Age Limits for Politicians? | Sam N Dan Agree to Disagree Ep. 1

Intro

Question is, would you get on a plane if you knew that the pilot was 80 years old? There’s a hard cut off for pilots. There’s a hard cut off for police officers. But what about our politicians? No age limit. None. Zero. I agree that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old. I think it would be so much more simple um to to just simply have a limit. The overwhelming majority of Americans, eight out of 10, favor setting caps, age limits. This stuff leaked out, right? It leaked out. But they’ll never actually go on the record and support it. Almost like Vladimir Putin. Nobody’s going against him, right? It’s career suicide. Are you allowed to run for one term at 76? I I think that

Question is would you get on a plane if you knew that the pilot was 80 years old? Would you not want that guy running the country? Well, that’s actually the debate today. Um, it’s messier than it sounds. There’s a hard cut off for pilots. There’s a hard cut off for police officers. But what about our politicians? Well, the people writing our laws, deciding where we go to war, appointing judges for life, no age limit, none, zero. So, today we’re asking it straight. Should there be an age limit for politicians?

I’m Sam Meirowitz and I’m arguing yes, there should be. I’m Dan Wasserberg and I’m arguing no, there shouldn’t be. And you’re listening to Agree to Disagree. We really want to just be able to explain, I think, to the audience why we’re doing this.

Why We Started Agree to Disagree

And um somebody asked me yesterday, why are you doing this? And for me, it is that we’re living in tribal times. People are just thinking of themselves as in this group or in this group, and they can’t have a dialogue about an issue. They have to figure out which tribe would tell them what to say.

Yeah. My friend Ben, your friend Ben, he he refers to it as team sports. It’s like everybody’s wearing a jersey and playing for their team. And if for some reason somebody from another tribe has a different position, it’s like they’re the mortal enemy. They’re emotionally charged not to agree with it. Even if they might agree with some piece of it, they have to say no just because it’s the other side.

Yeah. Got to stay on the team. You have friends that aren’t friends anymore. You have relatives that aren’t close anymore. You have sons and daughters not talking to their parents because they have different tribes that they belong to. And I’m specifically calling it tribes and not politics because at the end of the day um politics is tribal in many ways.

Yeah. Families not speaking to each other, friendships ended and people don’t know how to talk to each other. So what are we going to do about it?

Well, that’s what this show is about. This show is about the ability to have difficult conversations, take different positions, um argue uh zealously for what your position is, but at the end be able to agree to disagree. So my mom got so mad at one of these last two presidents. I won’t say which one. And she was like, “The president shouldn’t be able to be over 65.” And I was like, “65? That’s really young. Uh, I think that’s a little bit extreme, but we gave you that position today. So, you’re going to take the position of of should there be an age limit on politicians, and you don’t have to be at 65, but maybe you’ll tell us what the age should be, and I’m going to take the position of no, it’s up to the public. Let the voters decide, and we can have a little bit of back and forth exchange on it and see where it goes.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, um, as we go through from episode to episode and take positions, the audience should realize that the positions aren’t necessarily our own personal positions. We’re just asked to take a side and argue that side. And sometimes it may be our personal positions and sometimes it may not be. But the point is, what can we learn from having public discourse? What can we learn from taking a position and hearing the other side? That I think is probably the most important part of this whole process is trying to encourage people to listen. Listen, learn, keep an open mind. And you know, as attorneys, uh, sometimes we have to take positions that are not the position we believe in. They’re the position that our client believes in. And whether we agree or not, we have to do our best. And so that’s what we’re going to do here. we’re going to take a position, whether it’s the position that we would take individually on our own with our opinion and uh leave it up to the audience to decide, let them guess whether or not it’s uh our real position or we’re just advocating for a position.

