There are minimum age requirements to serve in Congress and the White House. Why not maximum age requirements? Do we need 80-year-olds making laws for the rest of us?

Age is just a number.  This adage is often expressed by women over forty and men in their sixties trying to rationalize their thirty-year-old girlfriend who is going to leave him high and dry in about five years for a more age-appropriate partner.  That’s to say, age is just a number – but it has its limits. 

In most states, a person must be at least sixteen-years-old to obtain a driver’s license.  However, over the past two decades in particular, many scientists have argued that most sixteen-year-old driver’s lack the maturity to be entrusted with operating a motor vehicle responsibly. They point to data that shows the leading cause of death among young people is vehicle crashes.  It is theorized that because the brain does not fully mature until a person is thirty-years-old or older, young drivers take risks and lack the focus to consistently drive safely.  Consequently, many states have restrictions on a sixteen-year-old’s driver’s license, with a full, unrestricted driver’s license not being issued until the driver turns eighteen-years-old. 

There is a randomness associated with age restrictions.  The reasoning behind any age limit requirement includes generalizations.  Certainly, there are sixteen-year-old drivers that have the maturity, judgement, dedication, and temperament to operate a motor vehicle with textbook precision.  Meanwhile, there are plenty of careless drivers on the road today with alleged, fully mature brains that seem to turn out one bad decision after another. 

With an estimated 234 million licensed drivers in the United States this year, it would be impossible to have a personalized, tailor-made system that evaluates mental maturity of each individual seeking a driver’s license to determine if he or she possesses the intellect and judgement to safely operate a motor vehicle.  Instead, society has accepted the idea of a static minimum age requirement that the majority of people accept as reasonable.

There are other minimum age requirements that the majority of Americans accept with little thought or objection.  You must be twenty-one years old or greater to purchase or possess alcoholic beverages.  You must be eighteen years old to vote.  You must be either eighteen or twenty-one to purchase a handgun – eighteen if you are purchasing from a private seller and twenty-one if you are purchasing from a licensed gun dealer.  It’s difficult to recognize what the concerns would be surrounding purchasing a handgun from a private seller instead of a licensed dealer that then warrants a different minimum age requirement. 

Despite the peculiar reasoning that must be behind the two different minimum age requirements to purchase a handgun, it’s a great example of how arbitrary some of the minimum age requirements can be when enough private citizens don’t raise their voices during the law-making process.  It would be difficult to argue that an eighteen-year-old purchasing a handgun from a licensed dealer somehow poses a danger to society that doesn’t exist if the same eighteen-year-old purchased an identical handgun from a private citizen.  Undoubtedly, politics polluted the process, as it so often does, leaving the American people with another senseless law that does little, if anything, to enhance public safety. 

There are many other minimum age requirements in our society.  Occasionally, these age requirements to purchase a regulated item or service, or engage in a particular behavior, change with the times.  For example, a person must now be at least twenty-one years old to purchase tobacco products.  For over five decades the minimum age to purchase cigarettes was eighteen years old.  However, today the evidence is overwhelming.  Tobacco kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.  Scientific studies are conclusive – the older a person gets, the less likely he or she is to pick up a cigarette and start smoking.  Scientists believe delaying the ability to legally purchase tobacco products for three years, from eighteen to twenty-one, will save thousands of lives each year. 

The United States Constitution has its own set of minimum age requirements.  Since its adoption on June 21, 1788, there have been minimum age restrictions for members of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and The White House. 

·         No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty-five years…

·         No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years…

·         No Person shall be President who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years…

The majority of our founding fathers argued in favor of common minimum age requirements in order to be elected to the United States Congress as well as to the White House. The prevailing wisdom then was that with age comes a certain level of knowledge, maturity, and refinement of opinion necessary for a person to become an effective statesman. 

Whether it’s sixteen to drive, eighteen to vote, twenty-one to drink, twenty-five to become a representative, thirty to be elected to the U.S. Senate, or thirty-five to be the President of the United States, these minimum age standards are widely accepted as necessary and most often, effective.  So why not some maximum age requirements?  Is it really in our countries best interest to have a ninety-two-year-old senator as we did with Robert Byrd, or a staggering one hundred-year-old senator as we did with Strom Thurmond?  Even of greater concern is the age of our presidents, for they are the Commander-in-Chief. 

