“Ladies and Gentlemen, President Putin” he garbled, as a confused President Zelen walked onto the stage.
“I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump if I didn’t think she was qualified” came the response to a reporter’s question about the competence of his actual second-in-command Kamala Harris.
What could’ve been next? Biden ordering his troops to “fire the nukes at Kyiv”? It would’ve been a bit awkward explaining, six months into a nuclear winter, that he hadn’t quite meant that and he’d just misspoken. Words are important when you’re ‘leading the free world’ and Biden hasn’t been too good at them lately.
This is why it was a relief when he resigned the nomination. He was right to do so. But the passing of time isn’t just an issue for Delaware’s most famous son – Republican nominee, and former president, Donald Trump isn’t faring much better. If he wins, he will equal Biden’s record as the oldest person to be inaugurated, at age 78.
Trump’s poor track record on being coherent means it’s harder to tell how ageing is affecting him. However, comparing his 2016 speeches to his 2024 efforts, seeing how much lower his energy is in delivery, it’s clear that he’s suffering from decline as well.
People can be considered too young to be president, so why can’t they be considered too old?
Cognitive abilities are especially important when we are talking about one of the most important jobs in the world, not just globally but nationally. Biden still controls the world’s strongest military with a $820 billion budget at his disposal, 42% of the world’s nuclear weapons, 30.8% of the global wealth, is the leader of NATO and holds veto power on the UN Security Council.
It is an intensely taxing job – both mentally and physically. During Obama’s ten years as President, he made 156 international visits and flew over 500,000 miles in Air Force One. The President being a little tired because he can’t exert himself as much as he used to, is a worry for us all.
For the presidency, there is an age minimum. You have to be aged over 35 to be eligible. People can be considered too young to do the job so why can’t they be considered too old? Why is there not an age limit?
Cognitive decline, similar to the kind it looks like we have with Biden, starts to become noticeable between 60 and 70. 75 is an age when this is likely not to be dramatically pronounced. Furthermore, it fits better with the current life expectancy in the US. It is 74.8 for men, 80.2 for women and 77.5 for both sexes. By putting the limit at 75, the likelihood of the international crisis caused by a President dying on the job is greatly reduced.
I also want to consider the retirement age according to the Social Services Administration which is between 66 and 67; the age should be significantly younger. The limit put in place is likely to exist for a significant period of time and both retirement age and life expectancy seem to continue to rise. So taking the highest possible retirement age of 67 and life expectancy at 80.2, creates an average of 73.6 that can be rounded up to 75. The boundary this gives between 35 and 75 has an average of 55, which is also the average age of all Presidents suggesting that it fits well with existing parameters.
But age is an important but overlooked facet of diversity and representation, and age limits and age minimums shouldn’t exist elsewhere. Age is a major defining factor in a person’s experiences and understanding of the world around them.
The ‘TikTok hearings’ in Congress went viral across social media due to the older senator’s apparent inability to understand how social media works. Younger people can ask questions that, for example, interrogate the Chinese ability to access American data, social media censorship and youth mental health, because they are experiences that they are closer to. But they may struggle to understand retirement and social care that they lack personal experience with.
Creating age representation is essential to functioning democracy and more should be done. Currently, 35.9% of the US population is aged between 18 and 44, compared to just 16.2% in Congress, and 16.8% of the US population is over 65, compared to only 33.2% of Congress. The average age in Congress is 58 compared to the average age of voting aged people being 38.
Age-based shortlists should be put in place in politics, similar to the British Labour Party’s use of women-only shortlists used between 1997 and 2022. This should come from federal and state levels to limit the age of candidates that are allowed to run in certain districts in order to effectively diversify the age range of Congress. Labour in 1997 used it to effectively increase their female MPs from just 37 – 13% of all their MPs when Tony Blair’s government came into office – to 190 MPs in 2024, 46% of Keir Starmer’s parliamentary intake.
Age is difficult and subjective and everyone experiences age differently. Biden and Trump are close in age at 81 and 78, respectively but Biden is more obviously experiencing symptoms of cognitive decline.
Age is crucial to representation and democracy and more must be done to increase representation within democracy. However, it can not be argued that this approach is sensible when applied to the job of President of the United States of America.
There has to be an age limit in order to ensure whoever is in the job can actually do it. The job’s too important not have one.
Age limits could mean politics, in and US and elsewhere, could have healthier, more cogent, and, most importantly, more able candidates.
Oh and it might even help avert that ever so awkward prospect of an accidental nuclear winter.
