Writing age restrictions into law probably wouldn’t get very far. But we could create a political culture that pressures older politicians to retire. Lifetime appointments in general are some bullshit, putting term limits on scotus would get around the age discrimination issue entirely.
You literally have age requirements written into the constitutiion for the minimum age for the presideny, there is no reason you couldn't set a maxium.
People can complain about ageism all they like, but time comes for us all. We all deminish in our faculties as we age, and I reject the idea we have to allow mad kings simply because they have the connections to keep everyone else away from the nominations. They are mentally declining narcissists that cannot admit the realities of their personal situation. Practically as a result of their declining faculties. Yes we should stop the outlandishly powerful mad kings from being able to seize the actual reigns of control on a society and world they verifiably will not be participating in the results of.
Writing age restrictions into law probably wouldn’t get very far. But we could create a political culture that pressures older politicians to retire. Lifetime appointments in general are some bullshit, putting term limits on scotus would get around the age discrimination issue entirely.
You literally have age requirements written into the constitutiion for the minimum age for the presideny, there is no reason you couldn't set a maxium.
I would prefer that we didn't, though I recognize we haven't found any good alternatives.
I do think at the very least we shouldn't have an age minimum for office that is so incongruent with the mininum voting age.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I am very wary of creating subjective health / acquity or objective age-based criteria that prevent a person from running for or holding office. I'm not as opposed to having a minimum age tied to the age of majority simply because as a society we largely restrict the ability for kids to do lots of things, but beyond that I think the voter should have the ultimate in most cases outside a few clear disqualifiers (e.g. being an insurrectionist or literally in prison).
If we're using age as a proxy for mental acuity or fitness to hold office, it begs the question of why we are only using age. I'd certainly say there are 75 or 80 year olds who are sharper mentally and more capable of holding office than say a 54 year old who just experienced a stroke or has early onset dementia, or a 35 year old with a learning disability or who suffered a TBI. Following this to its logical conclusion immediately goes to ableist disqualifiers due to disability and things like literacy tests.
Keep in mind Ryan is 54, McCarthy is 59, and Johnson is 52 so its not like (relative) youth is a cure for people being shitheads.
In addition, while there can definitely be downsides to an entrenched mindset, experience can offset some age-based mental decline and has value in and of itself. We've already seen what term limiting does at the state level to institutional knowledge and government continuity, and again it should be up to the voters if they want someone to remain in office or not.
I will agree there is a problem with lifetime appointments at the SCOTUS level, but that's only tangentially related to age. I have less issue with a Justice being 39, 59, or 79 than I do with their politics and how appointments to SCOTUS can be abused and a justice is essentially untouchable once confirmed. At the very least, having terms where they need to be reconfirmed to remain on the bench, or even better terms where a rotation of judges from the separate circuits hear cases would make more sense to me.
But in general age is a dysfunction of other issues in our political system, and while there are always in every profession be people who refuse to leave for ego or other reasons at least we have the ability to vote politicians we're unhappy with out of office.
Like if you manage to be the one 90 year old that’s just as spry and mentally pliable as you were at 35 (oh hey the age when I had to start admitting the decline in the first place) then sorry, not sorry, you’re a freak and our policy shouldn’t be designed around you. Also statistically you’re still probably gonna die within the next 10 years tops.
Like right now one of the best outcomes from our current situation is that nature just does its job and both these guys kick it before the end of the year. Super fun because our system has no fuckin way to deal with that happening after the conventions. Which should be thrown on the pile of reasons why we don’t let this happen
Like if you manage to be the one 90 year old that’s just as spry and mentally pliable as you were at 35 (oh hey the age when I had to start admitting the decline in the first place) then sorry, not sorry, you’re a freak and our policy shouldn’t be designed around you. Also statistically you’re still probably gonna die within the next 10 years tops.
Like right now one of the best outcomes from our current situation is that nature just does its job and both these guys kick it before the end of the year. Super fun because our system has no fuckin way to deal with that happening after the conventions. Which should be thrown on the pile of reasons why we don’t let this happen
Policy isn't designed around 90 year olds. There's been a handful of 90 year olds that have held national office in the 250ish years of our nation, and several of them were relatively capable up until the end - for every Feinstein or Thurmon there's an Inouye or Lewis who would get the boot and that's a huge loss to our nation.
Also yes our system absolutely has a way to deal with the candidate or candidates dying. The Vice President takes over.
