Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 484: Geezer Presidents

Transcript

Episode 484: Geezer Presidents · Words & Numbers

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Today on Words and Numbers Way MO.
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Listener questions on victimless crimes.
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College Republicans. And should there be an age limit
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on the presidency? All this more coming up next on
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words and Numbers, a civil original production.
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Check us out at civil.com. That's C ivl.com.
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Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony.
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And this is words and numbers. Ants, what's new and exciting in
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your world this week? A listener goes by initial B
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last name eixt. I got this right.
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Oh, did you get it? Yeah, yeah, very nice letter.
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I'm sorry, I don't know what your first name is.
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I searched around, you know, in the e-mail and the letter, there
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was no first name, just initial B.
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But the question is, or the comment I makes, I might suggest
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some additional explicit victimless crimes which exist
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include seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws for adults at least.
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One might also consider a number of other safety regulatory laws
1:03
to be potentially considered victimless crimes.
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This goes back to the discussion we were having a couple weeks
1:09
ago on on victimless crimes. And I've, I've talked about this
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before, the seat belt use laws and the helmet laws I was in
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when we were both in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania
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legislature repealed the helmet law that motorcyclist don't have
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to wear helmets. And an interesting counter
1:34
argument is that, well, it's not a victimless crime because the
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one way to look at it is, well, if I don't wear a helmet and I'm
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in an accident that harms me, it doesn't harm you.
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Why are we making a crime out of this?
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Except you could make the argument that if you don't wear
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the helmet and you are in a serious accident, now you've
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racked up all sorts of insurance of healthcare bills and your
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insurance has to pay this out that it then turns around and
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raises rates on everybody else. So all of a sudden it isn't
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victimless after all that. Your choice has a negative
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impact on other people. People have made that argument
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to me and it's kind of, I don't want to say it has legs, but it
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has at least one leg. I think I would push back a
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little bit and say if the insurance company, let me say it
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differently, if the insurance market is not overly regulated,
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then the insurance company is going to have an incentive to do
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a couple things. One is to insure motorcyclists
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at a different rate than everybody else. 2 is to insure
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people who wear helmets when they're riding motorcycles at a
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different rate than people who wear who don't wear helmets when
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they're riding motorcycles. And as a consequence of that, if
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you are not wearing your helmet and you're in an accident and
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the insurance company has to shell out a lot of money and so
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it turns around and raises rates, it would be raising rates
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only on other motorcyclists who aren't wearing the helmet.
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Now, you might say aha, but there this motorcyclist has now
3:30
imposed a, a cost on these other people.
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So this is not victimless after all.
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To which I respond, no, the the motorcyclist did not impose a
3:41
cost. It is the case that the other
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motorcyclists who don't wear helmets, their insurance rates
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go up. But they go up because the
3:51
insurance company has realized that these motorcyclists are a
3:54
greater risk than it had originally thought.
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That is, it's not that all of a sudden these motorcyclists are
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subject to to a greater cost. It's that they were getting a
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benefit. They were not being charged
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enough before. Now, all of that is contingent
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on there not being any regulation that says something
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that sounds fair, but it's stupid.
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Like, well, the insurance company has to charge the same
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premium to everybody. Well, all that then does create
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a victim in the sense of you do something that's stupid and now
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all of a sudden I, who am completely unrelated to the
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activity you were undertaking, have to pay more to my
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insurance. Yeah, you might recall during
4:38
that episode I I dug my heels in on drug use and prostitution.
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Those were the the grand examples that I come up with for
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victimless crimes. And I think that episode was out
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for about 8 seconds when our friend Zach Arnold came after me
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in the form of a Facebook message.
5:01
Victimless crime. I was just going to read it to
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you because it's beautiful. Victimless crimes not involving
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drugs or prostitution. Colon, Most immigration crime,
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most firearm violations, unregistered suppressors, SBRS,
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magazine size restrictions, some backing restrictions structuring
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many many licensing violations, some piracy laws, lots of
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hooting laws. I don't even know what the hell.
5:26
Oh, that must be housing. Housing laws, Minimum square
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footage, no accessory dwellings, many laws blocking anonymity and
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encryption. To which I I say to Zach and
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everybody else, yeah, I agree completely.
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But the reason why I dug my heels in on prostitution and
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drug use was because they didn't.
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Those weren't the result of regulatory wishes, right?
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There's an actual event, an actual thing that human beings
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do together. In one case, the buying and
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selling of drugs, the other case the buying and selling of, of
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sex. So people do this together and
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they both want to, one wants to do it to do it, one wants to do
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it for the money, right. And when you look at the
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regulatory things, those are kind of different.
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That's everybody in in the country.
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You know, I'm, I'm working with the Schoolhouse Rock definition
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here. Not actually how it happens, but
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a mass of people decide, wouldn't it be better if
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motorcyclists wore helmets? That's different than drug use.
