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No one is too old to be President!

While health may be an issue, age certainly should not be a reason to practice discrimination! (Except where the Constitution says that you must be at least 35 years of age.)

Even health is not a major issue, unless it is mental health or severely debilitating and/or impairing! We have a safety net called the 20th Amendment of the Constitution. It stipulates that if the President dies or is incapacitated that the Vice President shall assume the office of President. It also stipulates that "the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified". Currently the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 provides a succession order that is 18 men and women deep. That's plenty, even in the worst calamity!

The point is that while arguably the most important political post in our world today, the person in the office of President is not someone who is indispensable. This Republican form of Democracy has continued to function smoothly even though 4 Presidents have died in office, 4 have been assassinated and 1 has resigned.

Here are a few more things to think about. Of the 4 presidents who died in office, Zachary Taylor died of cholera and William Harrison died of pneumonia. Their ages were 66 and 67. We might actually throw their sicknesses out for our present issue because those diseases don't kill anybody in America any longer.

Of the other two, Franklin Roosevelt died from a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by arterial sclerosis. We might also discard his death out of our sample because the 25th amendment now states that a president shall only serve two terms. Admittedly the job is a stress nightmare and for that reason alone it should be limited to two terms. However, FDR was only 63 when he died and I don't think most people would even raise his age as an issue today!

That leaves only one President who actually died in office from a disease that might be one that we would worry about in an older person today. Warren Harding was felled by a stroke. However, he too would skew the statistics because he died at the relatively young age of 58. In his case, age would be even less a factor in elect-ability today.

This is why age alone should not be a limiting factor!

It is of interest to look at a few more facts when it comes to Presidential life expectancy. We noted earlier that 4 presidents were assassinated. These were Abraham Lincoln (56), James Garfield (49), William McKinley (58) and John Kennedy (47). If we are going to discriminate on the basis of age we might want to think about raising that 35 year old age limit. THE AVERAGE AGE OF AN ASSASSINATED PRESIDENT IS 52 YEARS OLD. Youth seems to be the real mortality issue here!

Have we forgotten the greatness of this country in which we live? Have we never even READ the Declaration of Independence, much less the Constitution? Age should not be discriminated against any more than gender or the color of one's skin!

In the United States of America, EVERYONE has been created equal, even if John McCain happens to have been created before most of the rest of us!

(Uh ... John? ... Feel free to use that one if you haven't thought of it already.)

Learn more about this author, RW MacAlisdair.
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