Like we’re already in a spot where we don’t know what to do if one of these candidates dies this year. Except they’re both past standard life expectancy, and their continued life is in fact just an extension of their existing wealth and power. Like these old guys aren’t your scrappy grandpa. They are alive because they are rich and powerful. The gerontocracy problem is itself a result of the plutocracy problem.
I think the supreme court would benefit from term limits, not age limits.
And the terms could be rather long, because they do need to exist outside of the scope of one party or election.
Something like 18 years, where the one on the longest is replaced by someone new, and this happens every two years.
The supreme court has a quite different problem this would resolve; right now everyone is looking for the youngest ideologue who can pass a sniff test in congress so that they can just be there for decade after fucking decade. I actually don't mind an older justice who has had a great career finishing the rest of it at the supreme court.
Clarence Thomas has been on the court for 33(!!!) years. He was only 42 when he got the chair. This ain't great.
I generally do agree with the premise that age should not be the disqualifying factor, but some of the factors that should be disqualifying present themselves more often with age.
I didn't want Feinstein to retire because she was old. She needed to retire because all of the gears were obviously slipping and her staff was basically propping her up and it was disgusting. I would feel the same way if someone had early onset dementia in their 50s. The age wasn't the issue, the dementia was.
Letting age alone being the reason we send someone off to pasture is bad for older folks still capable of doing the job.
And I guess my last rambling point is that this is why Republicans often win; they see an issue that can drive a wedge into the left, and narratively make it "the conversation" happening everywhere. Yes, we talked about how RBG and Feinstein needed to leave as they were too old... and now it is the #1 issue on the election because it hurts Biden. Their media discipline and use of language remains wildly more effective than it should.
Worth noting that the GOP was happy to use Senate rule bullshit to stop Feinstein from retiring. They absolutely do not care about age except as a weapon to attack the Democrats.
If someone wants to be old and involved they can be. They can be an advisor, they can be out on the campaign for a young person they think will do their job well. They can’t be the representative themselves. If they can’t participate because they can’t stand being second fiddle and not being the candidate themselves. Well good they shouldn’t have a hand on power anymore for a reason completely separate their age.
Writing age restrictions into law probably wouldn’t get very far. But we could create a political culture that pressures older politicians to retire. Lifetime appointments in general are some bullshit, putting term limits on scotus would get around the age discrimination issue entirely.
You literally have age requirements written into the constitutiion for the minimum age for the presideny, there is no reason you couldn't set a maxium.
I would prefer that we didn't, though I recognize we haven't found any good alternatives.
I do think at the very least we shouldn't have an age minimum for office that is so incongruent with the mininum voting age.
I would prefer it if people over a certain age stopped trying to control society because even if their faculties haven't declined the reality is that you will get to a point where you are disconnected from the reality of your voter base because you've spent 40 years in washington chasing whatever dream you had 50 years ago.
Because we see this and how it leads to serious problem's for parties; Pelosi and Feinstein were both relics of a bygone era and didn't seem to understand that the republicans of 2013 weren't the same ones of the 80's and that the tools for getting them to co-operate from that time period were invalid in this one or that younger democrats wanted them to actually fight for things like Climate change, taxation on the wealthy, accountability from then president trump and a host of other issues.
Meanwhile on the Right we have mitch having straight up senility moments where he just stares off into space because he seemingly doesn't know where he is or what's going on. It's so objectively pathetic that I can't even derive a sense of satisfaction from his incompetence.
What I am seeing a lot of is conversations like this - both in business and in politics - started by frustrated GenX folks in their 40s and 50s who would very much like the 80yr old executive / politician to finally get the fuck out of the way so people can rise behind them.
Longevity in the 70+ crowd puts more stress on the generation directly behind them, who have already been ruined three times in this millennium and would very much like to take over for a while before they retire broke.
Head to head standardized cognitive testing is probably the most realistic determination rather than some arbitrary number
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I don't know if I have a specific number in mind, but I do want candidates who will have to suffer the consequences of their own actions.
Climate Change is the clearest example of this. Having a bunch of people debate this topic who will be dead before everything falls apart crushes me.
The problem is there's always that one person who actually cares a lot about the issue on principle that would get forced out. And it's only one person, but others see this example as a negative consequence of age cutoffs and make up their minds that the practice is no good.
