A Commonsense Solution

 

Despite a debate performance that heightened concerns about his mental acuity and that even his most steadfast supporters describe politely as “concerning,” Joe Biden voters have no choice but to stick with him.  Were the Republican candidate himself not a lightning rod with his own comprehensive list of faults and failings, the Democrats would be in real trouble.  Democratic voters, knowing all that they know about the problems and dangers confronting our country, are going to vote for a potentially mentally unfit person because they cannot abide the thought of four more years of Donald Trump. Americans are getting a choice between terrible and awful for the most important job in the world at a time when economic, fiscal, and military challenges are as daunting as they have been at any time in the last fifty years.

How did we get here?  How are we left with a choice that Americans have termed uninspiring at best?  Described as a contest between “the lesser of two evils,” the decision to vote for either Trump or Biden is akin to amputation without anesthesia. Unimaginably painful. It is beets vs. liver.  There are a few who like beets and some who like liver, but most people would enthusiastically refuse both. In the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Starfleet cadets were put through a training exercise called the Kobayashi Maru.  The scenario was designed to test the cadets by placing them in a scenario in which there was no winning solution. Popular culture has since adopted the term Kobayashi Maru to describe any no-win situation.   As a nation, we are facing our own Kobayashi Maru test.

With Joe Biden eligible for a second term, the Democratic party finds itself in a tough spot.  A sitting President with remaining eligibility always has been his party’s nominee.  Lyndon Johnson, who assumed office after President Kennedy was assassinated, won a full term in 1964, but declined a chance at a second term. His decision to increase our involvement in the war in Vietnam made him a pariah to voters. Knowing this, he refused his party’s nomination, thus becoming the only eligible President not to seek reelection.  The choice was his ultimately, just as it is Biden’s. If Biden remains in the race, Democratic voters have no choice but to support him no matter how they may feel about his fitness for office or about his running mate, Kamala Harris.  I personally know of no one who is excited by the thought of a Harris presidency, but that is likely what we will get at some point if the Democrats prevail in November.  The Democrats are stuck and thus far Biden appears unwilling to listen to calls for him to step aside.

Could this have been avoided?  Absolutely.  The solution is simple.  Age limits. We already have them.  To be eligible for the presidency, a person must be thirty-five years of age, be a natural-born citizen of this country, and have been a resident here for at least fourteen years. These requirements are spelled out in the Constitution in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5.

In their collective wisdom, our Founding Fathers thought to ensure that any Presidential aspirant had sufficient maturity for the job.  I presume they did not consider an upper age limit because none of them believed in politics as the career profession it has become.  It was unthinkable to them that one of their countrymen would want–or could afford–such a career. It has become obvious that this is one of the few mistakes they made in establishing the framework for our great system of government.

I recently emailed my friend and Congressional representative Andy Barr asking him why no one has proposed an upper age limit for the presidency.  A recent Pew Research poll found that 79% of Americans support such a law.  That support is bipartisan, with support from 82% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats.  To this point I have not received a response.  Over and above the challenges that would come with such an attempt to amend the Constitution, my suspicion is that no such bill has been put forth because it likely would lead to calls for a Congressional upper age limit as well.  As we know, our Congressional representatives want little to do with anything that would limit their ability to remain in office.  This is another shortcoming of our system of governance: we rely on our elected officials to self-regulate, even if such regulation is to their own detriment.  While we would like to believe that our elected officials put country first, our experience tells us that this is very rarely ever the case.

What age is considered too old?  As of March 2023, the median age of all global leaders was 62.  We all know mentally sharp people who are in their 90s, just as we unfortunately may know Alzheimer’s patients in their 50s, so the answer isn’t as obvious as it might appear to be.  However, a legal framework establishing an upper boundary would safeguard our nation against the scenario that we now are facing: a presidential candidate who appears mentally unfit to everyone but refuses to acknowledge it. Personally, I believe 72 is a good answer. Any presidential candidate must be 72 or younger. A President should be able to turn 72 while in office but cannot run for reelection after that age.   This is five years past what the government describes as “full retirement age” for Social Security benefits. Thus, there exists at least some legal criteria. 

The leadership that came of age during World War II and the years immediately after governed us through a period of unmatched prosperity and our ascent to dominant global economic and military superpower status.  We have thus been loath to entrust our governance to the succeeding generations.  But it is time.  This Presidential election is proof of that. Americans have been begging for younger leadership. A constitutional amendment that defines an upper age limit for the presidency is the commonsense solution that is staring us in the face.