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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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For clarity, I'm not arguing against age limits- I just think that these things:
old politicians are out of touch and mental decline is a problem
corrupt politicians aren't held accountable
...are separate problems. If we solve the first one, that'll be a good thing, but if we do it without also addressing the second one, we'll still have the same accountability/corruption problems but with faster turnover.
Worse than that, setting up rules that go a bit like: [after n terms/x age, we can't elect you even if we love you and you're great] will go a long way towards addressing that first problem, but could create problems down the line.
For example, when we created the notion of a debt ceiling (we can't do the thing without a supermajority, even if it's the right thing) seemed reasonable on its face, it would bind the hands of future profligate spenders and that would solve the debt problem, right? But, we really just tied the hands of majorities and gave bad-faith minorities the power to ransom their political demands against turning the world economy into a dumpster fire.
Fundamentally, it's the voters' job to vote out the people that aren't fit to serve, and the reasons we don't reliably do that seem to be that machine politics and corrupt democracy seem to make it risky to vote out your McConnells and Grassleys and Pelosis and Feinsteins and such, because so much of the institutional gravity of the parties revolves around them.
I say, yes! Forcibly retire the dinosaurs with a pension and make them develop their successors before they're dead. But, don't expect that to solve the democracy problem, work on that too