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McConell had a scary moment which looks like it could be the onset of dementia or Alzheimers. He froze up for a solid 30 seconds just staring aimlessly when a question was asked of him as to whether he would run for re-election in 2026. People have been saying similar things about Biden, although Biden has had the same verbal tics for his entire career so it'd be harder to know for certain. Dianne Feinstein only just recently announced her retirement despite being over 90 years old. Trump is hardly a spring chicken himself at 77 years old.
Some have advocated for age limits on politicians, as older people can have cognitive decline and are presumably out-of-touch compared to younger counterparts. How much of a real issue is this? How long can aides keep cognitive decline out of the spotlight for before it becomes too obvious to ignore?
Everyone declines on their own timeline. Witness Fetterman (54). Also witness Charlie Munger (99) and Warren Buffett (93). I actually think the latter two showed their age at the last annual meetings, but they were functional for a long time and still somewhat functional. Trump I think is in no obvious decline.
Voters get to choose. Ageism is bad. Partisan politics and some other issues are probably letting some bad candidates thru but simply picking ages doesn’t make sense to me.
I’ll disagree with Trump on a lot of things but at 77 he probably shows more life energy than myself.
Joe Biden (80) I think is past his sell by date and should just be enjoying life with his grandkids but the left is able to unite around him so that’s fine to me. I don’t think he’s the decision maker but for whatever reason he likes being the front man.
The average age of a member of Congress is 59 years old, the oldest in modern history. The United States used to criticize the ‘gerontocracy’ of the Soviet Union of the 1970s-1980s, as Glen Greenwald points out here.
We have constitutional age minimums for elected office, so why not age maximums? I don’t trust our geriatric leadership to respond effectively to a real threat to the country. If we have to rely on their handlers instead, just now representative are our elected leaders? We need a ruling class that is virile, strong, responsive, and bold.
The exceedingly high average age of our government officials is likely a strong contributor to our absolutely retarded covid response, leading to the economic turmoil we are now suffering years later. There absolutely should be a maximum age limit. People's brains degrade as they age, in ways that are often not readily apparent to an unrelated third-party observer until it advances to a late stage. Their judgment cannot be trusted. We don't allow 12 year olds to run anything except a lemonade stand. I say it should be likewise for those over 75, and that's being generous.
On the other hand, everyone else had an equally awful Covid response except for a few places that were worse.
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How determinative is age really, on covid policy opinion? The youthful Briahna Joy Gray e.g. appears to agree with the oldies on this subject.
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