The other thing I think is actually valuable about lawyers weighing in on topics like this is that we are trained to think of what are the other side’s positions. put yourself in their shoes. Whenever I get a case, the first thing I do is I look on the board and I and I write down how do I win and how do I lose and it forces you to think like the other side like the opposition and I think there’s value in that in society because if other people when it be any kind of a topic whether it’s a family argument or whether it’s a political issue that’s at a debate to be able to step into the shoes of the other person gives you a perspective that keeps your mind open and keeps it flexible in how you view the world. And I think that’s critical in being able to civily agree to disagree.

Yeah. In a lot of our cases, um, one side starts off with a head start in the facts, the other side might have a better footing on the law, and both sides are going to adjust their strategy and try to get the message to the court, to the judge, to the jury, to whoever’s listening that uh that they should find for their side. So, that’s what we’re going to do here. We are able to live now far longer than we were than we were able to uh than the life expectancy was back when the framers wrote the constitution. I think that it was around the 50 60 years old that a lot maybe 60 70 years old a lot of the early presidents died. Um, but at the actual time that the Constitution was enacted, it was I think like 40 years old was the was the mortality grade. Um, so did you look that up or make that up?

I did look it up. And I mean, part of the reason why the mortality rate was so low is not because people couldn’t live longer. It’s just because there were a lot of infant deaths and so that average ended up bringing it much lower. Um, so it’s not like the perfect argument, but at the same time, um, even still, people that lived a long time were living into their 60s and 70s. Now, fast forward, you’ve got people that are saying that with AI and health advancements, they’re going to live until 150. So, it’s a completely different world than it was back then.

Understood. I can’t make any jokes about infant mortality, but I do understand I was bringing the average of the uh age of death down. Uh yeah, I’m fascinated by these people who think they’re going to live to be 200 years old, but we’ll save that for another show. Airline pilots, I think the cutoff is 65 years old. It’s it’s somewhere right around there. Police officers definitely have an expiration date. Uh, federal judges do not, and that’s probably something we’ll talk about, but there are certain Supreme Courts by state that do age out judges, and they may put them on some less important court, but you can’t stay on the Supreme Court if you’re over 75 or 76 years old. So, the question is, can we have politicians who are north of 80?

Biden, Trump and the Oldest Presidents in History

And I think like this is obviously spawned by President Biden, President Trump, and I’m glad that it’s a bipartisan issue, right? Uh you could be on one team or the other, but they’re about the same age. Actually, do you have the numbers in front of you on how old Biden was when he was brought?

Yeah, Joe Biden was the oldest president inaugurated to a a first term at the age of 78 years and 2 months. Um but he sought reelection at the age of 82. Um and Donald Trump is the oldest president inaugurated to a second term at the age of 78 and 7 months when he was inaugurated. So um we have in front of us like you said a bipartisan issue of ageism, right? Whether or not we should allow somebody that old to be the president of the United States and Congress, right? There’s at least 19 members of Congress who are above age 80 and the median in the Senate is 65. So although there are some young people bringing that down like your infant mortality stat, uh we know that the Senate is old.

as a um a personal observation, you and I, and I’m not going to say which president we got a chance to meet and be in front of um but we were very up close and personal to one of the last two presidents and I think I don’t I speak for maybe both of us when I say we had some concerns

Yeah. when we were there um about you know the mental capacity, cognitive decline, the cognitive decline is probably a better way of putting it, right? And and so we uh you know we we were we were there at a fundraising event. Um, we got to see how that president was um able to speak and was was his train of thought consistent and did it go down a um an a manageable, understandable, complete path and I feel like there were times where it wasn’t clear.

Yeah, he did a pretty good job, but he was reading from a teleprompter. And I think you and I as uh let’s just say students of the game could tell that uh there was some there was definitely some struggle there. So, I think we both wondered at that point um is this something that uh that should change. So, I guess the overwhelming majority of Americans, eight out of 10, favor setting caps, age limits that uh members of Congress and presumably the president of the United States should not be able to serve above a certain age. Uh I’m taking I’m taking the against position on that, but I guess I’m going against the majority. Uh what what do you think is the age? Can we start with that so we’ve got a reference point?

