Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
Given we have elected officials that are literally freezing while talking to reporters and yet would probably still win election after election? I don’t think the public cares if they are competent. They just care that their party symbol is next to their name so they vote for them.
The question does still remain whether the public not caring about the competency level of a specific elected official is grounds to restrict their voter autonomy. An argument could certainly be made that voting in a less competent candidate could be a strategic move.
Reasonable restrictions can and should be made. You cannot elect a baby, you cannot elect a rock, you shouldn’t be electing someone who clearly isn’t medically capable of doing their job anymore.
I’m not overly convinced that such restrictions are truly necessary at scale. When we are dealing with “large” populations, these sorts of edge-cases begin to become extremely improbable. While they would indeed remain possible, I would argue that if they were to actually end up occurring, that would be as a symptom of a much more serious societal breakdown which would most likely indicate an imminent collapse. That being said, if there was to be some explicit restriction, I believe that it is sufficient to state that individual must be, at least, a naturalized citizen. There could also be some other clause added for the sake of ensuring that the individuals interests are in that of the nation’s – like the natural-born citizen clause in the U.S.A; however, I personally haven’t come to a decision on whether I agree with that, or not.
Will that really change if we added age limits? They’ll just pick a successor and people will mindlessly vote for the new candidate instead.
We all know the Bidens, McConnells, Pelosi’s, etc aren’t really a single person. They have a whole team of people behind them who are making the decisions, doing the research, etc. You’re not really voting for the person as much as the administration that comes with that person.
For example a lot of people that were part of the Obama administration are part of the Biden. The person changed but the power structure more or less remains the same.
It would be a step in the right direction.
Something doesn’t need to be perfect to be better than we have today.
If we have a minimum age, we can have a maximum.
Or it’s a step in no direction and doesn’t actually do anything. Realistically a step in no direction is a step in the wrong direction because of opportunity cost - time spent that could have been spent doing something useful.
The idea behind a minimum age is that there is a certain experience that you get as you age. 25 year olds simply don’t have it. A max limit doesn’t make sense using that reasoning - you don’t lose experience as you age.
However, I agree that it’s inconsistent to have one and not the other. I say remove both - let the people decide who they want to vote for.