Get an old person who is passionate about generational issues and have them martyr their career because they believe in the age cutoff more than the good they can still do. That'll help
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
That’s why I say 65 cause average life expectancy is like 78. If they have to leave at 65 then they are going to have to live under the boot of whatever they set up for at least a decade.
I think there is a delicate balance. There are many successful elderly states people and honestly their success is very much due to the large teams they have as they are basically an avatar of their state power and whether they truly function well is immaterial. Staffers have been Weekend-At-Bernies-ing elderly politicians since time immemorial. It gets to be a problem when 1) the apparent age is optically damaging enough as to harm the office or the country they represent and/or 2) the age/quality of life is so severe that there can be no mitigation by staff such that it is no longer a collaborative effort between addled statesperson and their staff and instead the staff begin shooting off verbal fireworks to distract as their beloved Senator pulls a Bluescreen Of Death on live television. I am sure you have read this sentence and thought of your favorite hated Senator on the "other side" but it is universal to old as fuck senators/judges/presidents.
The public is generally able to discern the difference. Re: Biden and Trump, the problem is that the age concern has been around for years and does NOT diminish as the candidates get older. No amount of breathless praise that Biden is just so so sharp and witty in the back rooms and no amount of swearing up and down that Trump is just joking when he repeatedly forgets someone's name for minutes at a time will convince the public otherwise. It is a tough political problem and polling shows that it is a number 1 or 2 concern for the 2024 election on both sides.
According to google, rich people tend to live 15 years longer on average than the rest of us, so probably most politicians are in the 75 years of life expectancy range. It’s pretty wild that both Biden and Trump could conceivably die of old age during the campaign. It would be fully on brand for Trump to cause that kind of chaos.
For all my theoretical belief in not gatekeeping elected official runs, I dont super love my feeling that either is almost certain to die during the presidency but that's...eh.
I work in a field where you have surgeons and dentists (and to a lesser extent medical doctors, but surgeons and dentists are probably more of an obvious problem) working on people later in life, and its a controversial subject, because you don’t want to be agist and you don’t want to tell someone who may be in a precarious financial situation they can’t work, but by the same token there are some 90 year olds running around trying to do work on people that are definitely questionable as to whether they are safe to be working on people. By and large the professional boards overseeing things have failed to really come up with a satisfactory answer. Part of the answer that always comes up is “well if no bad patient outcomes are being reported what is the problem”? And the obvious response to that is “do you really want to deal with this after someone has already been injured or died?”
I have known of both a dentist and a surgeon that were both practicing until they died at over 90 years of age. I am not aware of any particular issues or bad outcomes with patients they had. I also know that I would have not let either of them touch me with a 10 foot pole at that age.
I say this in a thread dealing with politicians because I do feel its a broader concern, especially as people live longer and there is pressure on people to work for longer periods as our safety net for the elderly is gradually dismantled.
There is definitely an age people reach where they simply should not be doing tasks that are critical to human life or safety. I don’t have a number. I have known several guys who were 70 I would have trusted to work on me but most of them had voluntarily retired by 75 and ability to handle the work, not necessarily only the physical aspects but also the schedule and workload, was always cited as a big factor in why they retired.
I know that being a politician isn’t the same as being a surgeon or dentist. But they still oversee vital work, and there still are going to be issues with declining function. Is there a rare politician that can be effective at 75 or 80? Maybe. Should the entire upper level leadership of the country be 75+? Pretty sure the answer to that one is no.
Hmmm. Patients can choose their dentist, so that one feels...similarish.
The surgeon one is weird because surgeons may not be chosen. Id never want a 90 year old surgeon working on me? So right to choose your surgeon...I mean if someone wants the 90 year old, sign the waiver, go for it? But being randomly assigned the surgeon everyone knows is a massive risk is...what? Like how does insurance and liabbiity work for that? Shouldnt the hospital be the one deciding to oust them on the risk tolerance? Hospitals just cant fire uninsurable doctors? Their problem is dumb imo.
I think thats why Im resistant to comparisons to other jobs where the process of selection is not an election. Elected officials are chosen by the people they govern. Thats the basis of our government and of all government power. Taking away a vote or the right to run better have an ironclad reason. Im sort of against stripping the vote for anything at all?
If the process by which elections happen is broken in sone way, lets fix that, but talking about candidate attributes itself feels so weird.