Um well, Supreme Court justices have no age. um they can they can die literally while they’re on the bench and they do and they do and they do and um you know I think that look I I think that there’s a certain point in time where not only do you have to pass the baton but that you know the your the way that you think doesn’t necessarily match what the current times are and so when is that what’s the what’s the exact number

Hard to say what the exact number is, but I think that collectively we could probably come up with something that makes the most sense. Maybe it’s a percentage of the mortality rate. So if you are, you know, 90% of the mortality rate or within 10% of the mortality rate, um, at that point, you need to be able to they they establish it like, uh, you know, every year or something like that.

I see. So if it’s like 87 for a woman then then she would be out at 80 basically because it would be 10% of 87 would put you at like whatever 79.3 or something like that. Yeah, that’s what you’re saying.

I’m saying okay if you were to come up with something that was that was not static, right? That that was flexible and um was able to sort of move with the time so you didn’t have to keep on changing it.

Should Supreme Court Justices Serve Until They Die?

Yeah. It’s interesting that the federal judges, you know, don’t have an expiration date, right? And we saw Scalia die on a hunting trip while he was still on the Supreme Court. We saw Ruth Bader Ginsburg uh hang on. She thought that uh she thought she could outrun uh I think Donald Trump and didn’t work out. She died at the end of his presidency and he replaced her with a different judge with a different set of values. Uh, so clearly that’s a problem, right? I mean, should these people be dying on the bench? I mean, I would take the position that they shouldn’t.

Um, yeah, I’m going to I’m going to go nuanced here and I’m going to say yes, there should be an age limit on federal judges. Uh, they should have to at least pass some kind of cognitive test. maybe they should have to be re-uped every 10 years or re-uped at a certain age because uh they are not subject to the will of the people at all. And I think that that’s that’s troubling. They they can hang out and hang in there for the rest of their life when they’re um on uh on a ventilator, right? Presumably not not even doing any work. And we’ve heard those kind of stories lately about uh possibly Senator McConnell.

Yeah. Uh I mean it’s super dangerous I think to not have any type of ceiling uh because people will stay forever and who knows what test could actually actually effectively monitor what their cognitive abilities are to do the job that they’re doing. Right? So you might be able to measure, you know, their processing speed or you might be able to measure their memory, but can you really measure whether or not they’re able to still be a good judge? um and I don’t know that you can and that’s why I think that we probably need to have very specific um clear guidelines as to this is the cut off.

Is Age a Good Proxy for Competence?

So my argument is that age is not a good proxy for competence. Age is not a good test. Uh with with age comes wisdom. And my further point is that we should let the voters decide. And so I’m going to put the federal judges off to the side because they’re not being selected by the voters other than the president that appoints them. But for the president, for the Congress, for the Senate, at least at the federal level, um I’m saying no, let the people decide. Let the voters decide. If you take that away from the voters, you’re basically saying the the the voters aren’t fit to make this decision in the first place.

Yeah. I mean, look, I think that it’s very difficult to know from the other side of the podium whether or not somebody uh is capable of doing their job. We know, well, maybe that’s not the best way to put it, whether they’re cognitive cognitively capable of doing the job. Well, it’s the people around them that really get to see the the decline. Uh but, you know, you’re standing up there in front of a teleprompter, you’re propped up. um and you’re sort of like a um you know a puppet and you’re being puppeteered and you could get away with it, but that doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily going back and able to do the job well. And the voters just may never see that. Um the voters get, you know, sound bites, they get news clips, they get video clips, they don’t really get to see the the daytoday work of that politician. And I think that’s why it’s not fair for them to be able to be in a position to have to make that decision. And also they may not be paying attention to it really. Um they have their lives, they have their things that they need to do and they’re not sitting there analyzing every decision and every move that that politician makes. They’re just going by what they remember them to be, not necessarily what they who they are at that particular point in time.

Should Politicians Take Cognitive Tests?

