Back in 2019, I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “No Country for Old Presidents,” in which I suggested it was time for serious consideration of an age limitation for presidential candidates and a constitutional amendment to that effect. In 2025, regardless of the outcome of the election or the events of the next several months, it’s worth a serious and sober consideration and a bipartisan working group in Congress.

To begin, of course, any restriction on qualifications is a restriction on voters. A 35-year age minimum, the natural born citizen requirement, a two-term limit rule–all work to limit voter choices. Then again, the entire point of such rules is to disfavor a class of candidates because of some ex ante public judgment. That is, rather than risk voters make a tradeoff in the moment that they may regret in the long term, the qualifications are put in place to restrict voters’ choices. That is its own serious conversation worth having.

And it’s worth considering unintended consequences. The two-term limit, for instance, has functioned as a hard cap on presidents and made lame duck presidents near the end of their terms particularly weak. Whether one thinks of the “six year itch” as real or imagined, none of the recent second-term presidents (Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama) could have even threatened to run for a third term (however unlikely it might have been), emboldening any political opposition to them (and one can think of emboldened political opposition to all of them in their waning years).

A 75-year-old age limit would effectively cap a new presidential candidate to 66 years of age on Election Day. That would be the only way to ensure the possibility of completing two full terms without the risk of being considered a lame duck earlier in the presidency. But few presidents ever served beyond 75 (Reagan was the only one until Trump and Biden), and perhaps it’s little risk.

There are costs to fixating on age and making assumptions about candidates and age. But many states have age limits for, say, judges, with little apparent public consequence or fixation. There are of course Type I and II errors. Plenty of 80-year-olds could serve effectively as president; plenty of 60-year-olds may have challenges that prevent effective service. But with any crude cutoff, the question is what risks we are willing to accept and what ones we are not.

If it turns out the public, the media, and the political parties do a poor job of vetting candidates’ health and acuity, then a rule barring certain candidates (at some unacceptable level of risk) seems appropriate. And if there is particular discomfort with making that assessment with not simply a candidate but the sitting president of the United States, perhaps from some fear of undermining his ability to serve in office or projecting weakness abroad, then a broad ex ante rule rather than ongoing individualized assessment also seems appropriate.

Constitutional amendments are not easy things. But just like President Roosevelt’s third and fourth term spurred the Twenty-Second Amendment, we might be in an era where such a conversation is possible. And it’s possible others would want to discuss age limits for members of the House and the Senate, or age limits for the judiciary. We would want to consider how it extends to the Vice President. (Professor Steve Sachs, for instance, has floated one proposal here.) But we may well face a moment where a serious conversation is possible next year, and it’s worth thinking about it in the months ahead.