Back in 2023, I wrote a piece raising the question of whether there ought to be some upper age limit for holding elected office, Age Limits? (not Term Limits). The proximate cause of that foray into the subject was the obvious deterioration of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). There were also the consequences of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s resistance to strategic retirement (a non-elected example, but one that does speak to the overall topic).

Since that time, we have witnessed the importance of the aging of Joe Biden as well as the age-related deterioration of our second-in-a-row octogenarian president (although his problems are well beyond mere age). Now, as James Joyner notes, the issue is the health of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY). McConnell, who is 84, was already in poor health and appears to have suffered a significant health event that has him hospitalized, perhaps even on life support.

I will note, and James has examples in his post, that members of Congress younger than McConnell have gone silent due to medical reasons, who are far younger than McConnell. That raised another issue, but I will say that it strikes me as reasonable to require some level of disclosure to the public regarding extended absences, and even warrants consideration of rules to determine when an extended absence should lead to an office being vacated and/or some kind of provision for a temporary replacement.

While all of this may seem like a callous disregard for people who are ill, I would respond that all of these people hold important offices of public trust, and they all have profound responsibilities to their constituents. In many of these cases, it seems that members of government are treating their offices as their personal property to do with as they please, instead of offices that belong to the public.

It is not unreasonable to want the rules of the system to take into account how age impacts the ability of humans to live up to the responsibilities of public office.

I return to the age question not because everyone of advanced age is unhealthy or incapable of competent service, or that everyone is going to end up in the hospital while in office. But let’s face facts: the odds significantly increase for such outcomes. The older we get, the more health problems accrue, and the more the chances of mental deterioration increase. Rules should be made not for exceptions, but instead to protect the public from reasonable possibilities.

It is not unreasonable, I think, to suggest that the demands of the presidency are too much for a person in their 80s to adequately fulfill.

It seems plausible to me to argue that there should be a maximum age for elected office. As I noted in my previous post on this subject, many countries do have age maximums for judges, although age maximums for elected office are essentially nonexistent. As such, I realize I am on less firm ground in arguing for this position than is normally the case, where I usually have a lot of comparative evidence undergirding my position.

But just as we have age minimums on the proviso that maybe someone under 25 does not have enough experience to be in the House, even though there are certainly some exceptions out there, so too it seems to me that saying you can be no older than X at the time a person assumes office strikes me as reasonable. My initial thought is that X should probably be around 72. That would make the max age for the House at 74, the presidency at 76, and the Senate at 78. Alternatively, a max age at the end of the term could be installed, which would put the staggered ages on the front end (like with age requirements).

Part of the reason I say this is because it is pretty obvious that a lot of people simply don’t know when to call it quits. For example, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) will turn 88 next month and is running for re-election. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) will be 93 in September and has not yet ruled out running for re-election in 2028. Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) served until he was two weeks shy of 100.

But none of this is about specific people; it is about thinking about the question as a general proposition. Is the public well-served by having members of government in their 80s?

• Are persons in their 80s likely to have the energy needed to adequately represent their constituents?
• Are persons in their 80s likely to have physical or mental deficiencies that diminish their capacity to serve?
• Can persons in their 80s adequately relate to and understand the problems facing their constituents?

I think that last point is almost as relevant as the physical considerations. We all kind of get stuck in the past. I mean, the 1980s were, what, 25 years ago? Right? It strikes me, based on personal experience, that most people, as they age, tune out, or simply never learn a lot about technology and culture, or even socio-political change. Just listen to the sitting president, whose current rants about communists sound very much like things one might have heard in the 1960s and 1970s. It is no random event that much of what he sees as “making America great again” is rooted in a vision of the world from the 1950s.

When it comes to the current occupant of the White House, it seems noteworthy that he is more concerned about crass aspects of his legacy (something I have observed in other aged leaders), like his name on things and whatnot, than about the true consequences of his policy choices. At a minimum, the time-horizons for a person in their 80s in terms of having to live with the decisions one makes is far shorter than that of a person in their 50s.

I will admit, too, that I increasingly find it problematic when individual human beings think that they are so indispensable that they should stay in a job until they drop dead. Part of what motivates my thinking, I will confess, is that I find that much ego and self-centeredness to be more than a bit concerning. At some point, staying in power and retaining the titles and attention are far more about serving self than serving the public.

Indeed, to go into politics requires an enormous amount of ego to begin with. It is the kind of thing that makes it hard to quit. Political institutions should be designed to address human frailties, and I think some sort of limit on human egos in the case of refusing to leave fits such a notion.

I would further note that there is more than an adequate supply of persons in their 70s or younger to ably fill these roles. It isn’t as if we would all suffer if there were fewer octogenarians in office.

Note that in the abstract I would prefer to leave all of this to democratic processes, on the provision that some exceptional individuals might be able to serve into their old age. However, given the power of incumbency coupled with a lot of highly uncompetitive elections, that remedy is not available in the way one might like it to be.

Although I think we are seeing some of this in operation in the primaries. For example, I think that at least part of what is going on with recent DSA-affiliated candidates winning in Democratic primaries is driven at least in part by age. For example, the Chevalier (32) victory over Espaillat (71) in New York or Kiros (29) over DeGette (68) in Colorado was at least in part about wanting generational change as much as anything else.  And polling from FiftyPlusOne notes Janet Mills’s defeat in Maine isn’t an outlier. Americans across the board want age limits in politics.

FWIW, since my last post on this subject, the Congress has gotten slightly younger, per Pew:

The median age of voting members of the House of Representatives is now 57.5 years. That’s down from 57.9 at the start of the 118th Congress (2023-25), 58.9 in the 117th Congress (2021-23), 58.0 in the 116th (2019-21) and 58.4 in the 115th (2017-19).

The Senate, following the death or retirement of some of its oldest members, has reversed its aging trend. The new Senate’s median age is 64.7 years, down from 65.3 at the start of the previous Congress. The median age of the Senate had previously risen for three Congresses in a row: from 62.4 (115th) to 63.6 (116th), to 64.8 (117th) and to 65.3 (118th).

Here’s the breakdown.

Taken as a whole (House plus Senate), NBC News notes this is the third-oldest Congress of all time.

In total, this Congress is the third-oldest in U.S. history, with an average age of 58.9 years at the start of this session one year ago. The median age in the U.S. is 39.1.

At a minium my views are driven by the question of whether or not age maximums serve the public interest.

I will conclude by agreeing that this is not the biggest challenge we face (although it is pretty much in our face as it pertains to a president who frequently falls asleep on camera and may have undisclosed health issues, so it’s nothing). I also agree that it is not likely that my preference for a maximum age for elected office is likely to be implemented.

Still, I think we do have a problem with politicians who simply cannot let go, to the detriment of the broader public good.