Yep. There's mandatory retirement in other fields, and I think leading the nation is starting to look like one of them. Having a horde of people who just NEVER want to stop gaining power gripping...
Yep. There's mandatory retirement in other fields, and I think leading the nation is starting to look like one of them. Having a horde of people who just NEVER want to stop gaining power gripping onto the reigns is doing no one any favors.
I would even be enthusiastic about extremely generous retirement packages for presidents, senators and congressmen, as long as they can never again accept money from anyone else. No private...
I would even be enthusiastic about extremely generous retirement packages for presidents, senators and congressmen, as long as they can never again accept money from anyone else. No private business, no cushy vice president roles, no generous donations from private individuals. They can volunteer their time however they want, but no one but the US government will ever pay them again.
It'd cut way down on the incentives to cozy up to businesses while in office if we close post-office considerations as well as having rules against bribery while they're in office.
Yep, and I think this nails the point I see many people miss about making sure incentives align. Sure people will still try to game the system, but it'll be that much more obvious when they do,...
Yep, and I think this nails the point I see many people miss about making sure incentives align.
Sure people will still try to game the system, but it'll be that much more obvious when they do, they'll have less reason to do it, and they'll have less power in the system directly which weakens their ability to game it.
I think that is more than money. It's about life purpose and ego, which I use in the neutral sense. Getting money is merely a way of feeling important, of feeling that one matters, of having a...
I think that is more than money. It's about life purpose and ego, which I use in the neutral sense. Getting money is merely a way of feeling important, of feeling that one matters, of having a purpose and a place in the world. Bribes are more than monetary tribute: they are tribute to the ego.
I think about Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, who's visibly confused and senile in public and cannot function without her aides, much more so than Mitch McConnell — yet she refuses to retire. She's spent virtually her entire adult life in politics: first as SF supervisor, then mayor of SF, and then senator. If she were to retire, who would she be left as? Some tired old woman who waits for biological death? To retire is to allow one's self-concept, one's ego to die. The ego tries to cheat existential death by clinging to power, to purpose.
Then they will be happy to still be of use to the country without accepting additional renumeration above their generous pensions, won't they? I didn't propose any constraints on their actions,...
Then they will be happy to still be of use to the country without accepting additional renumeration above their generous pensions, won't they? I didn't propose any constraints on their actions, only on their compensation. I trust that would be sufficient to lead them to do what's meaningful instead of what's enriching. And maybe some will really be passionate about supporting a particular industry enough to volunteer their time, but that seems to me to be a harder sell than just handing them stacks of cash.
Very good point, and I really don't think there's much more to it than this. There are countless stories of retired people going back to work part time because after working for decades, and...
Very good point, and I really don't think there's much more to it than this. There are countless stories of retired people going back to work part time because after working for decades, and suddenly having nothing but free time, what even are you? Hell, think of one of the first things you ask someone after learning their name: "So, what do you do?"
To retire is to allow one's self-concept, one's ego to die. The ego tries to cheat existential death by clinging to power, to purpose.
I'm reminded of a passage from Be Here Now, in which Baba Ram Dass describes a yogi living in a cave sustaining himself via no food or water, but through refusing enlightenment and maintaining "a single narrow thread of ego;" the metaphorical cheating of existential death by clinging to life.
TBH past a certain point these guys aren’t really doing work anymore. They’re sort of just empty shells being “Weekend at Bernie’d” to stand in for the coterie of staffers and special interest...
TBH past a certain point these guys aren’t really doing work anymore. They’re sort of just empty shells being “Weekend at Bernie’d” to stand in for the coterie of staffers and special interest groups who benefit from being the hidden power behind them.
Another beautiful example of this is the recent story that Feinstein's staffers make sure they always have someone unofficially "on call," whose entire job is to watch Feinstein and catch her...
Another beautiful example of this is the recent story that Feinstein's staffers make sure they always have someone unofficially "on call," whose entire job is to watch Feinstein and catch her whenever it looks like she's about to wander out of the office and then make up an excuse to go with her so she can't humiliate herself with her senility.
Something like this would be best: Mandatory retirement at 60 Retired members of congress are prohibited from taking on any paid job (and no free air fare, yacht trips, etc.) Retired members of...
Something like this would be best:
Mandatory retirement at 60
Retired members of congress are prohibited from taking on any paid job (and no free air fare, yacht trips, etc.)
Retired members of congress keep their benefits and get ample pension payments
I don't think mandatory retirement at 60 is a great idea. Ideally, in a perfect world, you'd like to have members of Congress who are well-educated and have a lot of experience in their life, line...
Exemplary
I don't think mandatory retirement at 60 is a great idea.
Ideally, in a perfect world, you'd like to have members of Congress who are well-educated and have a lot of experience in their life, line of work/industry to bring that experience to Congress and provide that perspective in the House/Senate. In an age when many people don't even really start their long-term careers until their 30s, and many don't have children until their late 30s/early 40s, you're cutting off a lot of experiences there.
For example, I'm 32 and just had my first kid. Presumably, if my daughter ever has a kid it'll probably be when she's my age. So if I were to become a member of Parliament here in Canada, and was forced to retire at 60, I would never be able to provide the perspective of a grandparent, nor would most people. Additionally, I don't think it's fair to ask someone who is at age 60 and in good health to retire because we said so. Some of the smartest, most useful people I've worked with have been at retirement age. Don't get me wrong, that isn't true for all of them, but we have lost some good people on my team when they retired and even been eager to have them stick with us on casual contracts just to provide their expertise because they've garnered so much of it by that point.
Also keep in mind many may not have the resources or support to run for office until they're in their 40s or 50s. If I'm forced to retire at 60, and I don't feel I could have a successful run at office until I'm say 55... well, if I'm making decent money and like working I'm not going to run for office when it means I'll only be able to be in the House for a few years and then be unable to take work ever again, and wouldn't have much in the way of a pension since I'd only been there a couple years.
I don't think an age cutoff is fair, but some kind of physical/mental examinations would be a different story. If someone has severe memory loss and problems speaking they aren't fit to serve. But then, at the same time, even that doesn't really work in every situation, because look at John Fetterman, who had a stroke and worked hard to regain his movement and communication abilities, but still has some difficulties. Should he have been precluded from running because of his health? If not, then why should we preclude someone like McConnell being in office, even if he had a serious stroke like Fetterman did?
I disagree. You really do need a clear and objective way of determining when someone is unfit for office. And if you want to use a test of cognitive abilities, well someone has to write and...
Exemplary
I don't think an age cutoff is fair, but some kind of physical/mental examinations would be a different story.
I disagree. You really do need a clear and objective way of determining when someone is unfit for office. And if you want to use a test of cognitive abilities, well someone has to write and administer that test. For example, you might require a neurologist to admit such a test, but doctors can be biased just like anyone else. What if the doctor administering such a test decides that simply being a member of a certain political party indicates cognitive deficiencies? What if the doctor administering the test grades one party harshly while grading the other easily? Or what if the test is actually administered completely fairly, but one party consistently scores worse on it? Maybe one party just happens to nominate older candidates, or maybe people with mental deficiencies are more attracted to one party or the other. But if whatever test you use happens to hit one party harder than another, there will be no end to it.
There is a reason we use a hard age cutoff when determining the minimum age for voting. We could try to use a cognitive test to determine eligibility, but it's just too subjective. And we've seen from our electoral history that if you don't have very firm, clear, and objective rules to determine eligibility, people will try to disenfranchise minority groups using those vague qualifications. See literacy tests.
No. If you're worried about cognitive decline, the way to do it is to have a hard age cutoff. It's a crude instrument, but it's objective and can't easily be screwed with. Would a hard cutoff of say, 70 in the Senate, prevent a few perfectly qualified people from serving? Sure. But the same happens on the other end. You have to be at least 30 to be eligible for the Senate. And there probably are some 25 year olds that are particularly wise for their years that would make very good senators. But it's very difficult to objectively define such things. Instead, we use a hard minimum age requirement. It's not a perfect tool, but it is something we can fairly agree upon that provides little room for shenanigans. We use a hard age cutoff for voter eligibility and for serving in the House, Senate, and Presidency. If we're worried about cognitive decline with age, we should use a similar hard cutoff.