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It's a regulatory scheme and I wanted to keep things really
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simple when we talked about victimless crime, to keep all
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the regulatory stuff out because it confounds the matter.
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At some point, if we follow the logic that you were using
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earlier with insurance, at some point we have to require, not
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ban certain things, but require everybody to eat healthy, right?
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Everybody has to have a salad, a plain meat, probably no
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carbohydrates and a vegetable for dinner.
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That's the logical outcome of the regime that you were
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describing with insurance, because it has a cost on all of
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us when you behave in an unhealthy way, right?
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If you're, we would never be able to sell cigarettes, right?
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And, and we, we kind of toy with that a little bit from time to
7:24
time. That's a destructive product,
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but people love them. Couldn't do it.
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Liquor would have to be banned because it brings with it a
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tremendous social cost that we all have to end up paying for
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one way or the next. And I think these are all
7:38
arguments to have, but I wanted, for the purpose of that episode,
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to keep it very simple. There are these crimes that are
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absolutely victimless, and yet we disallow them time after time
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after time. All right.
7:53
You mentioned one that I'd like to circle back to because it's
7:58
not a regulatory thing and a lot of people say it is victimless
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and I claim maybe not. That's software piracy.
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No, I think I I, I have a real problem with people who don't
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respect intellectual property. Now let me let me say that one
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of the happiest days of my life was the day I found our book on
8:21
a torrent site. So look.
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We've made the big time. I'm against that sort of thing
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generally, but I was terribly complimented by it.
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People like our book enough to steal it.
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That's outstanding. But look, that's we don't make
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our living with that book, right?
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And there are people who make their living with their IP and
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if it's not protected, they've got real problems.
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And if the producers of high end IP aren't protected, we will
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come to a point quickly where there are no producers of high
8:57
end IP. Yeah, that, that's all correct
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and it's looking forward. I want to think about the more
9:03
immediate of here's a piece of software and I copy it.
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On the one hand, you can claim there is no victim.
9:13
I haven't harmed anyone and that is that is true in a sense I
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haven't unless I would have purchased the software.
9:23
And that's the thing that nobody ever talks about, right?
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When you see the, the motion picture people, right?
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The Hollywood people and the music industry people saying we
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lost X billions of dollars because of piracy.
9:39
Well, no, you didn't. I mean, let's just be brutally
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honest here. I've I've pirated things before.
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They're never things I would have bought.
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I just wanted to check them out real quick.
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Right. Right.
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So I had a look, if I liked it, I went out and bought it.
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If I didn't, I let it go, right. And that you're not losing money
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that way. You're, I think a lot of people
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make a lot of money that way. I think when people are are more
10:08
broadly introduced to your product, you run the risk of
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having new customers, right? Yeah.
10:17
So the presumption, never by the argument that X number of
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dollars have been lost. Those are always nonsense.
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Yeah, the assumption there is that every single person who
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pirated would have otherwise paid for the thing.
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Yeah, that's a. Big.
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That's ridiculous. Yeah, that's absolutely
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ridiculous. But I still think there's a
10:37
problem with piracy where people make their livings writing
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little tiny apps. Right.
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Are we going to let other people just copy their work?
10:48
That that seems incredibly counterproductive.
10:51
I think it's wrong as a simple moral issue, but it's it's even
10:55
stupid as a societal issue now. People in in our general
11:02
universe tend to be against IP protection, and I've never
11:07
really understood why. Yeah, I don't understand that
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either. I've heard people, I don't care
11:13
for the argument. I've heard people make the
11:15
argument that any product that has 0 marginal cost, that is I
11:21
can produce as many units once it's designed, I can produce as
11:24
many units as I want it no additional cost that that that
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should be free for everybody. I don't understand.
11:32
I don't understand a principal difference between something has
11:35
0 marginal cost and something has non 0 marginal cost.
11:39
I don't either actually. So as is sometimes the case,
11:43
we're in heated agreement after after this.
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Subscribe to Civil for $5 a month or $50.00 for an annual
12:34
subscription. Let's see if I can get us to
12:36
something where we'll disagree. You saw recently that San
12:40
Francisco had a massive power outage, yes?
12:43
Yes, I did. Like like 100,000 people without
12:46
power for a good deal of time, right?
12:50
And that's not the interesting part.
12:52
The interesting part is what happens to self driving vehicles
12:56
when the power goes down and the way MO cars in San Francisco
13:01
caused such trouble that they're going to have to figure out a
13:05
way to address this. Because when they could no
13:08
longer read the cues of the streets, headlights for example,
13:14
or streetlights, for example, traffic lights, what do they do?
13:19
They just stop. She had all these waymos just
13:23
stopping right where they were. And all the non waymos who we
13:27
sometimes referred to as other humans couldn't get around them.
