Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren Volebam Here, politicians often act like children, whether it's
Speaker 1: calling each other names, getting into slap fights on the
Speaker 1: legislative floor, or simply taking their toys and stomping off
Speaker 1: to another sandbox. The way lawmakers act, you'd be surprised
Speaker 1: they aren't still in preschool. The truth is that many
Speaker 1: countries around the globe require their elected officials to have
Speaker 1: some life experience under their belts. That includes the US
Speaker 1: or you have to be at least thirty five years
Speaker 1: old to be eligible to take the keys to the
Speaker 1: White House for the article. This episode is based on
Speaker 1: How Stuff Work. Spoke with John Siri, a government and
Speaker 1: politics professor at Pomona College. He said, most advanced democracies
Speaker 1: have an age requirement for the top executive office. It's
Speaker 1: just a matter of where they said it. The US
Speaker 1: Constitution imposes three eligibility requirements on anyone thinking about running
Speaker 1: for president. In order to actually take the office, you
Speaker 1: have to be a natural born citizen of the US,
Speaker 1: You must have lived in the US for at least
Speaker 1: the last fourteen years, and you have to be no
Speaker 1: less than thirty five years old, all of which appear
Speaker 1: likely to remain the law of the land for the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future, but it has been brought into question. A
Speaker 1: Serie is the author of the book Too Young to
Speaker 1: Run a proposal for an age amendment to the US Constitution.
Speaker 1: He argues that the age requirement is a remnant from
Speaker 1: the country's early days, in which American patriots were still
Speaker 1: just a little wary about finding themselves under the rule
Speaker 1: of a king or other dictatorship. That's why we have
Speaker 1: term limits and elections every four years. But the age
Speaker 1: requirement was one way to safeguard what John Adams called
Speaker 1: our natural aristocracy, or one in which leaders rise on merit,
Speaker 1: not by right. Siri explained, monarchs often succeed to the
Speaker 1: throne at an early age, so if you make it
Speaker 1: old enough, the age minimum is one hedge against monarchs.
Speaker 1: In other words, modernly, we might be a bit obsessed
Speaker 1: with the British and Targarian royal families, but we're still
Speaker 1: not keen to have one of our own. Still, it
Speaker 1: remains unclear where the Constitution's drafters pulled thirty five as
Speaker 1: the appropriate age to become the country's chief executive. You
Speaker 1: might ask, wasn't that a bit old for the era?
Speaker 1: Didn't people back then come of age earlier than they
Speaker 1: do now and die earlier too. It's true that the
Speaker 1: average life expectancy in late seventeen hundreds America was only
Speaker 1: thirty eight years of age, but remember that that's the average.
Speaker 1: It's skewed young because so many infants and children died
Speaker 1: before they reached adulthood, affected by diseases that we have
Speaker 1: vaccines and antibiotics and other modern medicine to fix. Now,
Speaker 1: if you lived past even the age of five, your
Speaker 1: average life expectancy jumped to over fifty, and people regularly
Speaker 1: lived into their seventies and beyond. Founding father Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: turned seventy the same year that he signed the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence. According to Siri, the founders who set the
Speaker 1: age requirement probably looked to the Roman Republic, which has
Speaker 1: served as a model for government for centuries. Roman councilors
Speaker 1: were required to be at least thirty five years old.
Speaker 1: So yes, the American presidential age minimum stems from a
Speaker 1: centuries old concern about kings and queens ruling from an
Speaker 1: iron throne and draws inspiration from millennia old bureaucrats who
Speaker 1: governed Rome. Maybe that's why some people say the rules
Speaker 1: should be changed and have even tried to officially petition
Speaker 1: the government. The arguments against the age limit are pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: You can drive a car, be sent off to war,
Speaker 1: and vote an election by the time you reach eighteen.
Speaker 1: You can be a state representative at twenty five and
Speaker 1: a senator at thirty. So at any of these points,
Speaker 1: why shouldn't you be able to sit at the grown
Speaker 1: up table and help make the big decisions. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, there's the wisdom that comes with experience and
Speaker 1: the knowledge that comes with learning over time. Biologically speaking,
Speaker 1: that pop science concept that our prefrontal corteses finished developing
Speaker 1: in our mid twenties isn't really true. But our brains
Speaker 1: develop at different paces, and research has shown that structural
Speaker 1: growth can continue into our thirties at least. But that's
Speaker 1: possibly even more evidence that the possessor of a slightly
Speaker 1: older brain might be a better choice for high office.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's always a stigma that you in our
Speaker 1: generations are dumb and can't be trusted. After all, the
Speaker 1: country's youngest president, Theodore Roosevelt was already forty two years
Speaker 1: old when he rose to the office after the assassination
Speaker 1: of William McKinley. But when you look back in history,
Speaker 1: think of someone like Alexander the Great, who conquered much
Speaker 1: of the known world and managed an empire all before
Speaker 1: dying at the age of thirty two. Maybe you were
Speaker 1: missing out on some upstart government whiz who could heal
Speaker 1: everything ailing Old Uncle Sam, the lebron James of politics
Speaker 1: could be sitting out there just waiting for their chance
Speaker 1: to wipe out the country's debt and hunger and install
Speaker 1: teleporters nationwide. Instead, that person is probably coming up with
Speaker 1: a cool new app somewhere in Silicon Valley. Siri thinks
Speaker 1: that maybe we have the whole age thing upside down.
Speaker 1: He said, if you're going to have age restrictions, they
Speaker 1: should probably be against old dodding people, which is a
Speaker 1: strong statement, although it is worth noting that throughout American
Speaker 1: history about three quarters of our presidence have been between
Speaker 1: the ages of fifty and sixty five, and our candidates
Speaker 1: are getting old. In nineteen eighty one, Reagan was the
Speaker 1: oldest president to ever come to office, at age sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Until Trump and Biden recently followed at ages seventy and
Speaker 1: seventy eight, respectively. It would take an amendment to the
Speaker 1: Constitution to change the age limit in either direction, which
Speaker 1: itself would require by partisan action, the likes of which
Speaker 1: are rare in today's political environment. But as of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center
Speaker 1: found that a whopping eighty percent of Americans think there
Speaker 1: should be an upper age limit on federal elected officials. So,
Speaker 1: however strong series statement is, it seems that a lot
Speaker 1: of us agree with him. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article should the US let people younger than thirty five? Run?
Speaker 1: For president? On how stuffworks dot Com, written by Chrisoffer.
Speaker 1: Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com and is produced by Tyler Playing four more
Speaker 1: podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.