Thank you for writing my reply for me. It makes me a little sad to see the other comment being so well received. I know it comes from good intentions, but it's an argument I hear a lot and it...
Thank you for writing my reply for me. It makes me a little sad to see the other comment being so well received. I know it comes from good intentions, but it's an argument I hear a lot and it shows a lack of research into history and politics.
It'd be great if we could just assess people and get the best person for the job who doesn't have any horrible morals or biases. But if we could, we probably wouldn't need most politics anyways since it's a form of friction put in place to get a bunch of people who hate each other to work towards positive goals rather than just spend time and energy murdering each other.
The cases of assessments being used to prevent people from entering systems is an old old practice and its something that happens in basically every corner of the globe. You might have it work for a few years as intended but it's only a matter of time until a bad actor poisons such a system with TERRIBLE results.
"Elegant" laws that leave little room for interpretation, but aren't perfect, tend to work a hell of a lot better because it's much harder for a bad actor to weasel their way past. Either you're 60 or not. It's hard to fake your age past a point.
As for the ability of the modern person to really get involved before they're 40 due to how life works, yeah that's an issue. An issue that I think would be better solved by 45/50 year olds who only just got time to get into congress and want to change it for future generations rather than 80 year olds who've been sitting on their throne for 40 years (and got elected arguing their old guard needed to step down).
Correct. None of these elderly politicians were first elected in their sixties, or seventies, or eighties. Most of them were elected in their forties or fifties. This article is about Mitch. Mitch...
Correct. None of these elderly politicians were first elected in their sixties, or seventies, or eighties. Most of them were elected in their forties or fifties. This article is about Mitch. Mitch was elected in his early forties in 1984. The age limit wouldn't make it impossible for him to become a Senator, it would make it impossible for him to remain a senator for forty years, which is an absurd amount of time for someone to remain an elected official to begin with. This limit wouldn't make it impossible for people to get life experience before becoming a politician, it would make it impossible for people whose only life experience is being a politician to hold an office for 50 years at the expense of other possible politicians who have different, more contemporary, and more relevant life experience.
But that isn't what you suggested. 70 is very, VERY different from 60. Just as 80 is very different from 70. There are very few 80 year olds who are fit for the mental challenge and stresses of...
Would a hard cutoff of say, 70 in the Senate, prevent a few perfectly qualified people from serving?
But that isn't what you suggested. 70 is very, VERY different from 60. Just as 80 is very different from 70. There are very few 80 year olds who are fit for the mental challenge and stresses of holding public office. The same cannot be said for 60 year olds.
The difference between using 60 and 70 years as a cutoff is one in magnitude, not in category. In that sense it may be different, but it is much less different than suggesting a physical/mental...
The difference between using 60 and 70 years as a cutoff is one in magnitude, not in category. In that sense it may be different, but it is much less different than suggesting a physical/mental examination, which was what you suggested as an alternative.
Further, you stated that
I don't think an age cutoff is fair
If this is your position, why then counter with the difference based on at what age that cutoff is set? I genuinely want to know, because I cannot see a way to reconcile the two arguments (on one hand arguing that no cutoff should be used and instead some different method is better, on the other implying that it may be reasonable depending on what age the cutoff is at).
In addition, we should remember to be charitable in our interpretations of what others say. For instance, note that the suggestion was for:
Something like this
That is, for a charitable interpretation we should treat these as examples of the types of restriction that should be applied according to the poster, not the specific solution that is the only viable one.
@isleepinahammock didn't suggest that number; @teaearlgraycold did. I think there ought to be an age limit (especially in the judiciary), but I agree that 60 is too young -- personally I'd put it...
I think there ought to be an age limit (especially in the judiciary), but I agree that 60 is too young -- personally I'd put it somewhere between 70 and 80.
I'd agree that somewhere in the mid to late 70s seems like a reasonable cutoff. If their contacts and experience remain valuable after that, we can create a type of sinecure position where their...
I'd agree that somewhere in the mid to late 70s seems like a reasonable cutoff. If their contacts and experience remain valuable after that, we can create a type of sinecure position where their successor can retain them as a sort of legislative Of counsel.
Keep in mind that the average life expectancy is still sitting around 76. Maybe that'd be a good metric: Average life expectancy between the two most recent census, minus 15 years. So that would...
Keep in mind that the average life expectancy is still sitting around 76.
Maybe that'd be a good metric: Average life expectancy between the two most recent census, minus 15 years.
So that would put the limit around 61, and it would go higher if the average life expectancy goes up. Good public policy should do that, so it's a win win.
Hard coding things to have dependencies on dynamic metrics that you don't fully control tends to produce weird edge cases. Like suppose you have a major war, pandemic, or natural disaster. Now...
Hard coding things to have dependencies on dynamic metrics that you don't fully control tends to produce weird edge cases. Like suppose you have a major war, pandemic, or natural disaster. Now your life expectancy has tanked and all your senior legislators must retire at exactly the time you need a steady hand on the tiller.
This is why it should remain with the voters and we should all be pushing, pressuring, voters to make better choices. I think we should consider just like legislators have financial disclosure, I...
This is why it should remain with the voters and we should all be pushing, pressuring, voters to make better choices. I think we should consider just like legislators have financial disclosure, I think there should be health disclosure requirements for congress.
The AMA and CDC should have a partnership where they publish a list of diagnosis of interest that have potentially cognitive/decision making impairments. If anyone has those dx they should have to release it and then the voters can decide if for this person it's impairing them sufficiently, maybe even triggering the possibility of a recall.
I'm sure there's risks/issues with this solution but I think it keeps it where the original decision to elect the person is with which is the voters vs doctors.
Yeah I find the need to bind legislators' hands on stuff like this to be a fundamentally anti-democratic impulse. That's justified in cases where we need to bind their hands to preserve democratic...
Yeah I find the need to bind legislators' hands on stuff like this to be a fundamentally anti-democratic impulse. That's justified in cases where we need to bind their hands to preserve democratic systems over the long term (i.e. no infringing on freedom of speech, have to maintain functioning election infrastructure, equal protection under the law, and so on). But on specific operational questions like "how much of the property taxes should go to education" or "what are the qualifications for a good legislator" that's exactly what voting is for. And deciding on what those boundaries are by a vaguer set of norms and customs permits more flexibility and room for deviance than codifying them as hard rules does.
I mean, the first term limits at all in the USA came about because of FDR. You're spot on. I think the idea of a forced exit is less of an issue when incumbants don't hold such strong staying...
I mean, the first term limits at all in the USA came about because of FDR. You're spot on.
I think the idea of a forced exit is less of an issue when incumbants don't hold such strong staying power. Name recognition tends to override any actual qualifications in the current setup.
Incumbancy itself would likely be less of a problem if not for all the dirty money funding campaigns.
In a more parlimentary system, where people voted for party then party chose reps, it sidesteps it a bit.
This only works if the system you're asking voters to use is capable of enabling them to make better choices. It's like giving construction workers a screwdriver and some nails, and then "pushing,...
This is why it should remain with the voters and we should all be pushing, pressuring, voters to make better choices.
This only works if the system you're asking voters to use is capable of enabling them to make better choices. It's like giving construction workers a screwdriver and some nails, and then "pushing, pressuring" them to build a better house. That's just asinine, because the capabilities of their output is limited by the tools they are given.
It's also assuming you're actually putting the tools in the hands of trained construction workers, and not just pushing random people onto jobsites and giving them inadequate tools and telling them to build something they don't even have the proper education or training to do.
I dont disagree the system for voting, elections need to be improved. Education and many other societal aspects also could be improved. However setting hard limits/term limits, age limits aren't...
I dont disagree the system for voting, elections need to be improved. Education and many other societal aspects also could be improved. However setting hard limits/term limits, age limits aren't the solution in my opinion or the right option.