13:32
And 'cause. It just caused this disaster of
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the traffic jam in in California.
13:38
And this is one of those things that we talk about all the time.
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You can't foresee every eventuality.
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You just can't. And this one was kind of
13:48
obvious, actually. Why did nobody at Waymo say, oh,
13:53
hey, wait a minute, when all the street lights go out, our cars
13:56
are going to go berserk and just stop in the middle of the road.
13:59
Why not edge them to the curb? Which, right, solved every
14:02
problem, right? That's like probably 10 minutes
14:05
worth of software work edging them to the curb.
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And yet nobody thought about it. I wouldn't have thought about it
14:12
either. I'm not picking on them.
14:14
Whoever who thinks that all the lights are going to stop
14:16
working. I love things like this because,
14:19
you know, you see these apocalyptic movies where, you
14:22
know, society falls apart and people who live in cities are
14:26
rampaging across the countryside stealing things.
14:28
I'm thinking there's no way that's going to happen.
14:31
The people in the cities aren't going to know how to get out.
14:34
Even if they are able somehow to get out, with the way MO's not
14:37
working in the metro's not working, their Google Maps isn't
14:42
working, they're not going to know where to go.
14:44
Everyone's just going to say put.
14:46
They're all screwed. Everybody's screwed.
14:48
I, I think this is hilarious. So we'll go from the hilarious
14:53
to the ridiculousness with the foolishness of the week.
14:56
And I hardly know where to start here.
14:58
So I'll, I'll start with, can I say our friends at the Buckley
15:03
Institute? I, I think we're friends, we're
15:05
fellow travellers with the Buckley people.
15:08
We should probably tag them in this.
15:09
So they know that we, we paid attention to something.
15:13
But they got into the New York Post by taking a look at Yale
15:17
undergraduate departments and learned that almost 30 of the
15:23
undergraduate departments have no Republican faculty.
15:27
No, not like minimal, but zero. Apparently 0 is the correct
15:32
answer, and it reminded me of Thomas Sowell who when asked
15:37
about diversity and claims of diversity, said this is his
15:42
exact quote. The next time some academics
15:44
tell you how important diversity is, ask them how many
15:47
Republicans there are in their sociology department.
15:51
Right. Right.
15:53
And my entire life I've met one right of center sociologist.
16:00
I don't know if he's a Republican or not, but he
16:02
certainly wasn't a Liberal Democrat, right?
16:05
He wasn't a progressive. But I took a quick look and
16:10
we'll, we'll put the put the graphic up on the screen and you
16:16
can see Ant the proportion and that this eliminates the
16:20
confounding characteristics of independence.
16:23
This is professors at elite universities who have stated a
16:27
preference for one of the two major parties or the other.
16:31
And as you look at it, Ant, there's a lot of blue in that
16:36
graph. 11 might say that the red in that graph is so small as to
16:42
be immaterial. And Yale isn't even the worst of
16:45
it. Yale is 97% Democrat.
16:50
Harvard is the worst of it at 99, Princeton at 98.
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Yale comes in at 3. Now, anecdotally, I know this to
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be true. I worked at many, many colleges
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and they every last one of them was exactly like this and
17:05
getting worse overtime. All right.
17:09
How's that working out for everybody right now?
17:11
I'll give you a a story. When I was at the previous
17:17
institution at which I was I had co-authored an article that got
17:22
a bunch of academic article that got a bunch of traction in the
17:26
news. It was about the estate tax and
17:30
the title on it was included the words death tax.
17:36
And we had, you know, as you do at the universities, the
17:39
monitors that show you news that's happening in the
17:42
university. And they had our pictures up
17:45
along with, you know, article in the, I forget where it was, Wall
17:49
Street Journal. Whatever about the death tax, it
17:52
was up for maybe half an hour before some mid level Dean
17:58
yanked it because the phrase death tax was offensive.
18:02
To who to? People, people on the left don't
18:08
like to call it death tax. They'd like to call it estate
18:11
tax. They think death tax is
18:14
pejorative when in fact it's a tax.
18:18
A sales tax is triggered by sales and income tax is
18:22
triggered by income. A death tax is triggered by
18:26
death. It's not triggered by an estate.
18:29
Well, not yet anyway. Right.
18:33
A wealth tax would be an estate tax.
18:37
The the wealth tax Oh no well tax was is triggered by wealth
18:40
that's. Yeah, that's, but that's an
18:42
estate tax, right? They would look at your entire
18:44
estate. And oh, I see.
18:46
I see what you're saying. Right, right, right.
18:47
Yeah. That that's different from dying
18:49
and having a big slice of whatever you've accumulated
18:52
taken away. But my point is that, you know,
18:56
here's an environment in which something came across in a
19:00
public way that was perceived to be right leaning and was
19:04
immediately nixed. Yeah, I'm not the least bit
19:08
surprised. I was told a number of times in
19:10
a number of places not to do X right.
