The debate over age limits for politicians has never been more urgent. Here’s something nobody wants to say out loud at Thanksgiving dinner: we’ve let nursing home residents run the nuclear arsenal for too long, and it’s time to change the locks.
I’m not being ageist. I’m being realistic. When the average age of our Senate is 64 and our Supreme Court justices are serving into their 80s, we’re not running a country—we’re running an assisted living facility with veto power.
And before you start composing your angry letter about respecting elders, let me be clear: this isn’t about disrespecting experience. It’s about acknowledging that the human brain, like everything else in this beautiful, terrible existence, has an expiration date. We don’t let 80-year-olds fly commercial airplanes. We shouldn’t let them fly the country.
The Biden Lesson We Didn’t Learn
Remember that debate? The one where we all collectively watched a man struggle through sentences like he was reading them off a teleprompter in another language? That wasn’t just uncomfortable television. That was a national security crisis dressed up as a campaign event.
The Democratic Party knew. They all knew. But they’d rather weekend-at-Bernie’s the presidency than admit the obvious: age matters when you’re making split-second decisions about global conflicts, economic policy, and whether to nuke a hurricane (yes, that was actually discussed in recent memory).
Biden’s departure should have been a wake-up call. Instead, we just hit the snooze button and rolled over.
Why Age Limits for Politicians Matter: A Case Study in Chaos
But here’s where it gets truly terrifying: it’s not just about age anymore. It’s about the wholesale abandonment of competency as a job requirement.
We have a former plumber running the Department of Homeland Security. Not “former plumber who went to law school and spent twenty years in immigration policy.” Just… a plumber. I’m sure he’s great at fixing leaks. The leaks he’s supposed to plug now involve classified intelligence and border security.
We have a Fox News personality running the Pentagon. The Pentagon. The building that controls the world’s most powerful military. And we picked someone whose previous job experience involved reading off a teleprompter and looking concerned about migrant caravans.
This isn’t governance. This is a reality TV show where the stakes include thermonuclear war.
The Congress Problem: Why Age Limits for Politicians Are Urgent
And it’s not just the executive branch. Walk through the halls of Congress and you’ll find people who’ve been “serving” since before the internet existed, making laws about AI and cryptocurrency and TikTok without understanding what any of those words actually mean.
Senator Dianne Feinstein served until she was 90, literally unable to recognize colleagues in her final months. Senator Strom Thurmond served until he was 100, casting votes on issues he couldn’t fully comprehend. And we keep re-electing these people because… why? Brand recognition? Fear of change? The fact that incumbents have fundraising advantages that make competition nearly impossible?
The problem with career politicians isn’t just that they’re old—it’s that they’ve spent so long in the bubble that they’ve forgotten what actual American life looks like. They’re making decisions about student loans when they graduated college for $400. They’re legislating healthcare when they have premium government insurance. They’re voting on minimum wage when they haven’t pumped their own gas in thirty years.
The Solution: Age Limits for Politicians, Term Limits, and Qualifications
Here’s what we need, and I don’t care if it’s politically unpopular:
**Age limits.** If you can’t be president before 35, you shouldn’t be president after 70. The same logic applies. We need leaders with skin in the game—people who will live long enough to experience the consequences of their climate policy, their foreign policy, their economic policy.
**Term limits.** No more career politicians. Twelve years max in Congress. You get in, you serve, you get out. This isn’t supposed to be a retirement plan. It’s supposed to be public service.
**Minimum qualifications.** Want to run a department? Prove you understand what it does. Basic competency tests. Relevant experience requirements. The same standards we’d apply to literally any other job in America.
I know what you’re thinking: “But Andrew, this would require a Constitutional amendment! It’ll never happen!”
You’re probably right. And that’s exactly the problem.
The Stakes: Why Age Limits for Politicians Have Never Mattered More
We’re living in the most complex period in human history. Artificial intelligence. Climate change. Global pandemics. Cryptocurrency. Nuclear proliferation. These aren’t problems you can solve with folksy wisdom and decades-old experience.
We need leaders who understand the world we’re actually living in, not the world they remember from 1975. We need people who can learn new technologies, adapt to changing circumstances, and think beyond the next election cycle.
Most importantly, we need leaders who will be alive to face the consequences of their decisions.
The Hairy Times Position on Age Limits for Politicians
This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s not about Republican versus Democrat. It’s about competency versus chaos, qualifications versus celebrity, and future versus past.
We deserve better than a government run by people who remember when phones had cords and operated by officials whose primary qualification is that they looked good on television.
Age limits. Term limits. Qualification requirements. Three simple reforms that could actually fix this mess.
The question is: do we have the courage to implement them?
Or are we going to keep pretending that everything’s fine while octogenarians and unqualified television personalities make decisions that will determine whether our grandchildren inherit a functioning planet?
The gerontocracy must end. Not because old people are bad—but because running a country requires the energy, adaptability, and long-term thinking that comes from having an actual stake in the future.
It’s time for a new generation of leadership. One that will still be around to clean up its own messes.
—Andrew Hahn
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