On the dangerous reign of the octogenarians. By Susan B. Glasser  Source photograph by Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call / Getty The tape is painful to watch. Whatever you think of Mitch McConnell, it was simply a political car crash to see the Senate Minority Leader, during a press conference in his home state of Kentucky on Wednesday, freeze up and stare blankly from a lectern for more than thirty long seconds, even after an aide rushed to his side and asked gently, “Did you hear the question, Senator?” All the worse, the question to which he never responded was whether he would run again when his Senate term is up in three years. Ouch. McConnell, who is eighty-one years old, has experienced a precipitous and very public decline since falling at a Washington hotel during a fund-raiser last March—and suffering a concussion. So far, the senator has refused to provide detailed information about his medical condition; indeed, his office sought to quell concerns after Wednesday’s event by claiming he was simply “momentarily lightheaded.” A letter from Congress’s attending physician, a day later, pronouncing him “medically clear” to keep up his schedule was hardly reassuring, either. The latest incident, coming after a similar moment of incapacity at a Capitol Hill press conference earlier this summer, has made clear that something serious is afflicting the top Republican in the Senate. In six months, McConnell has gone from the G.O.P.’s feared powerbroker to a symbol of how quickly things can go wrong for America’s fragile gerontocracy: running the world one minute, frail and unable to parry questions the next. | 
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