I never said age doesn’t matter. All I said is that some effects that come with aging are problematic and since all people age differently, they should be judged on their own basis. We have tests for cognitive decline… no need to use stupid methods like picking an age and drawing a line.
Tests for cognitive decline aren’t worth shit if we don’t actually 1) use them, 2) believe their results, 3) implement legal procedures to remove a president whose cognition has deteriorated, and 4) actually use (read: enforce!) those legal procedures.
But wait, there’s more! Cognition is complex and cognitive decline is gradual. I’m not sure that the existing tests (e.g., the NPI-C, IQCODE) are sensitive enough to measure the very onset of decline, which is what I’d want for a president. It’s safer to set the maximum age for presidency below the median age at onset of cognitive decline, which is roughly 70 per Hale et al (see doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100577).
Onset of decline sounds good but how were these studies able to tell where it starts if they were not adequate at testing it (because your claim is we cannot test it so easily so we should rely on the mean age provided by studies that test it… sounds like going in a circle to me)?
So why not have cognitive tests and a committee of experts. It’s the President we are talking about. Surely science can whip something up other than “70 BBAAAAAD, 50 OKAAAY”. You could be 35 with mental illnesses that affect your job. You could be 50 and a heavy drinker. Why stop at the age limit if we can disqualify unqualified candidates elsehow? Why use the “safer” dumbass cutoff limit when we can use the “more fair” approach of testing people individually? Why not use the cutoff limit to say “during these years, we test the President even more on cognition”?
But yeah I agree, nothing works if people won’t implement it. And whose fault is that?