Engaging voters or would be voters. Pushing for ranked choice or other novel election strategies. Giving more information like i suggested such as medical conditions that are considered relevant for the job that a third party determines are disclosable conditions. Just like pilots cannot be color blind, legislators shouldnt have alzhiemers or at least voters should know if they do. Aka I support giving the right tools.
Using your analogy of construction age limits are like saying we cant build more than three story buildings, regardless of residential, commercial, etc. That is going to lead to urban sprawl and other issues.
Some communities I believe would want to be represented by older individuals such as retirement communities in Arizona or Florida and with the right tools they should have the right to be able to elect individuals who represent them. Just like some communities should have the right to someone their age, race, sex, orientation, religion, we dont make hard rules about those categories nor should we for age. Im not the biggest fan of minimums either personally but if we as a country have them I wish they'd be more consistent.
With regards to hard limits, I think there's a difference between setting a maximum age for representatives and setting a maximum height for buildings depending on the context and circumstances,...
With regards to hard limits, I think there's a difference between setting a maximum age for representatives and setting a maximum height for buildings depending on the context and circumstances, but just generally how both of those would be approached I think it's different.
There's over 300 million people in the US. Obviously not all of those people are adults who would even be capable of being elected as a representative, and not all of those people are eligible/unfit for other reasons whether it's their citizenship status or criminal record or anything else that might potentially make someone unfit for office. In any case, it's still many millions of people, and yet there's far fewer people who actually serve as representatives. The pool to select from is large, the actual amount selected is small, with any reasonable limits set, we're unlikely to be excluding any significant level of experience or viewpoints. Arguably, we should be more concerned by the fact that with so few representatives relative to the population size, the apparent observation of people who are up there quite a bit in age taking up such a large portion of representatives should be a major cause of concern, far more than reasonable age limits. It's not to say it makes sense to elect a 10 year old to make sure children are represented, but I think it's clear that there is a middle ground there.
This is including the example you gave like older people in retirement communities and such that might want to elect people that best relate to them, at what point can a retired 65 year old not possibly relate to a retired 75 year old, or a retired 85 year old? Of course there are going to be some differences between those ages, don't get me wrong, but when the average life expectancy is something like 75ish years old, across all that spectrum of old age, you're going to have 67 year olds that are potentially experiencing some of the pains that some 77 year olds are feeling, meanwhile you might have an 80 year old that is doing better than a 70 year old. This ties back into my point about how many people are in this country, if retired people are concerned about electing someone who knows what retired life is like, with a reasonable limit set, say something like 70 or whatever, there's going to be that 68 year old retiree that has the life experience to meet people at that stage of life, there's no need to elect a 78 year old for that.
Now you might say, well if a 67 year old can be in just as poor health as a 77 year old, or worse, then that proves the limit is stupid and the idea you have about making health records for elected officials more public is more viable...Well to an extent that could be true, but we're also talking about what is realistic and reasonable. We don't determine when every person is a capable adult on a case by case basis, because that's just not feasible. We set a hard limit, 18 years old and you're fully qualified whether you're actually developed to that point or not. No one actually thinks 18 is some magical age where you've gained sudden enlightenment. Yeah, determining mental capabilities of millions of individuals is infeasible but how can I say the same over so few elected officials? That surely must be a bit more realistic. Well there's a lot more to politics than rational thinking. If that's all it were, then I'd probably be in more agreement with you, but that's just not how it is. Once you start taking things on a case by case basis, it gets more personal, and when it gets more personal, it gets less rational. Over something as simple and straightforward as health, where we can sensibly predict that health declines as we age and it becomes more and more obvious the greater the age, removing the personal out of the equation and setting a hard limit allows it to be more rational, because we can decide ahead of time without it impacting any particular person we might be more partial to. In the same way I might choose not to buy certain foods at the store that are unhealthy for me, but if I had them near me later when I was hungry I'd eat them in a second, I can more easily choose to remove the option when I'm not looking for something to satisfy a craving. Perhaps in the absence of eating cookies that I didn't purchase, I might double dip on something that was not as unhealthy as cookies that I did purchase but isn't really healthy anymore if I'm upping my intake of that food, thereby defeating my rational planning I had at the store. Yep that's possible, you can't win all the battles, all you can do is try to be better than you were the day before. It's no different than the possibility you might elect a 60 year old with a health condition and it impacts their output negatively, but that should be a lot less common than 80 year olds falling down and freezing up during a news conference.
Oh, the main goal was not to set a threshold where most people older are mentally unfit to do the job. It's to set a threshold such that the members of congress actually represent the population....
Oh, the main goal was not to set a threshold where most people older are mentally unfit to do the job. It's to set a threshold such that the members of congress actually represent the population. Having senators too old causes issues with climate change - they're too old to care as they'll be long dead by the time we're in disaster mode. They're mostly out of touch and stuck in their ways. They don't understand what people need.
Age is better in many ways than term limits. Term limits just put a hard revolving door in place that makes staffers and lobbiests even more powerful. But we all die eventually. On average before...
Age is better in many ways than term limits. Term limits just put a hard revolving door in place that makes staffers and lobbiests even more powerful.
But we all die eventually. On average before we're 80. I like the idea of forcing people to retire at 65, politicians included. Nobody should work till the day they die.
There are plenty of things that can be done outside the workforce.
I get a little twitchy every time people use "boomer" like it's a synonym for anything they don't like -- incompetence, stupidity, corruption, Trumpism, entitlement, etc. There's definitely a...
I get a little twitchy every time people use "boomer" like it's a synonym for anything they don't like -- incompetence, stupidity, corruption, Trumpism, entitlement, etc. There's definitely a chunk of younger people who fit that. There are plenty of old people who are sharp into their 90s and more. Individuals age differently, plain & simple. Certainly Dianne Feinstein should have retired years ago, but Nancy Pelosi isn't far behind her in years and can run circles around younger politicians.
Pelosi has had plenty of moments like this. It wasn't too long ago she did basically the same thing as Mitch did here in a press conference of her own, except that it was for longer and instead of...
Pelosi has had plenty of moments like this. It wasn't too long ago she did basically the same thing as Mitch did here in a press conference of her own, except that it was for longer and instead of being silent she was just saying random words that didn't go together. People age differently. Nobody this old is consistently as sharp as the average 35 year old, they all have bad days, and the average person that old is never as sharp as the average 35 year old, even on their good days.
I disagree because of variance in aging and how it correlates with physical health and mental lucidity. Especially now that we have people pursuing lifestyles that promote health and longevity....
I disagree because of variance in aging and how it correlates with physical health and mental lucidity.
Especially now that we have people pursuing lifestyles that promote health and longevity. We're going to have some shockingly healthy old people that are healthier than people 20 years younger than them who make less healthy choices. And assuming medical technology keeps advancing, this gap may get even greater than we can imagine now. Ultimately, an arbitrary and fixed forced retirement number does come off as ageism.
Absolutely. Mandela didn't run for re-election in South Africa because he believed an octogenarian shouldn't be in government. I know that's a high upper age limit and while I agree with him, I...
Absolutely.
Mandela didn't run for re-election in South Africa because he believed an octogenarian shouldn't be in government. I know that's a high upper age limit and while I agree with him, I would have liked to see him in particular have another term.
I completely agree. I would also like to see term limits for these folks. Same with SCOTUS. People forget that George Washington set the precedent for a president having only two terms. Had he not...
I completely agree. I would also like to see term limits for these folks. Same with SCOTUS. People forget that George Washington set the precedent for a president having only two terms. Had he not done that, we would have presidents in office until they died or were no longer fit to serve. “Career politician” was never supposed to be a thing.
No the framers knew people would become career statesmen, they just expected these to be positions held by landed gentry who didn't really need to care about money and lived off property, rents,...
“Career politician” was never supposed to be a thing.
No the framers knew people would become career statesmen, they just expected these to be positions held by landed gentry who didn't really need to care about money and lived off property, rents, and investment income.
The two term limit for President was specifically for President, because a chief executive ruling too long starts looking like a king and the system starts to conform itself to his way of doing things. This leads to a brittle system that is unable to cope with change. Legislators can stay as long as people want them, the body as a whole naturally cycles through.
