Happy 80th, Senator!

Time to go. We’ve always had a minimum age to serve in Congress. How about a max?

- By Jack Holmes

When Senator Chuck Grassley first got into politics, Ike Eisenhower was president of the United States. It was 1959, the same year the first transcontinental commercial flight made it from Los Angeles to New York's Idlewild Airport, later to be renamed in honor of John F. Kennedy. Late in the year, IBM introduced the 7090, a milestone computer model that relied on "transistors, not vacuum tubes." Grassley served in the Iowa House, then served three terms in the U.S. House. He's now in his seventh term in the Senate.

And he announced last September, a week after his 88th birthday, that he's running again. That will make him 95 years old at the end of his next term. Simply put, this is too damn old to be doing this job. It's too old to be doing just about any job.

The FAA mandates that pilots retire at 65. Their colleagues in air-traffic control are out at 56, though they can get exceptions to work until they're 61. Most police departments show employees the door in their 60s. At white-shoe law firms, partners are often pointed to the exit sign by age 68. Foreign-service employees at the State Department are out at 65. Mandatory retirements are mostly verboten in the United States. But there are some professions with such intense physical and mental demands, that require such high-stakes decision-making and mental acuity, that we've decided they're just different.

There's been a minimum age limit to hold various federal offices for centuries. For the House of Representatives, it's 25. For the Senate, it's 30. For the presidency, it's 35. This doesn't mean that no one under age 25 could ever serve competently in the House, or that everyone over 25 belongs there. After all, the current age requirement failed to keep out Madison Cawthorn, now 27.