McConnell says he ‘won’t be able to return to the Senate floor to vote quite yet’

Mitch McConnell is 82 years old and has now spent months in and out of the Capitol dealing with falls, a concussion, and whatever this latest health episode is. He says he's listening to his doctors and won't rush back to vote. Fine. Nobody should want a man in his eighties white-knuckling it to the floor against medical advice just to make a quorum. But the fact that this keeps happening, that we keep getting these terse updates about when the Senate Minority Leader might be well enough to show up, says something the man himself will never say out loud.

The Senate isn't a retirement home with good benefits. It's supposed to be a functioning legislative body, and right now one of its most powerful members is running it, or trying to, from somewhere other than the floor. That's not a personal failing on McConnell's part. Getting old and getting hurt happens to everyone lucky enough to live long enough. But institutions are supposed to have some mechanism for dealing with that reality besides "he'll come back when he can."

This is the same conversation we had with Feinstein, the same one hovering around half the Senate leadership on both sides. Voters keep sending octogenarians back to Washington and then acting surprised when the job proves too physically demanding for people well past normal retirement age. McConnell deserves respect for his decades of service, real respect, not the fake kind. But respect also means being honest that a body this important shouldn't be waiting on doctor's notes to know if it can vote.