Let's be clear though, Republicans pushed that term limit through because FDR functionally turned them into a political non-entity and they didn't want to spend another decade in the political...
Let's be clear though, Republicans pushed that term limit through because FDR functionally turned them into a political non-entity and they didn't want to spend another decade in the political wilderness.
Maybe not a #, but a cognitive and physical test. I.e. like a resume says "must be able to life 40lbs" or whatever... I've said the same for driving.. when you start collecting social security....
Maybe not a #, but a cognitive and physical test.
I.e. like a resume says "must be able to life 40lbs" or whatever...
I've said the same for driving.. when you start collecting social security. retake the driving test. Take again every 5 years. BUT also ensure they have free bus passes and subsidized instaCart or equivalent.
twice in my life i was run off the road by merging grandma who can't even turn her head and know she had to yield and i couldn't move over, nearly causing a pileup.
The maximum age argument got a whole lot louder when Biden got elected. That argument wasn't making the rounds on reddit when Trump was in office. Your seeing old dudes in government might confirm...
The maximum age argument got a whole lot louder when Biden got elected. That argument wasn't making the rounds on reddit when Trump was in office. Your seeing old dudes in government might confirm your bias, but there are plenty of younger politicians right alongside them, too.
What I'm saying is, it feels a whole lot like reddit in here lately. Barring everyone above a certain age from holding office won't stop the problems that the government has or how America is run. It's not a very good argument.
You can’t just shut down an argument by saying it “sounds like a Reddit argument.” Like others have said, certain other professions have mandatory retirement age for various reasons. It’s not a...
You can’t just shut down an argument by saying it “sounds like a Reddit argument.” Like others have said, certain other professions have mandatory retirement age for various reasons. It’s not a stretch to say that creating laws and permanently altering the structure of our country might ought to fall under the category of mandatory retirement.
The ageist argument holds weight when it comes to their holding a scalpel, or driving, or piloting a vehicle, things where their actions have a direct risk to human life in the moment. Give me...
The ageist argument holds weight when it comes to their holding a scalpel, or driving, or piloting a vehicle, things where their actions have a direct risk to human life in the moment. Give me some other examples and I might agree. Mitch has a team of people that help him push the buttons. Once he dies, someone is going to fill his position and you're going to see the same exact gridlock politics. His age has nothing to do with the laws that are permanently altering the structure of our country.
The ageist argument also fuels the "both sides" argument, which tricks the impressionable into not voting come 24 when Biden will need as many votes as he can get against De Santis or Trump. We've seen how loyal the Republican voterbase are to elect anyone despite their qualifications, and the Republicans are quite good at trickery as evidenced by their fueling the distrust in the DNC and sowing apathy in the election process when Bernie Sanders didn't get to up against Trump.
So when homie gave me two words that I've seen all over reddit since Trump lost in 20, well, it's hardly an original or empathetic statement. I'm no fan of Mitch whatsoever but surely one could muster a little more heart on a completely different website with different goals for its vibes, one of the first being "don't be an asshole."
Yeah. I haven’t been on Reddit much in the last few years. But I think before the recent influx of users my top level comment here wouldn’t have gotten so many votes. I threw it on here without...
Yeah. I haven’t been on Reddit much in the last few years. But I think before the recent influx of users my top level comment here wouldn’t have gotten so many votes. I threw it on here without too much thought. Now it’s got 30 votes and a lot of attention it doesn’t deserve.
Respectfully, friend, attacking the argument due to it supposedly feeling like something out of reddit is itself what feels to me like redditor behavior. Clearly a lot of people think there is...
Respectfully, friend, attacking the argument due to it supposedly feeling like something out of reddit is itself what feels to me like redditor behavior. Clearly a lot of people think there is merit to your argument that there should be a cutoff age, and a lot of people think otherwise, and they're all free to continue the conversation (as they are doing). It's the advantage of having more participants in the first place. I don't see anyone participating in bad faith.
I think people were more focused on Trump's other shortcomings and didn't want to harp on age, especially when many Trump critics are fond of Bernie Sanders who is no spring chicken himself....
I think people were more focused on Trump's other shortcomings and didn't want to harp on age, especially when many Trump critics are fond of Bernie Sanders who is no spring chicken himself. Conservatives and progressives alike aren't terribly excited about Biden, so barring older folks from running would eliminate both Trump and Biden from contention, pleasing many younger voters. That might be why the conversation is taking place now.
I would like to push back against the theme I'm starting to see of "there is discussion taking place/an opinion being supported that I don't agree with, therefore the site is becoming Reddit (which is bad)". People are going to have hot takes and misinformed ideas, none of us are experts in all of the things we like to discuss and comment on. If you feel that the idea lacks merit, by all means tell them why, but the testy "this feels like a reddit idea (and therefore bad/beneath Tildes by connotation)" seems unnecessarily divisive and alienating.
I mean if you want a controversial take, I think once you reach the age of social retirement (and/or draw from it) for your country, you should be barred from political exercise at all. That would...
I mean if you want a controversial take, I think once you reach the age of social retirement (and/or draw from it) for your country, you should be barred from political exercise at all.
That would mean you are no longer eligible to vote or hold office.
My thoughts are more centered around the thought that you've already done your part for your country and contributed to society - it's time to lie low and let the society you've been a part of to take care of you. You've had 40-50 years of voting, and 20-30 years where you could be an elected official at the highest ranks of government (in the US).
Controversial, sure, but I think it's best for long term health of a system to ensure continual turnover and the passing along of responsibilities from generation to generation. Plus a hard deadline makes most people conscious of the effect they have, and will likely make them consider more long term policy rather than short sighted gains based incentive.
It's not like I'm saying we need to euthanize the elderly, I just think after a certain point, we need to prioritize the handing down of power - that should be a celebrated moment. It's "sacred" to raise future generations and bring them to success as you move along.
I don't think there's a better way to handle that - we can't even get consistent agreement on having elderly drivers retest to get their driver's license let alone form a cognitive test that proves someone can hold office. And sure, it might not fix all of the problems we'd have since you'd still leave vulnerabilities for things like lobbyists and people who just are unsavory regardless of age - but it's a part of the solutions I have in mind, not the whole end all, be all solution.
Feel free to hate my opinion, but it is legitimate, and it's not based in controversy for the sake of it (nor edgy for the sake of karma) to be clear. I genuinely want to see a better tomorrow and I think prioritizing safeguards for future generations to have their hands in the system they rely in is a key step in continually modernizing a fast changing world.
I have had a blood vessel affect my brain via a stroke, and the first thing I thought is "that's a serious stroke or an aneurysm." I have no proof, or medical training, but I'm just saying what it...
I have had a blood vessel affect my brain via a stroke, and the first thing I thought is "that's a serious stroke or an aneurysm." I have no proof, or medical training, but I'm just saying what it looked like to me.
"transient ischemic attack" is the medical term I've seen people throwing around. that description seems to be consistent with the symptoms we observed, where he returned back to the press...
Transient ischemic attacks usually last a few minutes. Most signs and symptoms disappear within an hour, though rarely symptoms may last up to 24 hours.
that description seems to be consistent with the symptoms we observed, where he returned back to the press conference a few minutes later and appeared outwardly back to normal.
He had a slip and fall not too long ago IIRC. At his age small injuries have a way of compounding themselves into other, deeper health problems, including minor strokes.
He had a slip and fall not too long ago IIRC. At his age small injuries have a way of compounding themselves into other, deeper health problems, including minor strokes.
Similar boat of no training and the like, but this seems unlikely since he returned to finish speaking, but god I can't even imagine wanting to do this when I'm anywhere near that age, let alone...
Similar boat of no training and the like, but this seems unlikely since he returned to finish speaking, but god I can't even imagine wanting to do this when I'm anywhere near that age, let alone in that kind of health. The actual behavior of just "blanking" mid speech is concerning no matter what.
Extremely terrifying. When I have massive panic attacks while talking to people it's very weird. I get tunnel vision, I start blacking out, I feel dissociated, etc and then I just have to stop and...