19:15
I would publish something online with a heretical thought in it,
19:20
like, oh, I don't know, there should be no minimum wage or
19:23
something like this. Something basic and not crazy
19:28
and Dean's would come out of the woodwork, you know, with their
19:32
hair on fire, saying things like we have to take our donors into
19:36
consideration. We can't have you doing things
19:38
like this. That's proof positive that most
19:40
Deans don't really have jobs. Yeah, and I'm not sure they're
19:45
entirely in touch with their donors either.
19:47
No, that's right. And I think the more it gets out
19:53
that the university system is monolithically progressive
19:57
Democrat, the less the donations will flow.
20:02
And and there's, I think, I think they're about to reap what
20:06
they sow at this point. And let's be let's be clear here
20:09
that it's the monolithic part that's a problem.
20:12
If they were monolithically Republican, we'd be saying the
20:15
same thing. Same exact.
20:17
Problem that's right. And we're going to go on in the
20:19
main part of this episode yet to criticize, I think the last two
20:25
presidents, which are different parties in a very considerable
20:29
sort of way. So, you know, before you write
20:32
your Trump Derangement Syndrome emails, fire up your Biden
20:37
Derangement Syndrome e-mail too, because we're, we're going to
20:40
talk about the problem of having very old presidents, which has
20:46
come up in the last two administrations and others
20:50
before that and probably others to come.
20:54
But it's gotten to the point now, aunt, where people are
20:56
living so long where we, we've cured so many physical ailments
21:01
or maybe took better to the point we can treat so many
21:06
physical ailments that mental ailments are starting to rise to
21:12
a level that we've never seen before.
21:15
And it makes perfect sense, right?
21:16
When when your average lifespan is under 40, you're not going to
21:21
see a lot of dementia. And the average lifespan in the
21:25
United States was under 40 for a very long time, and now it's up
21:29
around. 80 Well at 80. You see new kinds of diseases
21:35
that people in previous eras never experienced.
21:39
And let's be real clear, Joe Biden was so demented at the end
21:45
of his presidency that he had no business being president, None
21:50
whatsoever. He had taken leave of his
21:53
senses. And I remember clearly when the
21:56
issue started coming up, it was the typical way these things
22:01
come up. A bunch of Republican zealots
22:04
started throwing stones. But that's always how it starts
22:07
one way or the other, right? The people out on the fringe are
22:10
going to be most likely to criticize hardest, earliest.
22:14
And they started criticizing him and the Democrats to their
22:18
eternal discredit. They could, they came out and
22:22
started saying things like, oh, Joe Biden's kind of like
22:24
Superman. He never sleeps.
22:26
You can run a marathon. But they were saying all these
22:29
goofy ass things about a man who was clearly out of his mind.
22:35
And then we had the first debate, well, the only debate
22:39
between Donald Trump candidate second time, third time around,
22:44
and Joe Biden president going up for re election.
22:48
And Joe Biden's performance in that debate was so horrifyingly
22:53
bad that I sat in the chair and I said to myself and to anyone
22:58
who would listen, his career is over.
23:01
There is literally nothing that he can do tomorrow to
23:05
rehabilitate what just happened. And what did you see from the
23:09
Democrats 5 minutes after it was over?
23:11
Joe Biden clearly won that debate.
23:14
They all came out and said, oh, oh, please, just please come on
23:21
now. By the time we saw it in that
23:23
debate, it was already 2 years too late.
23:28
And everybody knows that people, the press who followed him, they
23:33
all knew it. They just wouldn't say it.
23:35
Why not? Because they're in the tank for
23:37
the Democratic Party and they have been for decades.
23:42
We hear it now from the press that Donald Trump has lost a
23:46
step because they're not in the tank for Republicans and they're
23:51
certainly not in the tank for Donald Trump.
23:54
So we get reports of Donald Trump and the encroaching
23:59
dementia that people see with him, him zoning out, looking
24:04
out. You can see it in in certain
24:06
things. I've seen it falling asleep at
24:10
meetings when he's not up to speak.
24:14
It's a totality of little tiny things that you notice to know
24:19
that he's at the beginning stage of what's going to turn in to be
24:22
a real problem. And you know, we have a, a
24:28
minimum age on the president. You have to be 35, but we don't
24:32
have a maximum. Is there an age at which you're
24:36
too damn old to be president? Yeah, and look the.
24:40
The. Framers understood that age
24:43
mattered, and you know that because they said there's a
24:45
minimum age. You've got to be, you have to be
24:49
old enough, mature enough. In fact, they set minimum ages
24:52
for the Senate and the House as well, and they're younger, as I
24:55
recall. That's correct, they're younger.
24:58
So they were clearly going for they want someone with some life
25:02
experience. My guess is it's only a guess
25:06
that they didn't say anything about a maximum age because,
25:10
well, people just didn't live that long.
