With recent questions being raised about the mental competence of presidential candidates and congresspeople, it’s worth thinking about what should be done about it or whether we should do anything about it at all. An age limit has been proposed although it’s far from clear if this is something we should implement. Since part of the reason we’re considering whether to implement such a measure is to exclude individuals like Biden and Trump, I’ll assume that the limit would be somewhere around 75. Not much of what I say here depends on whether this is the optimal age limit.
An unintended consequence of an upper limit is that we would also be excluding many individuals who are perfectly capable of carrying out the duties of office. I personally know many people over the age of 75 who are about as mentally sound as anyone. I’d actually vote for some of them if they were on the ballot.
While this is not an unfounded concern, current candidates must be over the age of 35 to run for the presidency. To some this might justify an upper age limit. The thought behind the lower limit is that we think that age correlates with traits like wisdom and experience. We want our presidents to have certain characteristics, such as experience, and we want them to lack others, such as the impulsiveness that comes with young age.
We might apply similar reasoning to justify an upper limit. Certain diseases like dementia and general cognitive decline correlate with age. So the justification for a 75 year limit is similar to the lower limit currently in effect: being a president is extremely difficult so for the sake of the public good, we need to make sure that candidates are able to perform the required duties.
There is a practical argument here: an age limit is the best we can do. We use the age limit as a broad protection against a president having a certain trait, just like we use the age minimum. Of course, there are many capable, intelligent, and ethical individuals under 35. But generally speaking perhaps, we might think that we get more experienced and wise individuals after 35.
One problem with this is that people over the age of 80 only have a one in six chance of developing dementia. While this may seem high, this means of course that there’s a five in six chance that they won’t. The great majority of individuals in the 65 to 80 age range will not have dementia, which casts doubt on the justification for the age limit, particularly when we note that the rate of cognitive problems is dependent on the present and future state of medicine.
We are trying to account for mental decline, so a more direct proposal would be to implement yearly mandatory cognitive tests. Trump submitted himself to a cognitive test, which he apparently passed with flying colors – yeah, we’re going to need an independent office to design and administer the exam.
This would allow us to address our concerns with individuals like our current presidential candidates while also avoiding discriminating against the elderly who are perfectly fit to serve. Implementing mental fitness tests would present several challenges. How would that test be designed and where should we set the threshold for a passing grade?
Related Articles
From Donald Trump to Katie Porter, election denialism is on the rise. It’s time for voters to fight back.
Armstrong Williams: America at a crossroads with Biden-Trump rematch
Susan Shelley: The FDA overstepped against ivermectin
Douglas Schoen: What an improved economic outlook means for Biden
Larry Wilson: Generation Mope followed by Generation Alpha’s wee ferals
Mental fitness is best represented as a spectrum. There are clear-cut cases of candidates who are just too old for office. But there are also undoubtedly many potential candidates who would fall within a rather large gray area where it becomes difficult to determine whether they should be excluded. There would also be questions about how we should weigh competing factors. Some mental decline may be acceptable if a candidate has many other traits that we find desirable.
It’s clear that there are many concerning features of both an age limit and a mental fitness test. They both suffer from their own threshold problem. But we don’t have to throw our hands up about this. The threshold problem with an age limit appears to be more vicious than the threshold problem with cognitive tests.
An age limit casts a wider net and has the potential to exclude many more capable individuals. There is no perfect solution to this problem and there will be ambiguous cases where competent candidates are excluded either way. But we cannot allow compromised individuals to hold such powerful positions. At least a cognitive test for holding office directly targets the problem we’re trying to solve – it’s about mental acuity, not age.
Rafael Perez is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.