Like if you manage to be the one 90 year old that’s just as spry and mentally pliable as you were at 35 (oh hey the age when I had to start admitting the decline in the first place) then sorry, not sorry, you’re a freak and our policy shouldn’t be designed around you. Also statistically you’re still probably gonna die within the next 10 years tops.
Like right now one of the best outcomes from our current situation is that nature just does its job and both these guys kick it before the end of the year. Super fun because our system has no fuckin way to deal with that happening after the conventions. Which should be thrown on the pile of reasons why we don’t let this happen
Policy isn't designed around 90 year olds. There's been a handful of 90 year olds that have held national office in the 250ish years of our nation, and several of them were relatively capable up until the end - for every Feinstein or Thurmon there's an Inouye or Lewis who would get the boot and that's a huge loss to our nation.
Also yes our system absolutely has a way to deal with the candidate or candidates dying. The Vice President takes over.
So coming back to this in our election systems no, we don’t actually have this answer, and this is not necessarily the predictable outcome. Shit at this point it seems like of the candidate dies then the delegates that were supposed to go to them kinda just get to do whatever they want with their votes. If the candidate dies after convention before election then the party gets to basically install a new candidate totally at their whim (fuckin lol let’s rerun Clinton v Trump cause the Democratic leadership is old and out of touch). If they die after the election, before it is certified? Total chaos, their delegates get to choose what to do with their votes (oh hey look at all these states with local governments captured by republicans that act in opposition to the wishes of their constituency on a regular basis).
The candidates being so old that you can’t guarantee they make it through the whole election cycle is bad, it cracks open a bunch of holes in our system that haven’t really been investigated too much since the 1800s
Hmmm. Patients can choose their dentist, so that one feels...similarish.
The surgeon one is weird because surgeons may not be chosen. Id never want a 90 year old surgeon working on me? So right to choose your surgeon...I mean if someone wants the 90 year old, sign the waiver, go for it? But being randomly assigned the surgeon everyone knows is a massive risk is...what? Like how does insurance and liabbiity work for that? Shouldnt the hospital be the one deciding to oust them on the risk tolerance? Hospitals just cant fire uninsurable doctors? Their problem is dumb imo.
I think thats why Im resistant to comparisons to other jobs where the process of selection is not an election. Elected officials are chosen by the people they govern. Thats the basis of our government and of all government power. Taking away a vote or the right to run better have an ironclad reason. Im sort of against stripping the vote for anything at all?
If the process by which elections happen is broken in sone way, lets fix that, but talking about candidate attributes itself feels so weird.
The guy I knew of wasn’t at a hospital, he was a private practice general surgeon, so it was a similar situation to a dentist.
I think a hospital would probably eventually force you out if you were a trauma surgeon or something like that.
For insurance there are added premiums for advancing age but they will never actually deny you coverage that I am aware of. Note though there are certain health conditions you are required to report and they will deny malpractice coverage for. I have known of a couple of people with neurodegenerative illnesses that were basically forced to retire by insurance refusing to cover them (which is unfortunate, but was for the best).
Writing age restrictions into law probably wouldn’t get very far. But we could create a political culture that pressures older politicians to retire. Lifetime appointments in general are some bullshit, putting term limits on scotus would get around the age discrimination issue entirely.
You literally have age requirements written into the constitutiion for the minimum age for the presideny, there is no reason you couldn't set a maxium.
I would prefer that we didn't, though I recognize we haven't found any good alternatives.
I do think at the very least we shouldn't have an age minimum for office that is so incongruent with the mininum voting age.
I would prefer it if people over a certain age stopped trying to control society because even if their faculties haven't declined the reality is that you will get to a point where you are disconnected from the reality of your voter base because you've spent 40 years in washington chasing whatever dream you had 50 years ago.
I suspect I was overly polite in my prior response.
We literally have age requirements written into a document that also literally disenfranchised black slaves and Natives, written at a time when most states only allowed male landowners to vote, because the white male landowners who wrote these laws only considered people like themselves to be competent and trustworthy. That the constitution has an age minimum isn't a good argument in favor of age restrictions - if anything, we should take the US Constitution as a warning of what happens when we sit around and decide that [Those People] aren't capable of governing, for whatever definition of [Those People] we use.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I’ve absolutely been consulted by a surgeon that was past their cutting days. They still worked at the hospital, but in our discussions they like immediately identified that if we thought surgery was a way to go they would not be cutting because they were too old for that. Then I got to see an old wizened orthopedic surgeon be impressed and terrified by the amount of metal in my arm.
