Unless we die young, old age awaits us all — even U.S. presidents. Inevitably, the older we get, the greater the chances of our physical and mental health worsening.
Yet although the Constitution says a president must be at least 35, it sets no upper age limit. This is a dangerous oversight that should be remedied with a constitutional amendment that sets a maximum age of 75 for a person to be sworn in as president.
This would ensure that no one 80 or older will ever again lead our nation.
A study supported by National Institutes of Health estimated that about 24 percent of Americans in their 80s have dementia, ranging from mild to severe, including about 18 percent who have Alzheimer’s disease. The NIH describes Alzheimer’s as “a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out the simplest tasks.” That is not something we want in a president, even in an early stage.
Several books have been published claiming former President Joe Biden was too mentally diminished to lead our nation — claims that Biden vehemently denies. The book receiving the most news coverage right now is “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.
And we just learned the sad news that Biden, now 82, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of incurable but treatable prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. According to the American Cancer Society, there is only a 37 percent chance that a man with this diagnosis will be alive in five years, although some men survive 10 years or more.
I think Biden was an outstanding president who accomplished a great deal for the American people. I voted for him in 2020 and I supported his reelection until he ended his candidacy after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. I hope he is one of the long-term prostate cancer survivors.
But we have to face the reality that if he had been reelected, Biden would have had to deal with cancer treatments while president and might not have lived until the end of his term.
President Trump, now 78, will be 82 when his term ends in 2029. While repeatedly claiming that Biden has dementia, Trump insists that he is mentally sharp. Yet over 230 psychiatrists and other mental health professionals signed a letter published as an ad in the New York Times in October 2024 saying Trump is “grossly unfit for leadership” because, among other things, he “appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline.” A book published in 2017 titled “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President” argued that Trump is mentally ill and poses a danger to our nation.
Ideally, someone physically or mentally incapable of carrying out the duties of president would not run or would resign from the office. But presidents work hard to attain their position, and they and their staffs don’t want to give it up.
And although the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and the Cabinet, or a body approved by Congress, to remove an incapacitated president from office, it has never been invoked. It would likely only be used in an extreme case, such as if a president were in a coma.
Setting an age limit for future presidents via a constitutional amendment should not be a partisan issue. It would apply to future Democratic, Republican and third-party candidates.
America’s founders deliberately made the process of amending the Constitution difficult. A constitutional amendment must first be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. The amendment must then be ratified by the legislatures in three-fourths of the states, or 38 of 50, to take effect. The Constitution has only been amended 27 times.
An age limit for presidents would be unlikely to come into play frequently. No other presidents beside Biden and Trump took office at age 76 or older. The oldest other presidents when they left office were Dwight Eisenhower at 70 and Ronald Reagan at 77.
Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack in office in 1955 but recovered and was reelected in 1956. Reagan was diagnosed with dementia caused by Alzheimer’s in 1994, five years after he left office. There is still debate about whether he began deteriorating mentally while still in the White House.
The average age of U.S. presidents upon taking office for the first time is 57. Bad things happen to people at every age, but less frequently for the young and middle-aged than the very old.
Only 9 percent of Americans age 75 and older are even employed. Although the vast majority of jobs should remain open to qualified Americans regardless of age, the presidency is in a category all by itself. Going forward, it is in our national interest to have an age cutoff of 75 for our highest office. To believe otherwise borders on the nonsensical.
A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor and former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party.
