Should There Be Mandatory Retirement Age for Politicians?

I thought Zed's comments regarding mandatory voting would make for an excellent discussion of its own.

Should the US mandate voting in federal elections?

I like the idea of mandatory testing of cognition for elder statesmen, a review if you want but it would have to go all the way up to the Presidency to be fair. Would some of our past Presidents of elder status have passed such a test?

Government is not a business so trying to apply force retirement to elected officials is rather difficult to endorse. Term limits would work, even if there was a provision that someone could be reelected for not more than one returning term. Several possibilities here, so debate on.

If a state wants to be represented by a senile old coot, that is their business. If that state wants to consider the competence for office of their representatives, I would support their right to do so. But the federal government should not be in the business of telling the states who may or may not represent them, aside from impeachable offenses, of course.

As to the President, there is already a process for removing from power a president who is believed incapable of performing his duties.

As to term limits, I am against them for the same reasons I am against an age limit.

To my mind, as some have stated, politicians have term limits-as they come up for 'review' by their constituents on a regular basis--and further intervention by the govt erodes the people's right to choose their representatives...

Appointments for life, however, IMO, requires some form of accountability to aging. Many times, the elderly guy is the last to recognise his mental slippage.

For these, reviews of knowledge and thinking skills should be pre-set. Has anyone ever been forcefully sacked from the Supreme Court?

If anyones been following this forum closely, I was being facetious about endorsing cognitive testing of officials. It wasn't my idea.

It was my idea, but for life-term appointees.
And, I missed the facetiousness (word?) Thought you and I had practically agreed on something.

Was going to get out my camera....

There seems to me to be a serious problem with "cognative evaluation". Put simply, exactly who will be the judge of any individual's mental abilities? It is possible to formulate any subjective evaluation in such a way that it can be made certain that a given individual will pass or fail, depending on the nature of the questions and answers. By the way, a previous comment is precisely on target. We already have term limits and personal evaluations that occur every other year - we usually call them elections.
Concerning mandatory voting - here we go again. Do we really want people with no knowledge or interest in the political arena to be force to cast a vote anyway? I realize that this already happens all too frequently, but I fail to see the logic in making this problem even worse.

Re: Should There Be Mandatory Retirement Age for Politician
As we age old ,our face will be full of wrinkles ,our heart will be filled with not only sophistication but senility as well .And our soul will be contained within its banks and rush not so passionately past boulders and waterfalls as before .At that time ,we can still work as judges ,surgeons and entrepreneurs ,but we feel less and less competent .If we were judges ,we may cause miscarriage of justice or justice delayed .If we were surgeons ,we may cause misconduct of operation or operation miscolored .If we were entrepreneures,we may cause misdischarge of cargo or cargo misdelivered .
As we age old ,we want to still work ."the coming hope ,-the future day" ,we may think,"miles and miles to go before i sleep " ,we may suppose . But those golden and rosy days have gone dry.:the impairment of judgement ,the decay of vitality ,the increase of weariness and even the thought of rest .
Mandatory retirement age is a reasonable limit on individual rights .