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that deciding to run for office is different than other legal rights or what?
If it's so obvious that an incompetent 90 year old shouldnt run for such an important post, whats the issue? Nobody will vote for them.
I don't particularly care about the ageist counter point because the purpose of these positions is the betterment of the country as the whole, not some person in particular.
If we would be in aggregate better off with no politician over 70 in office, that is a good enough reason to me. Just like we are in aggregate better off if pilots retire at 60 or w/e their age is. Even though for probably the vast majority of them they could do an effective job many years longer.
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that running for office is different than other legal rights or what?
No it’s a horse shit response meant to distract from the actual question about putting limits on who’s allowed to rule over humanity.
Running for office, especially the presidency, is different from all those other things. If you can’t see why that is, that’s not my problem.
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that deciding to run for office is different than other legal rights or what?
If it's so obvious that an incompetent 90 year old shouldnt run for such an important post, whats the issue? Nobody will vote for them.
Power goes a long way towards hiding that kind of thing.
My main thing is I don't like the idea of people who are likely to die soon being able to set into stone how people who have barely begun to live get to exist. I have a lot of specific concerns about how the upcoming generations are likely to turn out, but they deserve to be able to have a real say in their futures rather than being beholden to whatever we millennials decide for them for almost all of their lives.
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that deciding to run for office is different than other legal rights or what?
If it's so obvious that an incompetent 90 year old shouldnt run for such an important post, whats the issue? Nobody will vote for them.
We don’t have a system where that’s the reality I have no choice but to vote for them because we don’t get to choose our candidate in this way. In fact in the last primary basically the party basically back room dealt to hand it to Joe Biden. Which is why we have mayor pete as transportation secretary.
If anyone over 65 (or pick your number) is not fit to be President, are they fit to govern their own affairs? Should testimony from over 65 be admissible in court? Expert witnesses? Should they be allowed to practice law? To be judges? To do any government job at all? To be a corporate officer with legal obligations?
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that running for office is different than other legal rights or what?
No it’s a horse shit response meant to distract from the actual question about putting limits on who’s allowed to rule over humanity.
Running for office, especially the presidency, is different from all those other things. If you can’t see why that is, that’s not my problem.
Would you be in favor of only allowing people who have, say, passed a graduate-level education in a relevant subject like law or international relations to hold office?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
At least part of the problem here is that presidential systems are bad. If a random 80-year-old is running for his 5th term as a Senator, that's fine(-ish). As long as they're not doing a Feinstein, it's alright if someone has to remind them of details here and there. The Presidency, as a position, is extremely important, can require rapid decisions, and doesn't have a usable mechanism for removing people from it for mental degradation without it becoming an absolute political shitshow. But electorally, it's filled by senior politicians at the end of their career, and having that experience is necessary to be a good President.
As for Biden specifically, I think he's fine mentally. Maybe not as sharp as he once was, but Trump was speaking worse than he is now last election. (Honestly, this whole thing reeks of projection. Start flinging the accusations of dementia against Biden now, so that when Trump wanders on-stage not wearing pants it doesn't hurt him in the polls.)
Posts
You literally have age requirements written into the constitutiion for the minimum age for the presideny, there is no reason you couldn't set a maxium.
I would prefer that we didn't, though I recognize we haven't found any good alternatives.
I do think at the very least we shouldn't have an age minimum for office that is so incongruent with the mininum voting age.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If we're using age as a proxy for mental acuity or fitness to hold office, it begs the question of why we are only using age. I'd certainly say there are 75 or 80 year olds who are sharper mentally and more capable of holding office than say a 54 year old who just experienced a stroke or has early onset dementia, or a 35 year old with a learning disability or who suffered a TBI. Following this to its logical conclusion immediately goes to ableist disqualifiers due to disability and things like literacy tests.
Keep in mind Ryan is 54, McCarthy is 59, and Johnson is 52 so its not like (relative) youth is a cure for people being shitheads.
In addition, while there can definitely be downsides to an entrenched mindset, experience can offset some age-based mental decline and has value in and of itself. We've already seen what term limiting does at the state level to institutional knowledge and government continuity, and again it should be up to the voters if they want someone to remain in office or not.