Extremely terrifying. When I have massive panic attacks while talking to people it's very weird. I get tunnel vision, I start blacking out, I feel dissociated, etc and then I just have to stop and walk away before I hit the ground or something. I also have a myriad of health issues that could make me act like this one time too, if it all caught up to me. He may have had a stroke, might have been a panic attack, or maybe something else. I haven't watched the guy for a year or so, but he looks way older and rough in this clip. Terrifying because I could be right there in his shoes one day. I mean, not making a public speech or whatever.
A friend thinks he had a mini-stroke. I don't know if he did or not, but the way the others around him responded and led him away felt to me like they'd been trained or informed on how to handle...
A friend thinks he had a mini-stroke. I don't know if he did or not, but the way the others around him responded and led him away felt to me like they'd been trained or informed on how to handle such a scenario. Maybe it's just basic "how to behave in front of the press" training for all politicians, but the one guy (don't know his name) was just a bit too calm and gentle in how they talked to him. He didn't seem particularly alarmed to me.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, I don't know. But it just instantly brought to mind the stories of elder abuse where elderly politicians are basically forced to stay in office by those around them since they lack the cognitive ability to declare they're retiring. Mitch isn't like that as far as I'm aware, but if he has some health issues where he should be resting... It just leaves me feeling a bit unsettled, I guess.
It could have been a TIA (trans ichemic attack). For those unaware this is what people mean when they say 'mini-stroke'. It shows the symptoms of a stroke (loss of control over motion,...
It could have been a TIA (trans ichemic attack). For those unaware this is what people mean when they say 'mini-stroke'. It shows the symptoms of a stroke (loss of control over motion, difficulties communicating, etc) because it is a temporary restriction of blood to the brain, but not a clot etc like a full-on stroke. It also typically resolves itself quickly.
My dad had a TIA a few years ago while in bed, and he got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and fell over because he couldn't properly move one half of his body. My mom called 911 and had an ambulance come; within 10-15 minutes he was fine and fully recovered, before even leaving in the ambulance, and they just took him to hospital anyway to run some tests. A TIA can be very short-lived, so it's possible that McConnell had one, had to be helped away into private, and then returned after recovering (and possibly went to hospital afterwards).
Another possibility could be Parkinson's; Parkinson's can leave sufferers unable to get words out, and unable to move. I kind of doubt this is what happened though, because usually in those cases they'd still be expressive and you would be able to see the frustration on their face at not being able to move/speak, whereas McConnell just completely glazed over.
I really wish there was an age limit on who can serve. It used to be the older were wiser and respectable in the community. You looked up to your elders. Now they are holding on to some pipe dream...
I really wish there was an age limit on who can serve. It used to be the older were wiser and respectable in the community. You looked up to your elders. Now they are holding on to some pipe dream of an age that has passed by.
IMO, he needs to retire, along with the rest of the 70+ year olds in the U.S. government, of all affiliations and all positions at all levels and departments. Alzheimer's, dementia, and mental...
IMO, he needs to retire, along with the rest of the 70+ year olds in the U.S. government, of all affiliations and all positions at all levels and departments. Alzheimer's, dementia, and mental decline in general are not that uncommon as humans age. People like this have no business running a convenience store let alone the federal government, IMO.
Personally, I can't really feel bad for him, because IMO, he has been detestable and held up tons of legislation by refusing to even bring it up when he was leader.
I can't bring myself to watch the video of him freezing. I do not like the man, but I do feel bad for him. That's a nightmare scenario for a lot of people. I have a lot of health issues and can...
I can't bring myself to watch the video of him freezing.
I do not like the man, but I do feel bad for him. That's a nightmare scenario for a lot of people. I have a lot of health issues and can imagine that being me.
I would love to see a maximum age for members of congress in addition to the current minimum ages.
Yep. There's mandatory retirement in other fields, and I think leading the nation is starting to look like one of them. Having a horde of people who just NEVER want to stop gaining power gripping onto the reigns is doing no one any favors.
I would even be enthusiastic about extremely generous retirement packages for presidents, senators and congressmen, as long as they can never again accept money from anyone else. No private business, no cushy vice president roles, no generous donations from private individuals. They can volunteer their time however they want, but no one but the US government will ever pay them again.
It'd cut way down on the incentives to cozy up to businesses while in office if we close post-office considerations as well as having rules against bribery while they're in office.
Yep, and I think this nails the point I see many people miss about making sure incentives align.
Sure people will still try to game the system, but it'll be that much more obvious when they do, they'll have less reason to do it, and they'll have less power in the system directly which weakens their ability to game it.
I think that is more than money. It's about life purpose and ego, which I use in the neutral sense. Getting money is merely a way of feeling important, of feeling that one matters, of having a purpose and a place in the world. Bribes are more than monetary tribute: they are tribute to the ego.
I think about Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, who's visibly confused and senile in public and cannot function without her aides, much more so than Mitch McConnell — yet she refuses to retire. She's spent virtually her entire adult life in politics: first as SF supervisor, then mayor of SF, and then senator. If she were to retire, who would she be left as? Some tired old woman who waits for biological death? To retire is to allow one's self-concept, one's ego to die. The ego tries to cheat existential death by clinging to power, to purpose.
Then they will be happy to still be of use to the country without accepting additional renumeration above their generous pensions, won't they? I didn't propose any constraints on their actions, only on their compensation. I trust that would be sufficient to lead them to do what's meaningful instead of what's enriching. And maybe some will really be passionate about supporting a particular industry enough to volunteer their time, but that seems to me to be a harder sell than just handing them stacks of cash.
Very good point, and I really don't think there's much more to it than this. There are countless stories of retired people going back to work part time because after working for decades, and suddenly having nothing but free time, what even are you? Hell, think of one of the first things you ask someone after learning their name: "So, what do you do?"
I'm reminded of a passage from Be Here Now, in which Baba Ram Dass describes a yogi living in a cave sustaining himself via no food or water, but through refusing enlightenment and maintaining "a single narrow thread of ego;" the metaphorical cheating of existential death by clinging to life.
TBH past a certain point these guys aren’t really doing work anymore. They’re sort of just empty shells being “Weekend at Bernie’d” to stand in for the coterie of staffers and special interest groups who benefit from being the hidden power behind them.
All the more reason to not allow it. Best case it's literally elder abuse.
Another beautiful example of this is the recent story that Feinstein's staffers make sure they always have someone unofficially "on call," whose entire job is to watch Feinstein and catch her whenever it looks like she's about to wander out of the office and then make up an excuse to go with her so she can't humiliate herself with her senility.
Something like this would be best:
I don't think mandatory retirement at 60 is a great idea.
Ideally, in a perfect world, you'd like to have members of Congress who are well-educated and have a lot of experience in their life, line of work/industry to bring that experience to Congress and provide that perspective in the House/Senate. In an age when many people don't even really start their long-term careers until their 30s, and many don't have children until their late 30s/early 40s, you're cutting off a lot of experiences there.
For example, I'm 32 and just had my first kid. Presumably, if my daughter ever has a kid it'll probably be when she's my age. So if I were to become a member of Parliament here in Canada, and was forced to retire at 60, I would never be able to provide the perspective of a grandparent, nor would most people. Additionally, I don't think it's fair to ask someone who is at age 60 and in good health to retire because we said so. Some of the smartest, most useful people I've worked with have been at retirement age. Don't get me wrong, that isn't true for all of them, but we have lost some good people on my team when they retired and even been eager to have them stick with us on casual contracts just to provide their expertise because they've garnered so much of it by that point.
Also keep in mind many may not have the resources or support to run for office until they're in their 40s or 50s. If I'm forced to retire at 60, and I don't feel I could have a successful run at office until I'm say 55... well, if I'm making decent money and like working I'm not going to run for office when it means I'll only be able to be in the House for a few years and then be unable to take work ever again, and wouldn't have much in the way of a pension since I'd only been there a couple years.