The minimum age requirement of thirty-five-years-old to be elected president demonstrates our willingness to accept age as a basic indication of cognitive ability and readiness.  Even though this age standard is not a guarantee of any capacity or competence, it is a reasonable pre-qualification to becoming President of the United States.  With the recent presidential election of seventy-eight-year-old Joe Biden, many Americans are quietly concerned about President Biden’s mental state.  When is a person too old to be elected President of the United States is a fair, honest question to be asking at this time? 

Politics and partisans aside, watch any video from ten years ago of Joe Biden speaking candidly, without cue cards, ear pieces, or a monitor, for more than ten minutes, and compare it to him speaking under the same conditions today.  You are deceiving yourself if you cannot quickly concede that he has lost some of his mental agility.  The question is how much, and when is it too much to be Commander-in Chief of the most powerful military in the world?  For those readers old enough to remember President Ronald Reagan, his last year in office had many people concerned about his mental fitness.  The empty look of bewilderment Reagan would display when he lost his train of thought, and was struggling to find the words, was difficult to witness.  On numerous occasions while on the 2020 campaign trail, when caught off script, Joe Biden displayed the same look of dazed disorientation. 

There is a difference between mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s Disease.  Many older people will experience the occasional forgetfulness associated with mild cognitive impairment.  Doctors recommend that people with MCI get tested annually for Alzheimer’s Disease.  The difference between MCI and Alzheimer’s Disease is the depth and persistence of memory loss.  Late-stage Alzheimer’s Disease is devastating.  It robs the afflicted of many memories, to include the inability to recognize spouses or children. 

When comparing MCI to Alzheimer’s Disease, it may be tempting to think MCI isn’t so bad.  For the majority of people, MCI is manageable.  But is mild cognitive impairment something we want in the President of the United States?  Does Joe Biden have MCI?  Is he suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease?  Do the American people have a right to know?  When asked if he would undergo cognitive testing, Biden answered, “I’ve been testing, and I’m constantly testing. Look, all you got to do is watch me. And I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I’m running against.”  Biden’s response isn’t very reassuring, is it?

There is a way to curb concerns about whether the President of the United States is too old to be in office.  What if we passed a law forbidding any person from running for the United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, or President of the United States if he or she is seventy-two years old or older on election day?  Why not?  The theory as to why we should have maximum age restrictions is as sound as having minimum age requirements, is it not?  And having maximum age restrictions such as seventy-two years old accomplishes much more.  It is an effective way to establish the resemblance of term-limits – something that has been discussed for decades but will never, ever pass a vote in the U.S. Congress.  There are far too many lifers in Congress that do not want to give up their power and prestige. 

An overwhelming seventy-five percent of Americans say they would vote in favor of term limits given the opportunity.  In today’s divisive political climate, seventy-five percent of the population in favor of the same thing is a landslide.  There are enough younger members of Congress to get a maximum age restriction bill passed, but they’ll need the help of the senior members that are planning on retiring.  No doubt Pelosi, Schumer, McConnell, Inhofes, and all the other Senators and Representatives are not going to jump on board unless the bill allows for a phasing out of those members that are older than seventy-two.  Existing Senators over the age limit would be allowed one more six-year term, while existing House members over the age of seventy-two would be allowed three more two-year terms. 

Having a maximum age restriction will give younger members of Congress an opportunity at leadership positions that they would most likely be denied if an age restriction is not enacted.  Such an age restriction will introduce more people to Congress because there will be greater turnover.  Deep seated entrenchments will be eliminated.  Inflated clout and cronyism will be diminished.  For once, Congress’s approval rating could possibly get out of the teens.  Brighter minds with less partisan bitterness and resentment will change the culture of ‘us versus them’ to ‘yes we can’.

Most importantly, the American people will have more confidence that their President is absolutely of sound body and mind.