25:12
It wasn't a thing you had to worry about.
25:14
Well, it's not that they they didn't live that long, although
25:18
they didn't. It's that they died before these
25:21
sorts of problems became evident.
25:24
Right, right. Yes.
25:26
Right. So we've got new problems that
25:28
we've never had to deal with before, and we're going to keep
25:31
on having them. That becomes the problem.
25:34
So the question becomes, do we want a maximum age for the
25:39
presidency? I'm not sure we do, but I'm
25:42
pretty sure we need to talk about it.
25:45
Where where do you fall on this? Do you think we should have a
25:47
maximum age? I think so.
25:50
Now, I, I tend to be, I tend to be of the camp that says, look,
25:56
we don't need any of that because we have the voting
25:59
system. If you don't want an old guy,
26:01
don't vote for the old guy, which I can, I can buy that.
26:06
If we had, I'm going to tread carefully here.
26:10
If we had a fair voting system, and by that I mean a system that
26:14
isn't locked in by the Democratic and Republican
26:18
parties. If we had a, a free for all and
26:21
you, you can actually pick from other people in a meaningful
26:25
way, I'd say, yeah, leave it to the voters.
26:27
But given that we can't, I wonder if we do need some kind
26:30
of guardrail here. Well, let me ask you the more
26:33
interesting question then because we, I, I think I've got
26:36
you on board with the smoke filled room option.
26:41
Yeah. Do I officially have you on
26:44
board with that? Have I sold you on that?
26:46
Yeah, I kind of like it. In fact, every time you mention
26:49
it, I get a bunch of e-mail from listeners saying, hey, that's a
26:52
good idea. Yeah.
26:54
So what? Just give us a a summary.
26:57
Well, the, the, the party faithful, the, the, the people
27:00
who occupy the upper echelons of the, the major parties would
27:06
have a meeting and they would declare who their candidate was
27:09
going to be. And that's how we got
27:11
presidential candidates. Opening it up to a primary
27:15
system made it more democratic. But I I submit that we get
27:20
lesser candidates now than we did when we had the non
27:24
democratic means of nominated candidates and they were
27:28
nominated in conventions with party faithful and you know,
27:31
these kinds of things. And I think we just had better
27:34
outcomes with that then we do now by opening the door for
27:39
every fool to vote for every single thing all the time.
27:43
So if, if we had that option for giving us our candidates, I, I
27:49
would say that we've the likelihood of getting a demented
27:52
candidate would be almost 0. Yeah.
27:57
And remember here we're we're hiring this person for his or
28:02
her brain. For four years, it's a four year
28:06
contract. And and we've reached a point
28:08
where the body can outlive the brain.
28:12
I think we've reached a point at where we can say with with
28:15
really, really deep confidence that the body will almost always
28:20
outlive the brain to in some meaningful way.
28:26
So, I mean, do you have an upper age that you would slap on this?
28:31
Because the the number we're toying with here is 80, right?
28:35
Biden Wright was the oldest president at the time of his
28:39
defeat at the end of his term, and Donald Trump will be the
28:43
oldest at the end of his second term.
28:47
Well, this Here's the trend. I have a a quote here from the
28:51
Hill, and it's an article that's quoting National Institutes of
28:54
Health. National Institutes of Health
28:57
estimate that almost 25% of Americans in their 80s have
29:02
dementia. So if you take that as truth,
29:07
and I have no idea of knowing one with the other, but as NIH,
29:10
if you take that as truth, then you got a president who's in his
29:14
80s. There's a 25% chance the, the
29:18
thing you hired him for, his mind isn't working correctly.
29:22
That's an awfully high chance. It it is awful for for an
29:26
employee, let alone somebody who's running the country.
29:30
Yeah, it it's awfully high. And you know, I, when I think of
29:36
mandatory ages for much of anything, my the first thing I
29:40
think is that no matter what we do, it's going to be arbitrary.
29:44
No matter what age we pick, there's going to be somebody
29:47
above it who would be not only perfectly qualified, but
29:50
desirable. And there's going to be a bunch
29:53
of people below it that are so far out of range already that we
29:58
don't want them anywhere near the handles of power.
30:01
So it's going to be arbitrary stipulated. 80 seems to be the
30:07
right place to begin the conversation.
30:10
I'm not saying it's an answer, it's not the right answer, but
30:13
it's the right place to start. Let me give you a data point.
30:16
The the Catholic Church dealt with this, I believe in the past
30:20
few decades, they imposed A mandatory retirement age for
30:24
their bishops. It's 75 now, I think.
30:28
I believe there are, there can be some exceptions, but they're
30:31
rare. And this is an institution that
30:34
is does not have a surplus of personnel.
30:39
I'll go you one better. I don't.
30:40
I don't think that there's a whole lot of problem with older
30:45
bishops. Who cares?
