Currently, the minimum age requirement to be president of the United States is 35 years old.
In Ireland, there was a referendum recently to reduce the minimum age of presidency from 35 to 21.
Wow! Can you imagine a 21 year old president? Can you imagine a 21 year old president of the United States? I mean, to be fair, I’ve met some brilliant 21 year olds- and even heard about some brilliant 13 year olds, like this 13 year old tech company founder– but in the case of a nation’s president, I think bit more life experience can be really helpful.
Ireland voted no on the referendum by a majority of 891,704 votes.
520,898 votes were for pro age change and 1,412,602 were against it.
But it’s interesting who voted yes. Here’s a quote from the Irish Times:
“Dublin South Central TD (TD is the equivalent of a congress member in Ireland), Eric Byrne revealed he had changed his mind at last minute and voted Yes. “It just dawned on me, I don’t have to vote for a 21-year-old but why deprive them of the right to run?”
Fine Gael Minister of State Simon Harris, who is advocated a Yes vote, said the Constitution is ageist and needs to be changed.
“Ageism has no place in our Constitution,” he added. “It was written at a time when there was a different view of our younger citizens.” “
21 is pretty young, but I wonder if the referendum results would be different if the age difference was changed from 35 to 30 instead of from 35 to 21.
A 30, 32, or 34 year old president seems doable to me. What do you guys think?
Do you think there’s a major difference between the ages of 30 and 35? What would it be like if the presidential minimum age in the US was lowered from 35 to 30?
Our youngest president ever was Theodore Roosevelt, who was sworn into office at 42 years of age
Barack Obama is our 5th youngest president, sworn in at 47 years of age
OMG I'm Thirty 
This is a good question. I do know the age requirement was originally set in place because of fears of an aristocracy forming. It was a way of preventing fathers from positioning their sons into office. There was also a life expectancy of only 50 years at the time this was placed into the constitution. Constitution aside, I do feel that there is a certain amount of “life experience” one gets when they are older. Speaking for myself only, I can honestly say that my knowledge has increased with age and the decisions I would make today are far different than the decisions I would have made ten years ago.
LikeLike
Yes, a very good question. I have another question. How many people under the age of 35 actually follow politics?
LikeLike