Congress has left town. The Senate has gone home for its August recess. The House has scattered to the four winds. And at the exact moment Washington decided it had done enough for the year, a 97-year-old British woman strapped herself to the top of an airplane and walked across its wing at altitude, because the word “can’t” is not in her vocabulary.

Her name is Betty Bromage, and this week, at 97 years and 127 days old, she broke her own Guinness World Record as the oldest female wing walker in history at RFC Rendcomb Airfield in Cirencester. It is her second time holding the record. She started wing walking at 87. She suffered a stroke in 2025. She got back on the wing. “The word ‘can’t’ isn’t in my vocabulary,” she told reporters.

Now, I want you to think about what Betty did, and then I want you to think about what Washington did this week. The Senate voted on a sanctions bill. The House did some things. Everyone went home for a month. Betty, meanwhile, looked at a stroke, and then looked at an airplane wing, and chose the airplane wing. That is not a metaphor. That is a documented sequence of events.

"Betty didn't form a working group. She didn't commission a study. She didn't hold a hearing on the feasibility of wing walking," said one aviation enthusiast who watched the record attempt. "She walked on the wing. It took 30 seconds. Washington has been trying to schedule a meeting about the meeting for 30 years."

Consider the contrast. In Washington, walking across a room requires three subcommittees, a bipartisan framework, and a funding vehicle. Betty walked across a wing at 100 miles per hour with the wind in her face and a scarf trailing behind her. One of these people should be running the Federal Reserve. The other one is a 97-year-old woman who is too busy breaking records to notice that the government has gone on vacation.

Some will say Betty should slow down. Some will say 97 is too old for wing walking. Some will say she should be more careful, that she should think about her health, that she should leave the stunts to the young. To those people I say: Betty does not know what “can’t” means. Do you? She had a stroke and she got back on the wing. The Senate had a quorum and it went home. I know which one of those I find more inspiring, and it is the one wearing the goggles.

This is what real achievement looks like. Not a press release. Not a ribbon-cutting. Not a markup session that produces a document nobody reads. A 97-year-old woman standing on the top wing of an aircraft, breaking the record she set the last time she decided “can’t” was not in her vocabulary. If Washington had half her nerve, the national debt would be paid off by lunch and we would all be wing walking by dinner.

BETTY BROMAGE: A RESUME FOR THE AGES

  • Age: 97 years, 127 days. Young enough to walk on a wing.
  • Record: Oldest female wing walker. Held twice. She broke her own record. The government has never once broken its own record for anything.
  • Started wing walking: At 87. That is a decade of aviation before most senators reach their first committee chairmanship.
  • Stroke: 2025. Response: got back on the wing.
  • Vocabulary: Does not include the word "can't." Also reportedly does not include the words "working group," "stakeholder," or "recess."
  • Time spent on vacation this year: None. The wing does not take August off.

I am not saying every 97-year-old should walk on an airplane wing. I am saying the ones who want to should be allowed to, encouraged to, and celebrated — and that the rest of us should ask ourselves why a woman in her tenth decade has more nerve than the entire federal government in its third century.

At press time, Betty had been offered an honorary position at a Washington agency, which she reportedly declined because the paperwork looked heavier than the wing.