30:46
What kind of damage are they going to do, right?
30:48
That's that's an internal church thing.
30:51
The church has decided that the church would be better off if
30:54
they didn't have elderly men in position.
30:56
Oh, they can do. Oh no, they can do a lot of
30:59
damage to the church. Yeah, to the church.
31:02
It's not the public at large, right?
31:05
So I'm going to give you one for the public at large.
31:08
There is a mandatory retirement age from in major airlines for
31:12
pilots and it's 65. Wow.
31:18
The FAA has decided that a 66 year old pilot is more risk than
31:22
we can withstand. Now, now think about that for a
31:26
minute. This is a situation where you've
31:30
got a pilot, but you also have a copilot right next to him.
31:32
That's right. And you've got all the
31:34
automation and you've got the air traffic control monitoring.
31:39
The thing with all those backups, they're still putting a
31:43
age limit of 65. Yep.
31:46
Yeah, how much more should we have an age limit on the guy who
31:50
holds the his button to the nuclear above?
31:52
Yeah, the, the, the nuclear codes somehow seem more
31:55
important than than commercial aircraft, right?
32:00
I don't want to diminish the idea of the commercial aircraft
32:03
'cause I, I think actually having a mandatory retirement
32:06
age there makes a lot of sense, right?
32:08
That's a job where you can do real harm.
32:12
And we've seen recently what crazy pilots can do, right?
32:16
There have been a couple of crashes that were clearly
32:19
suicides that just brought all these extra people along for the
32:22
ride. What about when the pilot looks
32:25
up and has no idea where he is or what he's doing?
32:28
James and I are delighted to be working with Civil.
32:30
For years we have been pushing people to think about how we can
32:33
make the world a better place. Civil's mission of upgrading
32:37
society fits exactly with what James and I have been talking
32:40
about for years. Civil helps us by allowing us to
32:43
do what we do best, which is researching topics that are
32:46
important in communicating these to our listeners in ways that we
32:50
hope they find enjoyable. To see Civil's extensive list of
32:53
content, including our podcast, Words and Numbers and our
32:56
lecture series, Words and Numbers Live. civil.com.
32:59
That's civl.com. I've got here in front of me
33:04
ages of presidents and I have them, of course, you know,
33:08
they're in there for however many years I've got them at the
33:12
at the age, the the ages they were when they were elected for
33:16
the first time. And you start with George
33:19
Washington, you're at 57. So upper 50s John Adams 61,
33:24
Jefferson 57, Madison 57. It's all in the 50s, early 60s
33:31
William Henry Harrison comes in at 68.
33:35
He was the 9th president. That's the first one that gets
33:37
close to the 70s. And you don't see a 70, you
33:42
don't see somebody taking office in a for the first time until
33:48
Reagan 69. Well.
33:50
So it's even after Reagan. Donald Trump was the first one
33:55
at 70, then Joe Biden 78, Donald Trump again 78.
34:00
So you know, Trump's going to be 82 if he if he makes it through
34:03
the term, which puts him in the 25% risk category.
34:08
And I can tell, I can tell you just by watching him closely
34:12
that there's already a problem. Do I think it's a big problem?
34:15
No, probably not. But it's the beginning of a
34:17
problem. And that problem doesn't ever
34:21
get better. It only gets worse.
34:23
And let me ask you, do we have we had a similar problem with
34:28
other presidents I know toward the end of Reagan's term?
34:33
Reagan's last concern. Reagan's last two years were
34:37
very difficult. He probably in a perfect world
34:41
wouldn't have served those two years.
34:44
Yeah. And I say this as a genuine fan
34:47
of the man, right? I have real admiration for, for
34:51
him, maybe one of the 5 politicians that have any
34:55
admiration for in my lifetime. So, you know, I don't want to, I
35:00
don't want to undermine that. But you can't make a case that
35:04
he was at full capacity for at least the last two years and
35:08
there were other presidents. That weren't at full capacity.
35:12
I'm thinking about Woodrow Wilson, but Wilson, my
35:15
knowledge, that was a stroke. Yeah, it wasn't mental decline
35:20
in that sense. Oh, it was.
35:22
It was a mental disaster. He could not do the job.
35:24
It it was, but it was caused by a physical ailment as opposed
35:28
to. Well, you know, I mean dementia
35:31
did in the context of this conversation.
35:33
How many 25 year old men? Or let's go, let's keep it
35:37
kosher with the age limit. How many 40 year old men have
35:41
debilitating strokes? Right.
35:44
And the answer is some, but almost not.
35:47
It's not 25% right, but Wilson's stroke was so bad that his wife
35:53
was functionally the president of the United States.
35:56
Yeah. She took care of everything.
