They can be roommates
/
and make a new friend every day
Dianne Feinstein is nine years older than Bob Dylan. She was 23 when the Edsel first began to be produced.
And 10 years older than Keith Richards
WASHINGTON — When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like those they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years.
Instead, the lawmaker said, they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours.
Rather than delve into policy, Feinstein, 88, repeated the same small-talk questions, like asking the lawmaker what mattered to voters in their district, they said, with no apparent recognition the two had already had a similar conversation.
The episode was so unnerving that the lawmaker — who spoke to The Chronicle on condition they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic — began raising concerns with colleagues to see if some kind of intervention to persuade Feinstein to retire was possible. Feinstein’s term runs through the end of 2024. The conversation occurred several weeks before the death of her husband in February.
“I have worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details, basically couldn’t resist a conversation where she was driving some bill or some idea. All of that is gone,” the lawmaker said. “She was an intellectual and political force not that long ago, and that’s why my encounter with her was so jarring. Because there was just no trace of that.”
Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.
But (ahem) this is also true:
Some of [her supporters] bristle at singling out Feinstein, when congressional history is filled with aging male politicians who remained in office despite their declining state.
As is this — her incapacity is actually old news, even if it’s growing worse:
Concerns about Feinstein’s ability to hold her job have followed her for years and intensified in 2020 when a series of accounts circulated about her performance. The attention two years ago was focused around the possibility that she would become chair of the Judiciary Committee under President Biden.
She defended her abilities at the time. “I don’t feel my cognitive abilities have diminished,” she told the Los Angeles Times in December 2020. “Do I forget something sometimes? Quite possibly.”
She had been responding to a December 2020 New Yorker story that reported Feinstein was “seriously struggling” with memory loss. The article said Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had to tell Feinstein more than once that she needed to give up the Judiciary Committee leadership post because she didn’t remember he had already told her.
A month prior, she repeated a question to a witness, word for word, in a hearing with seemingly no awareness of having done so, and she shocked colleagues at the end of the contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett by unexpectedly praising Republicans for having conducted a great process.
“This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” Feinstein told the Republican chair of the committee. “I want to thank you for your fairness.”
Since then, the situation has seemingly worsened, the lawmakers and former aides who spoke to The Chronicle said. Even those who consider themselves among Feinstein’s closest allies worry her health and memory struggles will rapidly deteriorate or cause public embarrassment.
A scary thought:
Adding urgency to the recent concerns: If Democrats retain control of the Senate next year, Feinstein will succeed retiring Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy as the Senate’s president pro tem — putting her third in line for the presidency. Feinstein has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission that would allow her to run in 2024, a formality that lets her keep her fundraising accounts active, though she has not yet declared whether she intends to run.
And, finally, why aren’t they showing this same compassion for Corn Pop’s pal?
Still, there’s a sense of resignation about the situation* amid the sadness and frustration, The Chronicle found, as discussions about how to persuade Feinstein to step aside have yet to produce any results.
“It shouldn’t end this way for her. She deserves better,” said the California Democratic member of Congress. “Those who think that they are serving her or honoring her by sweeping all of this under the rug are doing her an enormous disservice.”
*Nice pun
