I have long felt that there should be mandatory upper age limits on public office, whether elected or appointed. 65 seems right to me.
If under 35 is too young to be President, then there should be some age that is too old.
If under 35 is too young to be President, then there should be some age that is too old.
Also building alliances takes time, it used to be that politicians in DC were all friends with each other, which means they could go to the bar after work and figure things out together over some drinks. Now days any politician seen talking to someone of the "opposing" party is deemed a traitor and vilified by the 24hr news media.
They were a tiny percentage of the budget, and it was a small price to pay for functioning government.
And term limits will make it worse.
This isn't some theoretical, research has been done on states that have implemented term limits, everything got worse.
OK imagine senators have a 2 term max, 12 years. They are now 100% incentivized to plan for their next job and not actually care about being a senator. We already see this with roles that are appointed by the administration, FCC commissioners are famous for this. Go from industry -> government -> higher paid industry role, utilizing the connections one gained while in government.
Hah, I wish we could hold on to engineers for 4-5 years…
Politics is about representation and the elderly deserve representation too but they deserve competent representation. And we deserve proportional representation. But that brings up the issue that the political system is arguably rotten to its core and set up in such a way that it’s almost impossible to do such a thing. For proportional representation to be realistic we really need reforms to so many things, lobbying, gerrymandering, voting access, campaign finance, media regulation, etc. and the people who would need to reform this are the current representatives whose power would be potentially be threatened by the reforms that would be enacted.
Kind of a bummer, really
> There are great advantages to age, and people age differently.
The problem is the health of elected officials can't be trusted--their medical staff explicitly mislead or omit issues. "A pharmacist says he has filled Alzheimer's prescriptions for members of Congress" A single news article from a handful of years ago (and a huge ethical breach) is often brought up because there's a problem. That's the only reason anyone is interested in finding another proxy.
I read today that John F. Kennedy was riddled with health problems. He was young, and was considered a good president. How would this new medical enforcement work in His case?
https://www.google.com/m?q=john+f+kennedy+health&client=ms-o...
Well you can't very well have four-year-olds voting, correct? It's unfortunate because they have a stake in election outcomes, but they can't understand that stake. I wish they could vote but indeed they don't even understand what an election is. Instead eighteen is the age that's been chosen for voting, so that one might have time to develop enough of an understanding of the world, the country, the issues, and oneself to make a responsible decision. Is that the right age? One might even have a smidge of wisdom by eighteen. How about sixteen? Then for office, the Constitution has minimum ages, yes. I'd rather see those removed than an upper limit installed. Especially in this time when people are living longer and longevity science is making great early strides.
My grandmother lived to be 104. She was extremely sharp until about 100. She had a great length of experience upon which to draw, and she did. She'd had time to witness the arc of history, to confront her own mistakes and prejudices and to view questions from several perspectives. She'd developed wisdom.
Now, if we're to talk about the health of elected officials, it's obviously true the the old are more prone to issues. Until the fountain of youth is invented we all die. But it's not because "medical staff mislead or omit issues" that it's kosher to start stripping people of their rights. Enforcing transparency around relevant health issues would be the way, rather than using hearsay ("A pharmacist says he has filled Alzheimer's prescriptions for members of Congress") to discriminate against entire groups of people.
A few, sure, but amending the constitution requires widespread agreement.
Stop voting for them and they will stop running.