screen, but I recognize what recovery from serious illness looks like.
Recovery depends on appropriate nutrition, physical therapy, adequate sleep and support. Another fall for Mr. McConnell could be catastrophic, potentially even deadly. The demands of serving in the Senate do not disappear just because someone is recovering.
The larger issue, however, extends beyond Mr. McConnell’s health: Our government has virtually no guardrails for situations such as this. We have minimum — not maximum — ages to serve in Congress.
When it comes to whether someone remains medically capable of doing the job, we largely rely on the individual, their family and their political team.
This is not a Republican problem. I said the same thing as questions mounted around Sen. Dianne Feinstein several years ago. I have raised the same concern about Presidents Biden and Trump. My standard does not change depending on the letter next to someone’s name. Nor should the answer simply be an arbitrary age cutoff.
Two people can be 84 and have dramatically different levels of physical and cognitive function. We should establish objective, independent and transparent guardrails for those who serve in federal office.
Congress should convene independent medical experts to determine the minimum functional standards necessary to do these jobs. Elected officials deserve medical privacy, but the public deserves to know that the people making decisions on their behalf are capable of doing the job.
We should also have serious conversations about term limits. Mr. McConnell entered the Senate in 1985 and has announced that he will retire when his current term ends.
Our system allows members of Congress to remain in office for decades with no structural endpoint other than losing an election, voluntarily leaving office or dying. The Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that state-imposed congressional term limits are unconstitutional and that establishing them would require a constitutional amendment.
This system has yet another problem. We need young people in office who represent the generations that will live with the decisions Congress makes today. Yet the way Congress works often requires members to serve for years before they accumulate real power.
Mr. McConnell served for more than two decades before becoming his party’s Senate leader and then held that position for 18 years.
When power is concentrated among those who have been there the longest, and members are pressured to vote with their party, we risk losing the independent voices that are meant to make representative government work.
Term limits and medical guardrails address different problems. A younger member can become seriously ill, while an older member can remain extraordinarily capable. Medical standards should never consist simply of an age limit.
Still, elected office is public service, not lifetime tenure.
When an 84-year-old man is in medical recovery, our first instinct should not be to ask how quickly we can get him back onto the Senate floor. It should be to ask whether we are giving him the opportunity to recover safely.
There is something deeply troubling about a political system in which an elderly person can become physically diminished yet remain surrounded by incentives pushing toward continued service. Whatever Americans think of Mr. McConnell’s politics, he deserves the opportunity to recover with dignity.
Moreover, Americans deserve a government built for reality. People age, they get sick, and their abilities change. We should not wait for the next senator or president to force us into the same conversation. The guardrails should already be there.
• Dr. Anahita Dua is a vascular surgeon and founder and chair of Healthcare for Action.
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