I don't think an age cutoff is fair, but some kind of physical/mental examinations would be a different story. If someone has severe memory loss and problems speaking they aren't fit to serve. But then, at the same time, even that doesn't really work in every situation, because look at John Fetterman, who had a stroke and worked hard to regain his movement and communication abilities, but still has some difficulties. Should he have been precluded from running because of his health? If not, then why should we preclude someone like McConnell being in office, even if he had a serious stroke like Fetterman did?
I disagree. You really do need a clear and objective way of determining when someone is unfit for office. And if you want to use a test of cognitive abilities, well someone has to write and administer that test. For example, you might require a neurologist to admit such a test, but doctors can be biased just like anyone else. What if the doctor administering such a test decides that simply being a member of a certain political party indicates cognitive deficiencies? What if the doctor administering the test grades one party harshly while grading the other easily? Or what if the test is actually administered completely fairly, but one party consistently scores worse on it? Maybe one party just happens to nominate older candidates, or maybe people with mental deficiencies are more attracted to one party or the other. But if whatever test you use happens to hit one party harder than another, there will be no end to it.
There is a reason we use a hard age cutoff when determining the minimum age for voting. We could try to use a cognitive test to determine eligibility, but it's just too subjective. And we've seen from our electoral history that if you don't have very firm, clear, and objective rules to determine eligibility, people will try to disenfranchise minority groups using those vague qualifications. See literacy tests.
No. If you're worried about cognitive decline, the way to do it is to have a hard age cutoff. It's a crude instrument, but it's objective and can't easily be screwed with. Would a hard cutoff of say, 70 in the Senate, prevent a few perfectly qualified people from serving? Sure. But the same happens on the other end. You have to be at least 30 to be eligible for the Senate. And there probably are some 25 year olds that are particularly wise for their years that would make very good senators. But it's very difficult to objectively define such things. Instead, we use a hard minimum age requirement. It's not a perfect tool, but it is something we can fairly agree upon that provides little room for shenanigans. We use a hard age cutoff for voter eligibility and for serving in the House, Senate, and Presidency. If we're worried about cognitive decline with age, we should use a similar hard cutoff.
Thank you for writing my reply for me. It makes me a little sad to see the other comment being so well received. I know it comes from good intentions, but it's an argument I hear a lot and it shows a lack of research into history and politics.
It'd be great if we could just assess people and get the best person for the job who doesn't have any horrible morals or biases. But if we could, we probably wouldn't need most politics anyways since it's a form of friction put in place to get a bunch of people who hate each other to work towards positive goals rather than just spend time and energy murdering each other.
The cases of assessments being used to prevent people from entering systems is an old old practice and its something that happens in basically every corner of the globe. You might have it work for a few years as intended but it's only a matter of time until a bad actor poisons such a system with TERRIBLE results.
"Elegant" laws that leave little room for interpretation, but aren't perfect, tend to work a hell of a lot better because it's much harder for a bad actor to weasel their way past. Either you're 60 or not. It's hard to fake your age past a point.
As for the ability of the modern person to really get involved before they're 40 due to how life works, yeah that's an issue. An issue that I think would be better solved by 45/50 year olds who only just got time to get into congress and want to change it for future generations rather than 80 year olds who've been sitting on their throne for 40 years (and got elected arguing their old guard needed to step down).
Correct. None of these elderly politicians were first elected in their sixties, or seventies, or eighties. Most of them were elected in their forties or fifties. This article is about Mitch. Mitch was elected in his early forties in 1984. The age limit wouldn't make it impossible for him to become a Senator, it would make it impossible for him to remain a senator for forty years, which is an absurd amount of time for someone to remain an elected official to begin with. This limit wouldn't make it impossible for people to get life experience before becoming a politician, it would make it impossible for people whose only life experience is being a politician to hold an office for 50 years at the expense of other possible politicians who have different, more contemporary, and more relevant life experience.
But that isn't what you suggested. 70 is very, VERY different from 60. Just as 80 is very different from 70. There are very few 80 year olds who are fit for the mental challenge and stresses of holding public office. The same cannot be said for 60 year olds.
The difference between using 60 and 70 years as a cutoff is one in magnitude, not in category. In that sense it may be different, but it is much less different than suggesting a physical/mental examination, which was what you suggested as an alternative.
Further, you stated that
If this is your position, why then counter with the difference based on at what age that cutoff is set? I genuinely want to know, because I cannot see a way to reconcile the two arguments (on one hand arguing that no cutoff should be used and instead some different method is better, on the other implying that it may be reasonable depending on what age the cutoff is at).
In addition, we should remember to be charitable in our interpretations of what others say. For instance, note that the suggestion was for:
That is, for a charitable interpretation we should treat these as examples of the types of restriction that should be applied according to the poster, not the specific solution that is the only viable one.
In other words, we can read
as, say, "an upper age limit, maybe 60?".
@isleepinahammock didn't suggest that number; @teaearlgraycold did.
I think there ought to be an age limit (especially in the judiciary), but I agree that 60 is too young -- personally I'd put it somewhere between 70 and 80.
I'd agree that somewhere in the mid to late 70s seems like a reasonable cutoff. If their contacts and experience remain valuable after that, we can create a type of sinecure position where their successor can retain them as a sort of legislative Of counsel.
Keep in mind that the average life expectancy is still sitting around 76.
Maybe that'd be a good metric: Average life expectancy between the two most recent census, minus 15 years.
So that would put the limit around 61, and it would go higher if the average life expectancy goes up. Good public policy should do that, so it's a win win.
Hard coding things to have dependencies on dynamic metrics that you don't fully control tends to produce weird edge cases. Like suppose you have a major war, pandemic, or natural disaster. Now your life expectancy has tanked and all your senior legislators must retire at exactly the time you need a steady hand on the tiller.
This is why it should remain with the voters and we should all be pushing, pressuring, voters to make better choices. I think we should consider just like legislators have financial disclosure, I think there should be health disclosure requirements for congress.
The AMA and CDC should have a partnership where they publish a list of diagnosis of interest that have potentially cognitive/decision making impairments. If anyone has those dx they should have to release it and then the voters can decide if for this person it's impairing them sufficiently, maybe even triggering the possibility of a recall.
I'm sure there's risks/issues with this solution but I think it keeps it where the original decision to elect the person is with which is the voters vs doctors.
Yeah I find the need to bind legislators' hands on stuff like this to be a fundamentally anti-democratic impulse. That's justified in cases where we need to bind their hands to preserve democratic systems over the long term (i.e. no infringing on freedom of speech, have to maintain functioning election infrastructure, equal protection under the law, and so on). But on specific operational questions like "how much of the property taxes should go to education" or "what are the qualifications for a good legislator" that's exactly what voting is for. And deciding on what those boundaries are by a vaguer set of norms and customs permits more flexibility and room for deviance than codifying them as hard rules does.
I mean, the first term limits at all in the USA came about because of FDR. You're spot on.
I think the idea of a forced exit is less of an issue when incumbants don't hold such strong staying power. Name recognition tends to override any actual qualifications in the current setup.
Incumbancy itself would likely be less of a problem if not for all the dirty money funding campaigns.
In a more parlimentary system, where people voted for party then party chose reps, it sidesteps it a bit.
This only works if the system you're asking voters to use is capable of enabling them to make better choices. It's like giving construction workers a screwdriver and some nails, and then "pushing, pressuring" them to build a better house. That's just asinine, because the capabilities of their output is limited by the tools they are given.
It's also assuming you're actually putting the tools in the hands of trained construction workers, and not just pushing random people onto jobsites and giving them inadequate tools and telling them to build something they don't even have the proper education or training to do.
I dont disagree the system for voting, elections need to be improved. Education and many other societal aspects also could be improved. However setting hard limits/term limits, age limits aren't the solution in my opinion or the right option.
Engaging voters or would be voters. Pushing for ranked choice or other novel election strategies. Giving more information like i suggested such as medical conditions that are considered relevant for the job that a third party determines are disclosable conditions. Just like pilots cannot be color blind, legislators shouldnt have alzhiemers or at least voters should know if they do. Aka I support giving the right tools.
