No More 80-Year-Old Presidents

Our Founding Fathers were brilliant men and together, in their collective and inestimable wisdom, they established the following minimum age requirements for Representatives, Senators, and the President of the United States.

Article I, Section 2, Clause 2

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Article I, Section 2, Clause 3

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The above clauses beg the following question: Why did our Founders insist on a minimum age qualification for various federal offices but not a maximum one? Well, the answer is much simpler than you might think.

When the U.S. Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788, the average life expectancy in the newly-minted United States of America was just 34.5 years of age (constitutioncenter.org). In other words, it probably never occurred to James Madison and the other crafters of the Constitution that people would be living well into their 80s and 90s… and holding federal office at the same time.

Watching Dianne Feinstein (now deceased), Mitch McConnell, and other high profile – and very powerful – senators decline physically and mentally has been a sad affair indeed. It has also been a completely preventable one, too.

The same goes for President Joe Biden, who is a shell of his former self both physically and cognitively… and has no business running for a second term at the age of 81, at the end of which he would be 86 years old.

No, that wasn’t a typo. Geritol Joe will be 86 years and two months when he theoretically transfers the reins of power to his successor on January 20, 2029. Folks, we simply cannot afford to let that happen.

If federal officeholders don’t have the common sense and common decency to step aside when they are well past their “expiration date,” then We, the People, have to do it for them. After all, 79% of Americans favor a mandatory retirement age for Congress and the Presidency and 74% support the same for Supreme Court justices.

My fellow Americans, it is T-I-M-E for a maximum age limit for all federal officeholders, period. And let’s not stop there. America sorely needs term limits for similar reasons, to prevent a power elite from monopolizing Washington D.C.

Are you with me?