The closest thing I could find to a justification of the age limits was this from the Federalist Papers (#62) (bolding mine):
The justification for a hard ceiling, if there is one, would be completely different from the justification for a hard floor.
There are reasons (which you may or may not believe are sufficient) for the minimum age requirement. Those reasons would not apply to a maximum age requirement. If there is a sufficient justification for an age ceiling, it would have to be for completely different reasons and be decided on its own merits. You can’t just say that, because one sort of age limit is okay, another sort of age limit must also be okay.
One of these is not like the other. Being a woman, black, or gay has no impact on job performance. That’s why it’s illegal to discriminate against them.
But when you are applying for a job that needs to last at least four years and preferably 8, and requires a level of vigor that many people can’t manage at their best, age certainly matters. The increased risk of becoming infirm or dying in office or becoming senescent is a reasonable thing to discriminate against.
An 80 year old American male has a life expectancy of 9 years. Two presidential terms is 8. Presidents get excellent health care, but they are also put into a very strenuous job. And there are almost no 80 year olds anywhere who are as sharp as they were when they were 50 or 60. And by 90, most are either dead or in serious need of help just to get around and complete daily tasks.
Joe Biden is clearly showing signs of at least age-related senescence if not dementia. The odds that he will still be fit for office 6 years from now seem rather low.
I’d be in favor of lowering the minimum age for a President to 30, and capping the age at inauguration to 70 or 75. For Senators and congressmen, either have term limits or a hard retirement age of 80. And I’d do the same for Prime Minister and Parliament in Canada.
Democrats should especially worry about this, because their government representatives are aging fast. Ten of twelve house members over 80 are Democrats, and over twice as many Democrats as Republicans are over 65. The problem is that you will soon be facing a wave of retirements or deaths that could lead to a Republican wave.
Diane Feinstein in the Senate is 87 years old. Even members of her own party have said that her faculties are severely slipping. She’s going to be in office until at least 2024.
The octogenarians in the Senaste and House are also preventing younger, more vital members from rising into leadership positions. I’d think progressives in particular would not be cool with that.
No, they are not. Strangely there are these things called “elections”. If the VOTERS wanted older, more experienced Senators, that is their right at a voter.
Oh really? in your Primary there is only one candidate? Yes, in the general, there is often no choice. But the voters keep picking the older, more experienced candidates in the Primary.
I don’t think youth is any guarantee of competence.
MTG is only 48.
Cawthorn at 27 is the youngest Republican and one of the youngest members ever elected to the House of Representatives.[31][46]
While this is true, incumbency is a tremendous advantage in Congressional elections, particularly in House elections, the districts of which are frequently very “safe” for one party or the other, due to gerrymandering.
Even if a member of Congress is widely disliked, or a serious screw-up, there’s still a very good chance that they will still manage to get re-elected. For example, Ron Johnson, a Republican Senator from Wisconsin, is very good at putting his foot in his mouth, appears to have had some role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election (while making statements attempting to downplay the seriousness of the January 6th attack), and has been generally been very self-serving. He has low approval ratings in Wisconsin, and, yet, he still has a good chance of being re-elected this fall – recent polls show him with a slight lead over his Democratic opponent.
You mean the candidate with the better name recognition, the one that’s been around longer.
I never said anything like that, so I’m not sure what point you think you are making. Was that supposed to be in response to what someone else said, maybe in a different thread?
And, if you had bothered to read what I had said upthread, I did say that I was not for a mandatory age restriction, but that doesn’t mean I can’t prefer and vote for younger candidates. But it seems, from what you are lecturing me about right now, that I can’t.
I could vote out Feinstein, but whoever replaces her will not have her seniority, and thus will not have her power. Her leadership positions aren’t inherited by her successor.
So it’s often the choice of voting for a candidate you don’t much like, but whose power and influence on behalf of your state you DO like, vs. a candidate who is perhaps slightly better, but whose election will decrease your state (or Congressional district’s) influence and benefits.
To clarify, I am also in favor of age minimums. Obviously the specific reasons would be different for age maximums, but they would be similar kinds of reasons. (Out of touch as opposed to not enough life experience, less mentally sharp as opposed to impulsive, etc…)
If I could wave a magic wand and pick a perfect age, it would be you first take office when your youngest child is just starting college. Somewhere in the 30s to 50s. But of course that’s an irrelevant pipe dream.
