Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
If there were age limits it should be well below the point of any cognitive decline, because it’s also about having younger people in power who can think and plan on a scale of several decades, because that’s how long they have left to live.
I’m thinking like 50.
The problem with setting the age limit too low is that people of that age range might not feel represented.
To give an example, I’m 48. One of my upcoming concerns is retirement. Will it be able to afford to retire? Will I need to work part time after “retiring” just to survive?
If every politician in a position of power was too young, retirement might not seem to them to be an important issue. After all, when you’re 30, retirement seems forever away. They could enact policies that are great for people under 40 but devastating to people approaching retirement.
That’s why, while I definitely think politicians like McConnell and Feinstein should have retired long ago, I’m leery about setting too low of a forced retirement age.
Also, you do want people with experience there. Having a rotating door of only young people doesn’t really help anything.
The door wouldn’t be rotating anymore than it is now.
And what’s your source on young people not helping anything? All the times in US history that we made the most progress were under young Democrat presidents.
