Should There Be Age Limits on the U.S. Presidency?

To be eligible to be elected president of the United States, you have to be at least 35 years old. But why 35? And why is there no upper age limit? Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/us-millennials-under-35-age-limit-president.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren Volebam Here, politicians often act like children, whether it's
calling each other names, getting into slap fights on the
legislative floor, or simply taking their toys and stomping off
to another sandbox. The way lawmakers act, you'd be surprised

(00:24):
they aren't still in preschool. The truth is that many
countries around the globe require their elected officials to have
some life experience under their belts. That includes the US
or you have to be at least thirty five years
old to be eligible to take the keys to the
White House for the article. This episode is based on

(00:44):
How Stuff Work. Spoke with John Siri, a government and
politics professor at Pomona College. He said, most advanced democracies
have an age requirement for the top executive office. It's
just a matter of where they said it. The US
Constitution imposes three eligibility requirements on anyone thinking about running

(01:04):
for president. In order to actually take the office, you
have to be a natural born citizen of the US,
You must have lived in the US for at least
the last fourteen years, and you have to be no
less than thirty five years old, all of which appear
likely to remain the law of the land for the
foreseeable future, but it has been brought into question. A

(01:27):
Serie is the author of the book Too Young to
Run a proposal for an age amendment to the US Constitution.
He argues that the age requirement is a remnant from
the country's early days, in which American patriots were still
just a little wary about finding themselves under the rule
of a king or other dictatorship. That's why we have
term limits and elections every four years. But the age

(01:51):
requirement was one way to safeguard what John Adams called
our natural aristocracy, or one in which leaders rise on merit,
not by right. Siri explained, monarchs often succeed to the
throne at an early age, so if you make it
old enough, the age minimum is one hedge against monarchs.

(02:13):
In other words, modernly, we might be a bit obsessed
with the British and Targarian royal families, but we're still
not keen to have one of our own. Still, it
remains unclear where the Constitution's drafters pulled thirty five as
the appropriate age to become the country's chief executive. You
might ask, wasn't that a bit old for the era?

(02:35):
Didn't people back then come of age earlier than they
do now and die earlier too. It's true that the
average life expectancy in late seventeen hundreds America was only
thirty eight years of age, but remember that that's the average.
It's skewed young because so many infants and children died
before they reached adulthood, affected by diseases that we have

(02:57):
vaccines and antibiotics and other modern medicine to fix. Now,
if you lived past even the age of five, your
average life expectancy jumped to over fifty, and people regularly
lived into their seventies and beyond. Founding father Benjamin Franklin
turned seventy the same year that he signed the Declaration
of Independence. According to Siri, the founders who set the

(03:20):
age requirement probably looked to the Roman Republic, which has
served as a model for government for centuries. Roman councilors
were required to be at least thirty five years old.
So yes, the American presidential age minimum stems from a
centuries old concern about kings and queens ruling from an
iron throne and draws inspiration from millennia old bureaucrats who

(03:44):
governed Rome. Maybe that's why some people say the rules
should be changed and have even tried to officially petition
the government. The arguments against the age limit are pretty straightforward.
You can drive a car, be sent off to war,
and vote an election by the time you reach eighteen.
You can be a state representative at twenty five and
a senator at thirty. So at any of these points,

(04:08):
why shouldn't you be able to sit at the grown
up table and help make the big decisions. On the
other hand, there's the wisdom that comes with experience and
the knowledge that comes with learning over time. Biologically speaking,
that pop science concept that our prefrontal corteses finished developing
in our mid twenties isn't really true. But our brains

(04:29):
develop at different paces, and research has shown that structural
growth can continue into our thirties at least. But that's
possibly even more evidence that the possessor of a slightly
older brain might be a better choice for high office.
Of course, there's always a stigma that you in our
generations are dumb and can't be trusted. After all, the

(04:53):
country's youngest president, Theodore Roosevelt was already forty two years
old when he rose to the office after the assassination
of William McKinley. But when you look back in history,
think of someone like Alexander the Great, who conquered much
of the known world and managed an empire all before
dying at the age of thirty two. Maybe you were

(05:13):
missing out on some upstart government whiz who could heal
everything ailing Old Uncle Sam, the lebron James of politics
could be sitting out there just waiting for their chance
to wipe out the country's debt and hunger and install
teleporters nationwide. Instead, that person is probably coming up with
a cool new app somewhere in Silicon Valley. Siri thinks

(05:38):
that maybe we have the whole age thing upside down.
He said, if you're going to have age restrictions, they
should probably be against old dodding people, which is a
strong statement, although it is worth noting that throughout American
history about three quarters of our presidence have been between
the ages of fifty and sixty five, and our candidates

(05:59):
are getting old. In nineteen eighty one, Reagan was the
oldest president to ever come to office, at age sixty nine.
Until Trump and Biden recently followed at ages seventy and
seventy eight, respectively. It would take an amendment to the
Constitution to change the age limit in either direction, which
itself would require by partisan action, the likes of which

(06:22):
are rare in today's political environment. But as of twenty
twenty three, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center
found that a whopping eighty percent of Americans think there
should be an upper age limit on federal elected officials. So,
however strong series statement is, it seems that a lot
of us agree with him. Today's episode is based on

(06:49):
the article should the US let people younger than thirty five? Run?
For president? On how stuffworks dot Com, written by Chrisoffer.
Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
dot Com and is produced by Tyler Playing four more
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