All right. So we can agree that cognitive decline does not affect every person the same way. Correct. Of course. And it’s not it’s not exactly tied to age. Yeah. uh even though it comes with age. Um do you agree with Senator Sanders and others who call for uh cognitive tests? Is that is that offensive or agist?

I think it’s a mistake. Um I think the reason why is because it’s very difficult to make a test that’s applicable to a particular job and it’s going to be different for every single person. So, I think that you kind of need a line in the sand just to make it fair. And it doesn’t mean that people that are older and more experienced can’t be advisors or can’t participate in government. It’s just that as an elected official with the ultimate decision-m um capability, they they just need to leave at a certain point. It’s like go let the younger people take over.

I think I know the answer. I think I know what you’re going to say. But if it was Grandpa Meirowitz and he was the Benjamin Franklin of our time and he was like, I don’t know, 83.8 years old, are we giving him the boot?

Of course, I want Grandpa Meirowitz. Um, but it’s not a recipe for how the country should run as to anyone’s particular family member, right? I think that you need to make rules that are across the board and make it simple. I think the more that we complicate things, the more there is a chance for fraud, the more there is a chance that you’re going to have somebody that’s going to play with the test and play with the results and people are not going to necessarily believe the results. We’re we’re living in a in a society where um everyone questions everything, you know, is that is that a legitimate test? Um, I mean, we we went through the whole SATs were the are the SATs a legitimate test of people’s ability to perform in college, right? And there was all this debate about whether or not it should be done. Same thing. I think that it’s very very difficult to make one test or even have a system of tests that would measure somebody’s ability to do the job. So, you just got to get them out.

Interesting. Okay. You mentioned the founding fathers earlier. Um I I I one of the points when I was, you know, getting ready for today that I was thinking about was they had a pen. They wrote stuff down. It’s all written down. You have some people who say we got to follow the exact written word. You have other people who say the constitution and you know to some extent the bill of rights is like this open flowing document. Whatever point here is they said, okay, they said senators have to be 30. House of Representatives to be in Congress, you must be 25. To be sworn in as president, you have to be 35. They came up with this in, I believe, 1789. And they did not set a maximum of any kind. It was never mentioned at all. Now, I understand people weren’t living quite as long and soon people were going to be living to be 120, but why didn’t they address it if it was so important? And does that matter?

I think they didn’t address it because they couldn’t conceive of the fact that people would be living to over 100 years old. Um, I think that their concern was they wanted somebody who was at the prime of their career and their lives to be in a position to manage the country. But I think that they would never have envisioned somebody that was you know within years of passing to be up on that stage on that podium running the most important country in the world. I think that um with time change we also have to have a look a second look at the law and and and and consider it to be flexible and make sense for for where we are in the world. And with people living as long as they do now, you just can’t have people stay in office forever. Um that you got to turn it over and give it to a new gen generation. People with new ideas, new way of thinking. Um it’s just you’re never going to be able to groom the younger population in positions of of of power and authority um if you don’t give them a chance. And if people end up living till 120 and they stay in office until 110, we’re just never going to have the turnover that we need to be able to really effectively run the country.

Should Congress Have Term Limits?

So, slightly off topic, but kind of like a bullet point or a subpoint is term limits. You know, you brought this up. Should we have term limits for the United States Senate? Should we have term limits for the House of Representatives? We have it for the presidency. You can’t be president for more than two terms. Of course, that’s a open conversation at this point, but anyway, like, you know, let’s tie that in. What are your thoughts?

I do think we should have term limits. Um, I really do believe that being a politician should be a civic venture, not a career. I think that people should come into office with the intention of helping and doing right by the constituency that they represent and bring fresh ideas and and work to solve problems, but not make it their career. Cuz when they make it their career, I think they start to sacrifice the benefits that they could bring to their constituency for their own long-term gain.