I will agree there is a problem with lifetime appointments at the SCOTUS level, but that's only tangentially related to age. I have less issue with a Justice being 39, 59, or 79 than I do with their politics and how appointments to SCOTUS can be abused and a justice is essentially untouchable once confirmed. At the very least, having terms where they need to be reconfirmed to remain on the bench, or even better terms where a rotation of judges from the separate circuits hear cases would make more sense to me.
But in general age is a dysfunction of other issues in our political system, and while there are always in every profession be people who refuse to leave for ego or other reasons at least we have the ability to vote politicians we're unhappy with out of office.
Like right now one of the best outcomes from our current situation is that nature just does its job and both these guys kick it before the end of the year. Super fun because our system has no fuckin way to deal with that happening after the conventions. Which should be thrown on the pile of reasons why we don’t let this happen
Policy isn't designed around 90 year olds. There's been a handful of 90 year olds that have held national office in the 250ish years of our nation, and several of them were relatively capable up until the end - for every Feinstein or Thurmon there's an Inouye or Lewis who would get the boot and that's a huge loss to our nation.
Also yes our system absolutely has a way to deal with the candidate or candidates dying. The Vice President takes over.
Worth noting that the GOP was happy to use Senate rule bullshit to stop Feinstein from retiring. They absolutely do not care about age except as a weapon to attack the Democrats.
Theres a lot of checks! We uh dont use em but
I don't believe this at all. Not at all.
I don't even think a boomer backlash exists. Youth voters could absolutely elect younger candidates but guess what! They don't do it very much...
Sick burns on the internet are not a backlash. Lashing back suggests some form of action, which I don't see happening in the 18-24 demo.
I would prefer it if people over a certain age stopped trying to control society because even if their faculties haven't declined the reality is that you will get to a point where you are disconnected from the reality of your voter base because you've spent 40 years in washington chasing whatever dream you had 50 years ago.
Because we see this and how it leads to serious problem's for parties; Pelosi and Feinstein were both relics of a bygone era and didn't seem to understand that the republicans of 2013 weren't the same ones of the 80's and that the tools for getting them to co-operate from that time period were invalid in this one or that younger democrats wanted them to actually fight for things like Climate change, taxation on the wealthy, accountability from then president trump and a host of other issues.
Meanwhile on the Right we have mitch having straight up senility moments where he just stares off into space because he seemingly doesn't know where he is or what's going on. It's so objectively pathetic that I can't even derive a sense of satisfaction from his incompetence.
So yes: make it a maximum age of 70.
Longevity in the 70+ crowd puts more stress on the generation directly behind them, who have already been ruined three times in this millennium and would very much like to take over for a while before they retire broke.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Climate Change is the clearest example of this. Having a bunch of people debate this topic who will be dead before everything falls apart crushes me.
See also immigration policy, Taxation, education...
The problem is there's always that one person who actually cares a lot about the issue on principle that would get forced out. And it's only one person, but others see this example as a negative consequence of age cutoffs and make up their minds that the practice is no good.
Get an old person who is passionate about generational issues and have them martyr their career because they believe in the age cutoff more than the good they can still do. That'll help
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The public is generally able to discern the difference. Re: Biden and Trump, the problem is that the age concern has been around for years and does NOT diminish as the candidates get older. No amount of breathless praise that Biden is just so so sharp and witty in the back rooms and no amount of swearing up and down that Trump is just joking when he repeatedly forgets someone's name for minutes at a time will convince the public otherwise. It is a tough political problem and polling shows that it is a number 1 or 2 concern for the 2024 election on both sides.
What we cant elect people in hospice now either?
I have known of both a dentist and a surgeon that were both practicing until they died at over 90 years of age. I am not aware of any particular issues or bad outcomes with patients they had. I also know that I would have not let either of them touch me with a 10 foot pole at that age.
I say this in a thread dealing with politicians because I do feel its a broader concern, especially as people live longer and there is pressure on people to work for longer periods as our safety net for the elderly is gradually dismantled.
There is definitely an age people reach where they simply should not be doing tasks that are critical to human life or safety. I don’t have a number. I have known several guys who were 70 I would have trusted to work on me but most of them had voluntarily retired by 75 and ability to handle the work, not necessarily only the physical aspects but also the schedule and workload, was always cited as a big factor in why they retired.
I know that being a politician isn’t the same as being a surgeon or dentist. But they still oversee vital work, and there still are going to be issues with declining function. Is there a rare politician that can be effective at 75 or 80? Maybe. Should the entire upper level leadership of the country be 75+? Pretty sure the answer to that one is no.
