Grassley’s office doubles as a dating service

Sen. Chuck Grassley recently announced with pride that 20 couples on his payroll have married since he took office.I think it’s time to turn down the heat in the office to avoid mixed marriages – Iowa, the other from a blue state.

Since no other senator has announced numbers, I think Sen. Grassley is first among one.

Grassley is trying to prove he is still strong enough to serve in the Senate. I already had quasi-evidence. I had googled “Grassley and pushups” and got a video of the senator and a colleague doing push ups for the camera.

In a bizarre bit of logic, that video apparently proves that Grassley, now at 90, is still capable of thinking and voting, as strenuous as that is. But, he’s unable to escape his need to talk of his push up power.

In another bit of braggadocio, a subdivision of vanity, he informs us that he visited all counties in Iowa this year. He is tediously vain about his strength and his ability to ride in a car to 99 counties. I hope he sits up and never naps in the back seat. Those visits only proves he has a lot of gas and no pipeline to carry it off.

His pride in that accomplishment is featured in his weekly newsletter. How exactly that relates to his service as Senator is not clear. The best senators have found the telephone and computer make a senatorial office available at any time a constituent has a problem or question. Visiting a county is unlikely to provide any new information, concerns, or needs.

Visiting every county is a geographic challenge, not necessarily a learning one. Does the senator meet with a teacher or principal about school vouchers? Or any Democrats? How long does he spend in the county? It ‘s a vain effort to illustrate a self-view: active, spry, and ageless.

Back to the pushups. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas gets closer to the floor, but as pushups go, Grassley is pretty good. Would that it meant anything. That he can still move about without a wheelchair is wonderful, but irrelevant.

Age does matter. No one does as well, no matter what the profession, at 80 as they did at 60. I’ve made the trip: attention span is shorter, retention of facts more difficult, fatigue comes earlier in the day, bathroom breaks are more frequent.

People retire for good reason. Doctors generally retire in their 60s. according to the A.M.A. Teachers are burned out early. Social Security starts for all of us between 62 and 70. It is the time when skills to decrease.

Senators are not exempt from aging, including those who can do pushups or whose employees marry a colleague. You don’t have to suffer from Alzheimer’s to forget things. You don’t need a sprain to ache. You shouldn’t need a push to depart.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”