35:58
If we look at the three that we have or so who are close to 70
36:05
or above it, and you said Reagan was OK until his last couple of
36:08
years. Well, in his last couple of
36:11
years, at the beginning of his last couple of years, he would
36:14
have been 75. There's a lot of things pointing
36:18
to 7075. Donald Trump was 70 his first
36:23
time around. 75 seems to jump out here.
36:27
It it doesn't 80 jumps out just because we've had two presidents
36:31
right around that number. And if, if I were thinking about
36:36
this, I would think about it not in the terms that you've been
36:39
using, because you're using age at the time of election, I would
36:43
use age simply so age. You're going to age out at this
36:50
number even if you win the office and you cross the line.
36:55
You're out. I see.
36:57
Right? Yeah.
36:58
You age out. Well.
37:00
Well, that's interesting because the age out that I'm looking at
37:02
is, I do the math here is is 75, which is coincidentally the same
37:07
thing that Catholic Church chose for its bishops.
37:10
So there's somebody else has looked at this and said, yeah,
37:12
75 is the right number. If the FAA has decided that 65
37:17
is there. 55 FAA, Yeah. That that's actually playing in
37:21
my mind a lot more than I thought it would, right?
37:23
Because that's a real safety concern.
37:26
And people who take safety really seriously as a as a daily
37:31
goal have said 65 and you're out and that's it.
37:36
OK, so if we if we do that, let's suppose we had a 65 upper
37:40
limit and whenever you hit it, you're done.
37:44
You're in the middle of your term, you're done.
37:47
Who would have survived? John Adams would not have made,
37:51
he would have been out after his first term.
37:53
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, all turn 65 at the end of their
37:59
second terms. I'm assuming here 2 terms,
38:02
Jackson will be the first one, that he would have served part
38:06
of his first term, and that was it.
38:08
Yeah. Wouldn't William Henry Harrison
38:10
wouldn't even gotten in. So there's a handful of
38:12
presidents here that we've had that would not pass muster under
38:17
that rule. Yeah, I, I'm not sure it's the
38:20
right number. I'm just saying that I'm
38:22
inclined to start this conversation at 80 and then jump
38:27
all the way down to 65 because I have a justification for doing
38:30
that. I, I think if I were pressed
38:34
and, and given the authority to pick a number, it might be, it
38:40
might be 75, it might be 70. So it'd be somewhere in there.
38:45
I'd want to see some real data on dementia pre 80s.
38:50
All right, So what are the odds in the 70s?
38:54
What are the odds in the 60s? Notice the problem that we face
38:58
if, if we were to manage a constitutional amendment, and
39:03
that's what would take that, put an upper limit within, you know,
39:09
a couple decades, someone's going to discover a cure.
39:13
And now we've got a problem that we've got people who are of
39:16
their right mind into their hundreds and they can't run for
39:19
president. Yeah, you know you're going to
39:20
end up in this in a situation down the road where people are
39:23
living to 300, but constitutionally they they can
39:26
only serve until there's 70 between the ages of 35 and 75,
39:31
right. And and some would say, and I
39:34
probably under the best of circumstances would put myself
39:38
in this group. Some some would say that we
39:41
already have a mechanism to take care of it soon.
39:43
It's the 25th Amendment. Let me let me read it to you
39:47
just just for a bit. Whenever the Vice President and
39:50
a majority of either the principal officers of the
39:53
executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by
39:58
law provide transmit to the President Pro Tem of the Senate
40:02
and the Speaker of the House their written declaration that
40:06
the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties
40:09
of his office, The Vice President shall immediately
40:12
assume the powers and duty duties of the office as acting
40:15
President. And then there's there's a bunch
40:19
of qualifiers and everything else but.
40:22
The executive branch, and really you should read this as the vice
40:26
president and the cabinet, they can decide that the president
40:33
doesn't have it. They can have a meeting and say
40:39
Joe Biden can no longer be president.
40:43
And I I would submit that there was a time when that would have
40:48
been a moral requirement, and it was absolutely a moral
40:52
requirement by the time the debate happened.
40:54
Yeah. And, and as you're talking about
40:57
that, I'm, I'm thinking if the 25th Amendment wasn't invoked at
41:04
the end of the Biden term, it's never going to be invoked.
41:07
When will it be? Because it was the perfect
41:10
situation that the vice president was, would have, well,
41:15
we all knew would have taken Biden's place when indeed Biden
41:18
finally dropped out, it was kind of a given that he was going to
41:21
drop out as soon as people realize the public realized in
41:25
general what was going on. The Democrats could have kept
41:28
the White House or everything was in favor of the 25th
41:32
Amendment being invoked. In fact, I claim Pamala Harris
41:36
would have won that election had she invoked the 25th, because
41:39
she would have gone into the election not as a candidate, but
41:42
as the president. Well.
41:43
Not only that, but she could have said, look, I did what the
41:47
country needed me to. Yes, yes, party be damned,
41:52
everything be damned. This is what had to happen.
