Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) with AI narration.
In the United States, many professions have legitimate age limits: Commercial airline pilots cannot exceed 65, and the retirement age for federal law enforcement officers is 57. Two-thirds of S&P 500 companies have age limits of 72 or 75 for directors. Many consulting and law firms require partners to retire in their 60s.
There is currently no such formal limit for the presidency. Age can still disqualify a candidate. After President Joe Biden’s dismal performance in a debate earlier this year, his party pressed him to acknowledge that his more obvious limitations and signs of declining cognitive abilities were hurting Democrats’ chances of retaining the presidency. Former President Donald Trump, 78, give an incoherent speech It raises legitimate questions about his mental capacity.
Besides Biden and Trump, other candidates and officeholders have also shown signs of age-related cognitive decline. Think Dianne Feinstein and Orrin Hatch. It is in the national interest to ensure that people with cognitive disabilities cannot be elected to public office, especially the most powerful office in the world: President. The simplest and fairest way to protect the United States from this problem is to impose an age limit on all federal officeholders and judges.
Currently, 32 states and the District of Columbia have age limits for judges. In most cases, the age is set at 70, but some states have higher ages, such as 72, 73, and 75. The mandatory age limit for judges in Vermont is 90. South Dakota will vote this year to amend its state constitution to limit the age of congressional candidates to 80. Such age limits have bipartisan support: About 80 percent of Americans support age limits for federal elective office, and 74 percent support an age limit for Supreme Court justices. A CBS poll found that a majority of respondents thought the age limit for politicians should be under 70.
Opponents of age restrictions sometimes Assert These measures take away the people’s right to choose their leaders, and democracy can self-correct because voters can refuse to support elderly politicians whose mental faculties are declining. If Biden had remained on the ballot, no one would have been forced to vote for him.
But incumbency advantage is not a means to turn an election into a rejection of a politician with cognitive decline. Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign is a clear example. By insisting on running as an incumbent, Biden drove away other candidates and alienated other potential candidates. Challenging a sitting officeholder in a primary election can be career-ending, and it is not something politicians do voluntarily. As a result, when Rep. Dean Phillips tried to recruit a plausible alternative to President Biden, none were accepted, leaving him, a junior member of the House, as the only candidate to challenge the president. Not surprisingly, this ended Phillips’ political career. And because Democratic voters had few other options, they committed their votes to Biden in primary after primary, even though the majority believed he was too old and his disability was becoming too severe. Only through divine intervention by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, major donors, and a few others, did the unprecedented happen: a candidate with enough delegates to be the major party’s presidential nominee withdrew from the race. Biden’s withdrawal opened the door to a full list of potential successors, including Vice President Kamala Harris.
Another objection The biggest problem with mandatory age limits is that the cutoff is arbitrary because different people age differently in their intellectual decline. Some people lose fluid intelligence at a young age, while others are intellectually astute enough to hold office and be wise judges in their 80s. And age limits are indeed arbitrary. A minimum age to vote or hold office is also set in almost every country, including ours. But instead there are mandatory intellectual ability tests. This too is arbitrary, vague, and easily manipulated. Some people are good at taking tests, while others (like me and my two brothers) are bad at standardized tests of any kind. Dementia screening tools and assessments can look at various aspects of cognitive ability, but they rarely provide a diagnosis on their own. Any testing system would first need to determine the appropriate cognitive tests for becoming a senator, a federal judge, or a president, and developing tools validated for these unique offices would require data that does not exist. Second, a testing system would need someone to decide what constitutes passing. Who would that be? And how would we protect them from special pleading by those in power? Conversely, age restrictions are clear and cannot be manipulated.
We could also choose based on when people are likely to begin to decline. Higher age limits, like the age limit for judges in Vermont, increase risk: at age 80, the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is nearly 20 percent, and at age 85, it’s over 33 percent. For adults with at least a college education (which all judges and almost all elected officials have), the first signs of cognitive impairment appear, on average, at age 76. We propose an age limit of 75, to match the age limit for many corporate directors.
Some people Some argue that such a limit would prevent many mentally healthy older people from providing valuable leadership to the country. A 75 age limit would exclude people like Benjamin Franklin, who was active in the Constitutional Convention at age 81, and Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Paul Stevens, who continued to contribute greatly after leaving the Supreme Court at age 90. Perhaps most relevant to this debate is Speaker Pelosi, who was 82 when she retired as Speaker of the House, but is still as intelligent and politically powerful at 84 (and up for reelection this fall).
But age limits do not prevent these people from serving their country. They can provide advice and influence in many ways beyond holding elected political positions or serving on the bench. Today, sitting presidents turn to former presidents and cabinet members for advice. Presidents also often send retired politicians on important international missions or to lead delicate negotiations. Mandatory age limits for elected officials and judges do not prohibit this type of national service or support.
Biden’s July withdrawal from the presidential race is already seen by many as the centerpiece of his legacy as a public servant. His withdrawal would trigger a constitutional amendment to mandate age limits for all federal elected officials and judges, a movement that could be led by Biden, former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. That, more than anything, would cement Biden’s place in history.
