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Mitch McConnell faces resign calls over freeze: "Cognitive malfunction"
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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politics
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Need to get these old ghouls out of office and set maximum age limits for all positions of government
I think it's clear that people can be disconnected from reality no matter how old they are, and that older people are not excluded from being insightful and valuable to the political process (think Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich).
It's easy to feel like elminating older people from politics is a solution, but it's not. Voting for good people who actually represent your interests and the interests of your community is a better solution, but that's harder to think about.
You can't vote people into office who are younger when your only viable choices are people who are all over the age of 65.
Maybe, but Kentuckians have been voting against their own best interests for years.
Sounds like Kentuckians like to suffer. I say this as a Texan and my fellow Texans love to suffer and constantly vote against their own best interests.
Kentucky is inflicting their suffering on everyone else though, since McConnell was the reason for the shift in scotus by denying and then rushing appointments through the Senate.
I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that there is also a minimum age for office. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If a grown adult is considered too young to serve then these geriatric ghouls are too old in my opinion.
Minimum for president is 35, senate is 30, house is 25. For one, I think those ages are "sufficiently youthful" to be generally representative of current modern concerns, all other things aside. They could easily be some years younger, possibly eliminated entirely, on the same basis as there is not a current upper age limit: let people be elected on their individual merits, and not exclude people on the basis of age.
I agree that there being a minimum age limit without an upper limit is contradictory, but a better solution would be to lower or eliminate the minimum. Perhaps some other kind of metric could be employed in place of a minimum age limit for federal office, like "having served as an elected official at the State level for two years."
I'd be okay requiring someone to serve as an elected official prior to serving in the House or Senate. Hell, I'd probably support mandatory public service for most if not all people for a period of time.
Logically, if you’re a candidate from any party, that knows they won’t be around in a decade’s time, what incentive, responsibility, or obligation do you REALLY have to do what’s best for ALL citizens— Including those who’ll be around for a few more decades. Especially regarding decisions with society-changing implications that’ll impact generations of change. It’s such a staggering conflict of interest that it’s not reasonable to expect any politician to set it aside.
That is even setting aside the obvious statistical likelihood that people over the age of 65 are significantly more likely to contract ailments that will impair their judgement and therefore their ability to do their job like Alzheimers (the exact same parroted reason for the minimum age requirement, that young people’s brains are not fully developed, and therefore are not able to perform the job adequately). If we’re going to arbitrarily set a minimum, we should be obligated to set a maximum.
Great, they can be advisors or join think tanks or other organizations. Robert Reich has no power. I'm a huge Bernie fan but even I think he's too old.
Cognitive tests would be great. THANKS!
Too ripe for abuse by whoever sets the standard.
Even that can be fraught with danger. Who creates, administers, judges those tests? We already see bias issues in standardized testing for students.
There are already such tests and they were created by neurologists and backed by studies.
"Literacy" tests from the Jim Crow era South have very clearly demonstrated why these are not a good idea.
Those were for voting, not candidacy, AFAIK. Not that candidicy would have been any more fair then...
Maximum Age at election = median life expectancy
If you want to serve longer, make people's lives better.
My suggestion in another thread was if it's 18 years after birth to vote then it should be 18 years before average lifespan to lose the right to vote.