Using your analogy of construction age limits are like saying we cant build more than three story buildings, regardless of residential, commercial, etc. That is going to lead to urban sprawl and other issues.
Some communities I believe would want to be represented by older individuals such as retirement communities in Arizona or Florida and with the right tools they should have the right to be able to elect individuals who represent them. Just like some communities should have the right to someone their age, race, sex, orientation, religion, we dont make hard rules about those categories nor should we for age. Im not the biggest fan of minimums either personally but if we as a country have them I wish they'd be more consistent.
With regards to hard limits, I think there's a difference between setting a maximum age for representatives and setting a maximum height for buildings depending on the context and circumstances, but just generally how both of those would be approached I think it's different.
There's over 300 million people in the US. Obviously not all of those people are adults who would even be capable of being elected as a representative, and not all of those people are eligible/unfit for other reasons whether it's their citizenship status or criminal record or anything else that might potentially make someone unfit for office. In any case, it's still many millions of people, and yet there's far fewer people who actually serve as representatives. The pool to select from is large, the actual amount selected is small, with any reasonable limits set, we're unlikely to be excluding any significant level of experience or viewpoints. Arguably, we should be more concerned by the fact that with so few representatives relative to the population size, the apparent observation of people who are up there quite a bit in age taking up such a large portion of representatives should be a major cause of concern, far more than reasonable age limits. It's not to say it makes sense to elect a 10 year old to make sure children are represented, but I think it's clear that there is a middle ground there.
This is including the example you gave like older people in retirement communities and such that might want to elect people that best relate to them, at what point can a retired 65 year old not possibly relate to a retired 75 year old, or a retired 85 year old? Of course there are going to be some differences between those ages, don't get me wrong, but when the average life expectancy is something like 75ish years old, across all that spectrum of old age, you're going to have 67 year olds that are potentially experiencing some of the pains that some 77 year olds are feeling, meanwhile you might have an 80 year old that is doing better than a 70 year old. This ties back into my point about how many people are in this country, if retired people are concerned about electing someone who knows what retired life is like, with a reasonable limit set, say something like 70 or whatever, there's going to be that 68 year old retiree that has the life experience to meet people at that stage of life, there's no need to elect a 78 year old for that.
Now you might say, well if a 67 year old can be in just as poor health as a 77 year old, or worse, then that proves the limit is stupid and the idea you have about making health records for elected officials more public is more viable...Well to an extent that could be true, but we're also talking about what is realistic and reasonable. We don't determine when every person is a capable adult on a case by case basis, because that's just not feasible. We set a hard limit, 18 years old and you're fully qualified whether you're actually developed to that point or not. No one actually thinks 18 is some magical age where you've gained sudden enlightenment. Yeah, determining mental capabilities of millions of individuals is infeasible but how can I say the same over so few elected officials? That surely must be a bit more realistic. Well there's a lot more to politics than rational thinking. If that's all it were, then I'd probably be in more agreement with you, but that's just not how it is. Once you start taking things on a case by case basis, it gets more personal, and when it gets more personal, it gets less rational. Over something as simple and straightforward as health, where we can sensibly predict that health declines as we age and it becomes more and more obvious the greater the age, removing the personal out of the equation and setting a hard limit allows it to be more rational, because we can decide ahead of time without it impacting any particular person we might be more partial to. In the same way I might choose not to buy certain foods at the store that are unhealthy for me, but if I had them near me later when I was hungry I'd eat them in a second, I can more easily choose to remove the option when I'm not looking for something to satisfy a craving. Perhaps in the absence of eating cookies that I didn't purchase, I might double dip on something that was not as unhealthy as cookies that I did purchase but isn't really healthy anymore if I'm upping my intake of that food, thereby defeating my rational planning I had at the store. Yep that's possible, you can't win all the battles, all you can do is try to be better than you were the day before. It's no different than the possibility you might elect a 60 year old with a health condition and it impacts their output negatively, but that should be a lot less common than 80 year olds falling down and freezing up during a news conference.
Lord of the Flies 2: This time, the jungle comes home.
Point taken.
Oh, the main goal was not to set a threshold where most people older are mentally unfit to do the job. It's to set a threshold such that the members of congress actually represent the population. Having senators too old causes issues with climate change - they're too old to care as they'll be long dead by the time we're in disaster mode. They're mostly out of touch and stuck in their ways. They don't understand what people need.
Age is better in many ways than term limits. Term limits just put a hard revolving door in place that makes staffers and lobbiests even more powerful.
But we all die eventually. On average before we're 80. I like the idea of forcing people to retire at 65, politicians included. Nobody should work till the day they die.
There are plenty of things that can be done outside the workforce.
I get a little twitchy every time people use "boomer" like it's a synonym for anything they don't like -- incompetence, stupidity, corruption, Trumpism, entitlement, etc. There's definitely a chunk of younger people who fit that. There are plenty of old people who are sharp into their 90s and more. Individuals age differently, plain & simple. Certainly Dianne Feinstein should have retired years ago, but Nancy Pelosi isn't far behind her in years and can run circles around younger politicians.
Even Pelosi is starting to lose her sharpness TBH, it's just that she was starting from a very high baseline.
Pelosi has had plenty of moments like this. It wasn't too long ago she did basically the same thing as Mitch did here in a press conference of her own, except that it was for longer and instead of being silent she was just saying random words that didn't go together. People age differently. Nobody this old is consistently as sharp as the average 35 year old, they all have bad days, and the average person that old is never as sharp as the average 35 year old, even on their good days.
I disagree because of variance in aging and how it correlates with physical health and mental lucidity.
Especially now that we have people pursuing lifestyles that promote health and longevity. We're going to have some shockingly healthy old people that are healthier than people 20 years younger than them who make less healthy choices. And assuming medical technology keeps advancing, this gap may get even greater than we can imagine now. Ultimately, an arbitrary and fixed forced retirement number does come off as ageism.
In case anyone in this discussion is interested in the actual age makeup of the current Congress: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/30/house-gets-younger-senate-gets-older-a-look-at-the-age-and-generation-of-lawmakers-in-the-118th-congress/
Absolutely.
Mandela didn't run for re-election in South Africa because he believed an octogenarian shouldn't be in government. I know that's a high upper age limit and while I agree with him, I would have liked to see him in particular have another term.
I completely agree. I would also like to see term limits for these folks. Same with SCOTUS. People forget that George Washington set the precedent for a president having only two terms. Had he not done that, we would have presidents in office until they died or were no longer fit to serve. “Career politician” was never supposed to be a thing.
No the framers knew people would become career statesmen, they just expected these to be positions held by landed gentry who didn't really need to care about money and lived off property, rents, and investment income.
The two term limit for President was specifically for President, because a chief executive ruling too long starts looking like a king and the system starts to conform itself to his way of doing things. This leads to a brittle system that is unable to cope with change. Legislators can stay as long as people want them, the body as a whole naturally cycles through.
I mentioned elsewhere. FDR is the reason there's a legal two-term limit for president.
Let's be clear though, Republicans pushed that term limit through because FDR functionally turned them into a political non-entity and they didn't want to spend another decade in the political wilderness.
Maybe not a #, but a cognitive and physical test.
I.e. like a resume says "must be able to life 40lbs" or whatever...
I've said the same for driving.. when you start collecting social security. retake the driving test. Take again every 5 years. BUT also ensure they have free bus passes and subsidized instaCart or equivalent.
twice in my life i was run off the road by merging grandma who can't even turn her head and know she had to yield and i couldn't move over, nearly causing a pileup.
The maximum age argument got a whole lot louder when Biden got elected. That argument wasn't making the rounds on reddit when Trump was in office. Your seeing old dudes in government might confirm your bias, but there are plenty of younger politicians right alongside them, too.
What I'm saying is, it feels a whole lot like reddit in here lately. Barring everyone above a certain age from holding office won't stop the problems that the government has or how America is run. It's not a very good argument.
You can’t just shut down an argument by saying it “sounds like a Reddit argument.” Like others have said, certain other professions have mandatory retirement age for various reasons. It’s not a stretch to say that creating laws and permanently altering the structure of our country might ought to fall under the category of mandatory retirement.
