It’s hard to be a cheerful person when you’re in the news business these days. There’s a lot of bad news. But as someone who appreciates good writing, bad news that’s written with style is easier to digest than your average story. And good writing is what Mary Kate Cary specializes in.

Cary, a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, wrote more than 100 presidential addresses when she served as a White House speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to early 1992. In her story this week for The Conversation, she tackles something that is worrying a large percentage of America’s voters: Why are “Biden and Trump – who are more than a decade and a half beyond the average American retirement age – stepping forward again for one of the hardest jobs in the world?”

Old politicians are common now, she notes: “Every one of the 20 oldest members of Congress is at least 80, and this is the third-oldest House and Senate since 1789.” That fact was accentuated when, Cary reminds us, “a local pharmacist on Capitol Hill made headlines a few years ago when he revealed that he was filling Alzheimer’s medication prescriptions for members of Congress.”

As a veteran political staffer-turned-observer, Cary says there are lots of reasons why this is happening – and her story is an unexpectedly witty exploration of a vexing question many voters are struggling to answer.