Also, someone mentioned term limits, and I am a big fan of term limits. They should apply to all high level policy positions, most especially the Supreme Court.
In fact, I think I’d kind of like every presidential term to nominate one new Supreme Court Justice as their traditional first act in office, who then replaces the longest tenured Justice. Actually what is that, a 36-year term limit? That doesn’t seem sufficient. But I do kind of like the idea of every presidential term getting to appoint a judge. And also maybe cap it at two; appointing three judges in a single term feels wrong.
But I can say that if one sort of age limit is okay, another sort of age limit can’t be dismissed as bigoted by definition.
The go-to example seems to be airline pilots, who have a mandatory retirement age regardless of fitness. (Google seem to indicate they might be temporarily raising it from 65 to 67 to deal with a pilot shortage, but the hard cap regardless of fitness exists and is legal.)
In fairness, I did think of an example where I am (strongly) in favor of age minimums, but would be equally strongly opposed to an age maximum: The age of consent. So I do concede that the existence of a minimum does not automatically justify a maximum. (But I do not concede that all maximums are automatically wrong. It appears to be more of a case-by-case basis. I have no objection to the airline pilot maximum.)
Most of these additional restrictions that people propose in threads like these (including but not limited to age caps) would be unnecessary if voters could be trusted not to vote for unfit candidates.
If there are certain kinds of people who shouldn’t hold office, I’d rather see the voters keep them out by not voting for them than by passing laws or amending the Constitution to restrict who can and can’t hold office.
IMHO these are the strongest arguments in favor of term limits for Congress. But I wonder if there are other ways to fix these issues (such as making those leadership positions expire at the end of a term).
Do any of you older Dopers resent the implication that everyone past a certain age is out of touch and less mentally sharp? Or do you agree with it?
…than they were 30 years ago? Does anyone over 70 really dispute that they’re not quite as sharp as they were when they were 40? Do they have less energy than when they were 40?
EDIT: I do see that term limits would be a much more viable strategy than age limits.
Me, too – in a perfect world. But as we’ve seen in the real world, we can’t trust voters to do that.
I’m not just talking about Trump. Voters on both sides routinely nominate and elect people who aren’t really up to the job, even if they once were. Lots of voters do no research whatsoever and know nothing about candidates beyond name recognition, which gives incumbents a huge advantage.
Note – I’m not advocating for age limits. Just pointing out the futility of expecting voters to make reasoned judgments about who’s fit to hold office.
That’s a question for those who are over 70 (which I am not).
I will point out that some mental decline is not a result of aging per se but of other factors, such as side effects of medication (see here for a longer list), or diseases such as Alzheimer’s which don’t affect everyone but which cause significant mental decline in those who are affected.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that people peak physically before middle age; nor that they continue to learn and accumulate experience throughout life; nor that the aging process affects people so differently that a hard age ceiling will be inappropriate for at least some of the people affected.
For me, the question isn’t “is 70 an age where you can’t do it, or where others should forbid you to do it,” but “is 70 an age where this is really the best idea for all concerned, including the country?” Biden won the election, and he’s doing fine, which is great in the short term.
However, whether he and we want to admit it or not, mortality is a thing, as are age-related health conditions. Even if he’s in robust health NOW, the 2024 voters will be gambling that Candidate Biden will also be in robust health for the entirety of ages 82–85. Statistically, that’s not a great bet. So either he has primary challengers, which means that party unity has to be forged anew after the primary season, or he doesn’t, in which case we hope that the general electorate isn’t worried about the octogenarian president thing (coming this November in any case).
I would argue that our post-Trump D president needs AT LEAST eight years to recover and lay the groundwork for the repair of the hot mess that was Trumpistan, and that while there are never guarantees, Biden’s age is a factor in making us all less certain about an eight-year Biden White House, or even an eight-year D White House.
In other words, his age isn’t necessarily precluding him from doing his job, and doing it fairly well, but there can nevertheless be longer term repercussions. There might not, and I hope not, but I think if the Democrats were a little better at planning and messaging, they would have gotten ahead of this. Not necessarily by ditching the older candidate—a VP with stronger public-relations skills would have mitigated a lot of the issue by being a clearer successor.