When Democrats took the debate stage on Tuesday night, the top two candidates for the party's nomination were in their late 70s. Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, if elected, would not only be the oldest presidents to serve, but the oldest to be inaugurated.

Liberals have spent decades portraying Ronald Reagan as senile during his presidency. But Sanders and Biden would be older at the start of their presidencies than Reagan was when he left office. Sanders would turn 80 before the first year of his presidency is up, and Biden would hit that mark before he reaches the midpoint of his first term.

The man they'd be challenging, President Donald Trump, is no spring chicken — at 74 in June, he'll be a year older than Reagan when he sought reelection and famously quipped about Walter Mondale's "youth and inexperience." Given the proliferation of septuagenarian candidates, to which one could add Michael Bloomberg (77) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (70), the time is long overdue for a serious discussion about the implications of electing elderly politicians to the most powerful office in the world.

Most conversations about presidential age focus too much attention on life expectancy. However, life expectancy isn't really the most appropriate metric to consider. Though the nation would mourn the death of a sitting president, and such an event would have a number of practical implications, constitutionally, the succession process would be straightforward. In that case, the vice president, who will have received tens of millions of votes on the same ballot, would take over as president.

But the Constitution provides much less guidance when it comes to a situation in which the president is undergoing cognitive or physical decline. The 25th Amendment, which has played a role in fantasies about removing Trump, states that the vice president can take over "whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of such other body as Congress" offer a "written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

Anybody who has had to have conversations with aging parents about maintaining their cars or independent housing understands the difficulty of getting humans to accept the limits imposed by their mortality. Add to that the political implications of removing a democratically elected president against his or her will, and it's very unlikely that the 25th is going to be invoked other than in cases of total incapacitation or unconsciousness.

Yet there are plenty of scenarios that fall far short of that — conditions that can significantly impair a president without rising to the level of being so clear cut as to trigger the 25th Amendment.

Though before the adoption of the amendment, the Yalta Conference is a worthwhile reference point. Just two months before his death, Franklin D. Roosevelt had to make an arduous 14,000-mile round trip to Crimea for the summit toward the end of World War II. For decades, historians have debated the role that Roosevelt's declining health played in allied concessions to the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and China that shape world affairs to this day. But by all accounts, FDR was noticeably ailing.

Nobody knows what the future holds, but we do know that, all else being equal, older individuals are more likely to encounter serious health problems. In addition to these general concerns, it isn't as if leading presidential candidates have had squeaky clean medical histories. Sanders had a heart attack in October. As the Washington Examiner recently reported, Barack Obama's former doctor raised questions about Biden's health. "He's not a healthy guy," Dr. David Scheiner said after reading his medical records. "He's not in bad shape for his age, but I wouldn't say he's in outstanding health. Could I guarantee he won't have issues for the next four years? He has a lot of issues that are just sort of sitting there." While a letter from the former vice president's physician noted he was a "healthy, vigorous" 77-year-old who was fit to serve as president, it also disclosed that "Biden receives treatment for an irregular heartbeat and high cholesterol." Trump, meanwhile, has been less than forthcoming about his medical history.

Addressing candidates' age and health is a sensitive topic — nobody wants to be seen as lacking compassion. Yet consistently elevating politicians who are at an advanced age is playing with fire and creating a real risk for the nation. Our national discourse should be taking this risk a lot more seriously.

Reprinted from The Washington Examiner

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

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