The ageist argument holds weight when it comes to their holding a scalpel, or driving, or piloting a vehicle, things where their actions have a direct risk to human life in the moment. Give me some other examples and I might agree. Mitch has a team of people that help him push the buttons. Once he dies, someone is going to fill his position and you're going to see the same exact gridlock politics. His age has nothing to do with the laws that are permanently altering the structure of our country.
The ageist argument also fuels the "both sides" argument, which tricks the impressionable into not voting come 24 when Biden will need as many votes as he can get against De Santis or Trump. We've seen how loyal the Republican voterbase are to elect anyone despite their qualifications, and the Republicans are quite good at trickery as evidenced by their fueling the distrust in the DNC and sowing apathy in the election process when Bernie Sanders didn't get to up against Trump.
So when homie gave me two words that I've seen all over reddit since Trump lost in 20, well, it's hardly an original or empathetic statement. I'm no fan of Mitch whatsoever but surely one could muster a little more heart on a completely different website with different goals for its vibes, one of the first being "don't be an asshole."
Yeah. I haven’t been on Reddit much in the last few years. But I think before the recent influx of users my top level comment here wouldn’t have gotten so many votes. I threw it on here without too much thought. Now it’s got 30 votes and a lot of attention it doesn’t deserve.
Respectfully, friend, attacking the argument due to it supposedly feeling like something out of reddit is itself what feels to me like redditor behavior. Clearly a lot of people think there is merit to your argument that there should be a cutoff age, and a lot of people think otherwise, and they're all free to continue the conversation (as they are doing). It's the advantage of having more participants in the first place. I don't see anyone participating in bad faith.
Hey. I was not trying to attack anything. I was trying to defuse the situation. The comment I replied to brought bad vibes.
I didn't mean to imply you were. We have both misunderstood each other. Sorry!
I think people were more focused on Trump's other shortcomings and didn't want to harp on age, especially when many Trump critics are fond of Bernie Sanders who is no spring chicken himself. Conservatives and progressives alike aren't terribly excited about Biden, so barring older folks from running would eliminate both Trump and Biden from contention, pleasing many younger voters. That might be why the conversation is taking place now.
I would like to push back against the theme I'm starting to see of "there is discussion taking place/an opinion being supported that I don't agree with, therefore the site is becoming Reddit (which is bad)". People are going to have hot takes and misinformed ideas, none of us are experts in all of the things we like to discuss and comment on. If you feel that the idea lacks merit, by all means tell them why, but the testy "this feels like a reddit idea (and therefore bad/beneath Tildes by connotation)" seems unnecessarily divisive and alienating.
I mean if you want a controversial take, I think once you reach the age of social retirement (and/or draw from it) for your country, you should be barred from political exercise at all.
That would mean you are no longer eligible to vote or hold office.
My thoughts are more centered around the thought that you've already done your part for your country and contributed to society - it's time to lie low and let the society you've been a part of to take care of you. You've had 40-50 years of voting, and 20-30 years where you could be an elected official at the highest ranks of government (in the US).
Controversial, sure, but I think it's best for long term health of a system to ensure continual turnover and the passing along of responsibilities from generation to generation. Plus a hard deadline makes most people conscious of the effect they have, and will likely make them consider more long term policy rather than short sighted gains based incentive.
It's not like I'm saying we need to euthanize the elderly, I just think after a certain point, we need to prioritize the handing down of power - that should be a celebrated moment. It's "sacred" to raise future generations and bring them to success as you move along.
I don't think there's a better way to handle that - we can't even get consistent agreement on having elderly drivers retest to get their driver's license let alone form a cognitive test that proves someone can hold office. And sure, it might not fix all of the problems we'd have since you'd still leave vulnerabilities for things like lobbyists and people who just are unsavory regardless of age - but it's a part of the solutions I have in mind, not the whole end all, be all solution.
Feel free to hate my opinion, but it is legitimate, and it's not based in controversy for the sake of it (nor edgy for the sake of karma) to be clear. I genuinely want to see a better tomorrow and I think prioritizing safeguards for future generations to have their hands in the system they rely in is a key step in continually modernizing a fast changing world.
I have had a blood vessel affect my brain via a stroke, and the first thing I thought is "that's a serious stroke or an aneurysm." I have no proof, or medical training, but I'm just saying what it looked like to me.
"transient ischemic attack" is the medical term I've seen people throwing around.
that description seems to be consistent with the symptoms we observed, where he returned back to the press conference a few minutes later and appeared outwardly back to normal.
He had a slip and fall not too long ago IIRC. At his age small injuries have a way of compounding themselves into other, deeper health problems, including minor strokes.
Similar boat of no training and the like, but this seems unlikely since he returned to finish speaking, but god I can't even imagine wanting to do this when I'm anywhere near that age, let alone in that kind of health. The actual behavior of just "blanking" mid speech is concerning no matter what.
Extremely terrifying. When I have massive panic attacks while talking to people it's very weird. I get tunnel vision, I start blacking out, I feel dissociated, etc and then I just have to stop and walk away before I hit the ground or something. I also have a myriad of health issues that could make me act like this one time too, if it all caught up to me. He may have had a stroke, might have been a panic attack, or maybe something else. I haven't watched the guy for a year or so, but he looks way older and rough in this clip. Terrifying because I could be right there in his shoes one day. I mean, not making a public speech or whatever.
I don't like Biden (or McConell), but that's nice to see they can put politics aside for one's health like that.
A friend thinks he had a mini-stroke. I don't know if he did or not, but the way the others around him responded and led him away felt to me like they'd been trained or informed on how to handle such a scenario. Maybe it's just basic "how to behave in front of the press" training for all politicians, but the one guy (don't know his name) was just a bit too calm and gentle in how they talked to him. He didn't seem particularly alarmed to me.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, I don't know. But it just instantly brought to mind the stories of elder abuse where elderly politicians are basically forced to stay in office by those around them since they lack the cognitive ability to declare they're retiring. Mitch isn't like that as far as I'm aware, but if he has some health issues where he should be resting... It just leaves me feeling a bit unsettled, I guess.
It could have been a TIA (trans ichemic attack). For those unaware this is what people mean when they say 'mini-stroke'. It shows the symptoms of a stroke (loss of control over motion, difficulties communicating, etc) because it is a temporary restriction of blood to the brain, but not a clot etc like a full-on stroke. It also typically resolves itself quickly.
My dad had a TIA a few years ago while in bed, and he got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and fell over because he couldn't properly move one half of his body. My mom called 911 and had an ambulance come; within 10-15 minutes he was fine and fully recovered, before even leaving in the ambulance, and they just took him to hospital anyway to run some tests. A TIA can be very short-lived, so it's possible that McConnell had one, had to be helped away into private, and then returned after recovering (and possibly went to hospital afterwards).
Another possibility could be Parkinson's; Parkinson's can leave sufferers unable to get words out, and unable to move. I kind of doubt this is what happened though, because usually in those cases they'd still be expressive and you would be able to see the frustration on their face at not being able to move/speak, whereas McConnell just completely glazed over.
I really wish there was an age limit on who can serve. It used to be the older were wiser and respectable in the community. You looked up to your elders. Now they are holding on to some pipe dream of an age that has passed by.
IMO, he needs to retire, along with the rest of the 70+ year olds in the U.S. government, of all affiliations and all positions at all levels and departments. Alzheimer's, dementia, and mental decline in general are not that uncommon as humans age. People like this have no business running a convenience store let alone the federal government, IMO.
Personally, I can't really feel bad for him, because IMO, he has been detestable and held up tons of legislation by refusing to even bring it up when he was leader.
I can't bring myself to watch the video of him freezing.
I do not like the man, but I do feel bad for him. That's a nightmare scenario for a lot of people. I have a lot of health issues and can imagine that being me.
I hope he's dealing with it okay.
Oh no! Who will dedicate their life to ruining democracy with him on the sidelines?!
Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Lindsay Graham, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville... the list goes on and on.
the other 3 ninja turtles?