41:55
But we all realized that that was what had to happen, and it
42:01
didn't. Yeah.
42:03
Do I? Do I trust her at all from that
42:07
point forward? I do not.
42:09
Not even a little. And I want all the people who
42:12
send me those Trump Derangement Syndrome letters to hear what
42:16
I'm saying. Kamala Harris was unfit for the
42:19
office. Yeah, well, I know she didn't do
42:22
the job as vice president. She had the the one job she had
42:27
as vice president, more important than in any of the
42:29
others was that, and she didn't do it.
42:32
And I don't think the Trump administration would do this
42:35
either, although I think JD Vance would be more likely to do
42:39
it than Kamala Harris, right? If a vice president is going to
42:43
trigger this event, I, I think Vance would be more likely than
42:48
Harris. I don't think what I've seen of
42:51
Trump right now, Look, I'm not a fan, but I don't think you can
42:55
make the case that physically he's not here or mentally he's
42:58
not here, that he has to be removed.
43:01
I think he's showing signs, early signs of dementia.
43:05
Well, I mean, go find the 80 year old men who aren't.
43:09
That's not as easy as it sounds. Does that disqualify him from
43:12
the job right now? I I doubt it.
43:14
I don't think so, but I don't see him every day.
43:18
I don't work in the White House. Maybe the cabinet that does see
43:22
him every day, that falls all over him to compliment him in
43:25
these ridiculous meetings they show on TV.
43:28
Maybe they're really behind the scenes saying things like, what
43:30
are we going to do about him? I don't know.
43:34
Sooner or later they're going to have to say that because we're
43:38
only one year into the term and I'm already seeing problems.
43:41
Not. Not even.
43:42
We're not even a full year into the term.
43:45
I guess that's right as we record this three days before
43:48
Christmas. We're not quite there yet, but,
43:50
you know, close enough for government work.
43:54
So I, I don't know, I'm uncomfortable trying to figure
43:58
out a maximum age because I'm not sure there should ever be a
44:02
maximum age in a country that takes the idea of equality
44:07
seriously and merit seriously. Maybe everything has to be on a
44:12
case by case basis. I don't know.
44:15
But we're, we're in new territory here.
44:18
And if you're not terrified by what Joe Biden looked like at
44:23
the end of his term, you're not paying attention because who was
44:29
president then wasn't him, right?
44:33
The presidency was divided among a large group of people, and
44:37
that large group of people wanted it to continue.
44:42
How do I know that they didn't invoke the 25th Amendment?
44:46
They could have, but they were more comfortable with the
44:49
situation they had. God help us all.
44:54
That's a good place to end. And, and that you should
44:56
remember, especially on this day, Christmas, this comes out
45:02
on Christmas of all days to be, to be nice.
45:05
And I know your your first motivation is to behave like a
45:08
Grinch, but you should behave like a Grinch after the fact.
45:13
When, when, when his little tiny heart grew so big and he just
45:16
couldn't help but be nice to all the who's in Whoville.
45:19
We should take a moment to thank our listeners for sticking with
45:22
us for all of these years. I think that's right.
45:26
This is our 8th Christmas. 7th Christmas?
45:28
I don't know. And I, you know, I'm a little
45:31
when I watch, I'm a big fan of the news on Saturday Night Live.
45:34
Are you, you ever watch that at the end of the year?
45:37
The two guys who do it, Colin Jost and Michael Che, they write
45:42
each other's jokes and they have to say them out loud no matter
45:47
how offensive they are. I think we should probably have
45:51
an adaptation of this in some meaningful way.
45:54
Yeah, the problem is you, you would win outright.
45:58
Whatever. I don't even have to know what
45:59
you would write. It would not be something I
46:01
could say. Well, it'd be something you
46:04
could say. It's just that, you know, we all
46:06
know I'll get to the gutter faster than you, and there's no
46:08
depth to which I won't sink. And that's what makes it funny.
46:12
That's why Michael Che wins every year.
46:14
This year, as a matter of fact, Michael Che convinced Colin Jost
46:18
that they weren't going to do it this year and then showed up
46:21
with jokes for Colin. Colin had no jokes for him.
46:26
I think the whole thing is kind of designed to make Colin Joes
46:28
the the villain. But you would be the Colin Joes
46:32
here. But, you know, Colin's married
46:35
to Scarlett Johansson, so it's not all bad.
46:39
Merry Christmas, James. Merry.
46:40
Christmas, Aunt, see you next time.
46:43
At Words and Numbers, we spend a lot of time talking about what's
46:46
going on in the economy and the government.
46:48
But fundamentally, all of this boils down to one thing.
46:51
The greatest threat facing modern society is a lack of
46:54
respect, that people who disagree somehow find it
46:57
difficult, if not impossible, to discuss their differences in a
47:01
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47:07
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47:10
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47:13
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