I I understand that point and um I’m not really disagreeing, but what about the will of the people? And what about the argument that when you’re in Congress, it takes you, let’s just make up a number, four years to really get your feet wet, to understand what’s going on, to learn how to work in Congress. And like by year 10 or I don’t know, eight or 12, you’re you’re finally in the groove and you’re finally got some power and you figured out how to make stuff happen. Now you’re working with the president. You’re working with the uh what do you call them? Like the the the whip and uh the the the Mike Johnson in Congress and the leader in the Senate or in your party or whatever, you know? Doesn’t it take 10 15 years to get to that point?

Yeah, I mean it definitely helps solidify relationships. Um, and obviously relationships and bonds are often times what get deals done. And so there is a good argument for why being in office over a period of time can help move things along faster. But it’s a double-edged sword because if you have the divisiveness that we have now, then that divisiveness just carries over and it makes it impossible to get anything done. So it’s it’s kind of like the uh the Montichus and the Capuletes, right? Like generations of family feud that just doesn’t go away. And it it it in a way I think of I think of politics in the same way. When it’s when it’s a system of divisiveness, if we were able to come together as a country and it wasn’t so divisive, maybe it would be something that you could get done. And I remember back in the day when I was in Washington doing internships, um a lot of what you’re saying would happen. The the the the conservatives and the liberals would get together in the back rooms and they would horse trade um and they would make things happen, right? Um but but you just the horse trading is is is it can’t even be on the same camera anymore. They can’t be on the same because they can’t be seen with each other.

Yeah, it’s an you raised an interesting question and and that question is uh well it seems like the old school is more prone to wheeling and dealing and that the new school is more prone to tearing down institutions, tearing down, let’s just say party norms, rebuilding and you know I’m not sure if that’s conducive to getting more done or not but I think there is an argument to be made that the older more experienced experenced people uh uh may be able to get more done on behalf of the people than young folks who are getting a lot of views on social media, getting a lot of attention, maybe even raising a lot of money, but not necessarily getting all that much done.

I mean, look, um it’s a good point. It it’s it’s it’s definitely um if if the times weren’t so divisive, I think that the older politicians would be able to do it the way that they used to do it and sort of teach it to the younger generation. But we have a completely different way of thinking right now and it goes back to the whole tribalism. It’s I’m part of this tribe, you’re part of that tribe and never the two shall intertwine. And that that is I think an impediment to being able to move things forward. And so I think if you have if you have age limits and term limits, you you sort of force the turnover and you get rid of the more career politicians which are which are so backed into their way of thinking at this point because of their constituencies are are feeling that way too that the turnover I think will actually help maybe get people to do deals because they’re only there for a short period of time. So they got to get a deal done while they’re there otherwise their point their time there is wasted.

Oh, I see. Put a little pressure on it. Put them on. Put them Put some pressure on. Put an hourglass on. Flip it and say you got to get it done.

Yeah. I I I don’t know. I agree that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old. But I don’t agree that they shouldn’t have been elected. I think if that’s what the people want, that’s what the people get. Now you’re taking the position that basically they’re too old. They’re they’re they’re they’re north of 80 in their second term, right? Biden didn’t get a second term. He dropped out. Trump did get a second term. Um, and I guess I guess technically he was close to 79 at that point, right? Um, but there are mechanisms to handle incapacity.

Is the 25th Amendment Enough?

There’s the 25th amendment. There’s resignation pressure. We saw Biden get pushed out. Do you think that those I’ll call them safeguards aren’t enough to to keep us safe from old people ruining our lives?

Yes, there’s guard rails. Um, but I think that the guard rails right now are considered drastic measures and it takes so much to actually um implement and use those uh those guardrails that trying to trying to use the guard rails as a basis to say that something that seems broken or seems um not not what you would want ideally. really I think is is not the solution. Um it’s just so difficult to implement and execute on those guard rails that practically speaking I I don’t think that they’re really guard rails. Um it’s like the nuclear button, right? telling the president you are no longer competent to do your job and now you’re going to have to get support to be able to use the 25th amendment to the constitution to remove a sitting president is is is such a drastic measure that I think it would be so much more simple um to to just simply have an age limit.