The surgeon one is weird because surgeons may not be chosen. Id never want a 90 year old surgeon working on me? So right to choose your surgeon...I mean if someone wants the 90 year old, sign the waiver, go for it? But being randomly assigned the surgeon everyone knows is a massive risk is...what? Like how does insurance and liabbiity work for that? Shouldnt the hospital be the one deciding to oust them on the risk tolerance? Hospitals just cant fire uninsurable doctors? Their problem is dumb imo.
I think thats why Im resistant to comparisons to other jobs where the process of selection is not an election. Elected officials are chosen by the people they govern. Thats the basis of our government and of all government power. Taking away a vote or the right to run better have an ironclad reason. Im sort of against stripping the vote for anything at all?
If the process by which elections happen is broken in sone way, lets fix that, but talking about candidate attributes itself feels so weird.
So coming back to this in our election systems no, we don’t actually have this answer, and this is not necessarily the predictable outcome. Shit at this point it seems like of the candidate dies then the delegates that were supposed to go to them kinda just get to do whatever they want with their votes. If the candidate dies after convention before election then the party gets to basically install a new candidate totally at their whim (fuckin lol let’s rerun Clinton v Trump cause the Democratic leadership is old and out of touch). If they die after the election, before it is certified? Total chaos, their delegates get to choose what to do with their votes (oh hey look at all these states with local governments captured by republicans that act in opposition to the wishes of their constituency on a regular basis).
The candidates being so old that you can’t guarantee they make it through the whole election cycle is bad, it cracks open a bunch of holes in our system that haven’t really been investigated too much since the 1800s
The guy I knew of wasn’t at a hospital, he was a private practice general surgeon, so it was a similar situation to a dentist.
I think a hospital would probably eventually force you out if you were a trauma surgeon or something like that.
For insurance there are added premiums for advancing age but they will never actually deny you coverage that I am aware of. Note though there are certain health conditions you are required to report and they will deny malpractice coverage for. I have known of a couple of people with neurodegenerative illnesses that were basically forced to retire by insurance refusing to cover them (which is unfortunate, but was for the best).
I suspect I was overly polite in my prior response.
We literally have age requirements written into a document that also literally disenfranchised black slaves and Natives, written at a time when most states only allowed male landowners to vote, because the white male landowners who wrote these laws only considered people like themselves to be competent and trustworthy. That the constitution has an age minimum isn't a good argument in favor of age restrictions - if anything, we should take the US Constitution as a warning of what happens when we sit around and decide that [Those People] aren't capable of governing, for whatever definition of [Those People] we use.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
To sign legal documents alone? To make medical decisions for themselves or others? To get married of their own accord? To determine their investment portfolio?
Deciding to continue to work well into your twilight years is a failure of the society.
This is horse shit
Barely worthy a response
We aren’t talking about them having personal agency. This is about allowing them to be among the most powerful people in the world. Deciding the fates of millions if not billions of other people.
Are you mad cause you think that deciding to run for office is different than other legal rights or what?
If it's so obvious that an incompetent 90 year old shouldnt run for such an important post, whats the issue? Nobody will vote for them.
If we would be in aggregate better off with no politician over 70 in office, that is a good enough reason to me. Just like we are in aggregate better off if pilots retire at 60 or w/e their age is. Even though for probably the vast majority of them they could do an effective job many years longer.
No it’s a horse shit response meant to distract from the actual question about putting limits on who’s allowed to rule over humanity.
Running for office, especially the presidency, is different from all those other things. If you can’t see why that is, that’s not my problem.
Power goes a long way towards hiding that kind of thing.
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We don’t have a system where that’s the reality I have no choice but to vote for them because we don’t get to choose our candidate in this way. In fact in the last primary basically the party basically back room dealt to hand it to Joe Biden. Which is why we have mayor pete as transportation secretary.
Would you be in favor of only allowing people who have, say, passed a graduate-level education in a relevant subject like law or international relations to hold office?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
As for Biden specifically, I think he's fine mentally. Maybe not as sharp as he once was, but Trump was speaking worse than he is now last election. (Honestly, this whole thing reeks of projection. Start flinging the accusations of dementia against Biden now, so that when Trump wanders on-stage not wearing pants it doesn't hurt him in the polls.)