The United States needs an Anti-Gerontocracy Amendment
. Just as the minimum age of 35 for becoming president reduces the risk of immaturity and inexperience, a maximum age of 75 would reduce the risk of the ravages of old age. It’s not a question of whether a given individual can outperform. It’s whether the average risk of increasing age is too great, whether we can reliably assess claims to perform, and whether the consequences of making a mistake could be disastrous. Once you make it a question of individual fitness, you get self-serving self-reports, refusals to divulge test results, having “bad nights”, outright lies, and so on and on. It’s endless. You have to rule out the entire age cohort; otherwise, you get our current preposterous situation. The Amendment’s 75-year maximum would also apply to the vice-presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. Candidates would only be eligible for terms that they would complete before turning 76.