I mean I I have to uh I I got to give you the win on that. I think we saw the 25th amendment uh be be kicked around at the end of President Trump’s first term and I think we saw the 25th amendment being um you know potentially invoked after the disastrous debate performance by President Biden and I think the answer is clear. It’s never going to happen.

No, people are just not going to do it. Um, especially going back to the tribalism. Yeah. You know, you you you knew there were people in, again, I’m not gonna talk sides here. I’m just gonna say there were people in both camps, in the Biden camp, in the Trump camp, that have said that they had concerns about the the the cognitive abilities of their president.

This stuff, this stuff leaked out, right? It leaked out. So, you know, but they’ll never actually go on the record and support it. And that and that’s going to and that’s the problem.

Yeah. They would have to be in like a vegetative state, right? That I think that that’s that’s the point here. As long as that person is still making decisions and calling the shots, uh almost like Vladimir Putin, nobody’s going against him, right? It’s career suicide. If if you’re in that camp, you can’t go against your sitting president.

We agree the 25th amendment is largely useless. It’s useless for this conversation. Um, what other guardrails are there to protect us from the old guy in office?

That’s just it. There aren’t any. There just aren’t any. It’s the whole reason why you got to have age limits.

But isn’t that completely agist and substituting your judgment for the will of the people?

Absolutely not. Look, um, we already have age limits. There already, as as we pointed out in the in the beginning of the, uh, of the segment, there are age limits for pilots. Well, what are the age limits? There’s there’s age limits for police officers. There’s age limits for state judges around the country. There’s all kinds of even law firms have age limits for partners. They have to age out.

Picking the Number: 75, 70 or 72?

So, we agree the 25th amendment is pretty useless in this conversation unless the president or whoever is in a vegetative state. Uh you’ve said that that’s basically that’s basically it. There are no other guardrails. So, we need an age. What is the age? You gave a formula. I understand it’s interesting, but we got to we got to pin it down now. Now, we’re writing the rule. What’s the age?

I mean, it it fair it’s a difficult question to answer, right? Um, but if I had to pick an age right now, I would say 72. 72 because if you do get elected to two consecutive terms, you will not be serving as president into your 80s. Um, you would have finished both terms by the time you’re 80.

Are you allowed to run for one term at 76?

Um, I I think that yes, I would

I thought you were going to say no.

I I would I would say if you but but whoever whoever asked to run for one term.

Well, somebody should have. [laughter] Somebody should have. And I’ll let you all figure out who somebody is.

I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t think that um people go into it thinking to themselves um or promising that they’re going to only run for one term.

But isn’t it ageist agist? you know, 80-year-old surgeons and 80-year-old judges and CEOs, and I know you mentioned there are firms that push people out at a certain age, but I I kind of always thought that was to make room for the young people so that they could rise up through the ranks, but you know, let’s just say you have some privately held law firms where the the guy’s 88 years old and kicking ass. Like, isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that acceptable?

I was front and center to a law firm at one point in time where I observed somebody that was in his later years, let’s just say. Um, and it was comedic how hard the rest of the firm was trying to push him out of that position to the point where he finally said, “You know what? Um, I’m not even going to bill for my time. I’m just going to come here and work and you guys are going to have to deal with it.” Um because he refused to leave.

And look, I mean, and you you 30 year olds were all laughing at him. Is that what you’re saying?

I think that there was a sense of my god, I’m never going to have a chance to move up the chain if the guy at the top is willing to work for free and still stay in power.

Yeah. Look, I still subscribe uh to or you know, let me say it a little bit differently. Uh, your honor, I still believe and I hope you do too, that 330 million people get to decide and that we don’t just put a little committee together that decides, okay, this age 72, 76 with one term is now too old to run. Um, I think you need an amendment to the constitution, frankly, and that’s going to be very hard to do.

Well, I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree. All right, we want to hear where you land. Um, and so if you’ve got a topic that you think is interesting, send it to us and uh we’ll check it out. I’m Daniel Wasserberg. And I’m Sam Meirowitz. And this has been Agree to Disagree.