(New York) Dianne Feinstein was certainly not the first person to read a question written by herself or one of her advisers during a hearing in the United States Senate. The problem is that the then 87-year-old Democratic senator from California asked the same question twice, with the same intonations, a few minutes apart. The witness to whom she was speaking, Jack Dorsey, then boss of Twitter, had the delicacy to repeat his initial response as if nothing had happened.
But the clip of the interaction soon ended up on a conservative site, along with a message that was both descriptive and prescriptive: “Senator Feinstein just asked the same question twice and didn’t notice. It’s time to retire ! »
The episode dates back to November 2020. Next month, Dianne Feinstein will celebrate her 90th birthday. She will then become the first nonagenarian to sit in the Senate since Democratic Senator from West Virginia Robert Byrd, who died in full office at the age of 92, in 2010.
But the dean of the Upper House of the United States Congress still does not seem ready to retire, even if her state of health is causing even more concern than two and a half years ago.
It is both a personal tragedy for one of the most admired politicians of her generation, a political problem for Democrats and a telling moment for the Senate.
Dianne Feinstein is the dean of an institution that has five octogenarians, including her four-month junior Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, and 29 septuagenarians, 11 of whom are at least 75, out of a total of 100.
None of them threaten the record of former South Carolina Republican senator Strom Thurmond, who was 100 when he resigned. In 2020, one of his former advisers told the journalist from New Yorker Jane Mayer: “For the last ten years of his life, Strom Thurmond did not know whether he was on foot or on horseback. »
Power and prestige
There are many reasons why elected members of the Senate stay there forever. Seniority is one. It offers several advantages, including access to the most prestigious or influential positions. An example: from 1989 to 2008, Senator Robert Byrd was able to direct colossal sums of money to his small state thanks to his role as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, of which he was a member during his 51 years in the Senate.
The prestige attached to the office of senator is another reason, as well as the moral and psychological comfort provided by a dedicated staff. The pressure of the parties, which do not want to have to defend seats left vacant, can also play a role.
Of course, the Senate isn’t the only place octogenarians are dealing with politics these days, as Joe Biden can attest in the White House.
But the Senate is a special case. And Dianne Feinstein adds her name to a long list of elected officials who have experienced a painful end of career there. Some of his female colleagues also see sexism in the calls for his resignation which have again been heard in recent weeks.
“We have male members who are struggling in various ways, and I don’t hear anyone suggesting they retire,” Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, 73, said in mid-April.
Senator Stabenow made the statement while her colleague from California was confined to her San Francisco residence due to shingles. The absence of Dianne Feinstein in Washington would probably not have caused such a stir if the senator did not sit on the very important Senate Judiciary Committee.
PHOTO SARAH SILBIGER, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein has been away for nearly three months.
However, for nearly three months, the Democrats were unable to confirm Joe Biden’s candidates for the federal bench because of this absence. Hence these calls for the resignation of Feinstein, whose seat could be filled quickly by a person appointed by the Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom.
Leave with your head held high
On May 9, a frail Dianne Feinstein, her face half-paralyzed by shingles, eased the pressure somewhat by returning to Washington. But his condition did not reassure anyone. An online magazine reporter Slate first recounted an exchange with the senator in which the latter did not seem to remember that she had been absent from Washington.
THE New York Times followed with an article revealing that the chosen one was suffering from post-infectious encephalitis, a rare and potentially debilitating complication of shingles that had not been previously announced.
Still, Dianne Feinstein insists she won’t step down until her current term ends on Jan. 3, 2025. She could have walked out of the Senate with her head held high at the respectable age of 85, at the end of her term. of his previous term. The first woman to be elected mayor of San Francisco will have left her mark in Washington by drafting the bill that banned assault rifles from 1994 to 2004 and by leading a damning investigation into the torture of the CIA under George W. Bush.
Instead of a well-deserved retirement, Dianne Feinstein is treated to macabre jokes from those around her, one of which was revealed by the New York Times : “His relatives joke in private that, perhaps, when Mme Feinstein will be dead, she’ll start considering quitting. »