Mental Competence Tests?
Terry H. Schwadron
Feb. 20, 2023
We should give announced Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley a gold star for cleverness.
Her call, however symbolic, for mental competency testing for any presidential candidate over age 75 has people talking — and advancing her name and her status as a distinctly younger candidate than Donald Trump or Joe Biden, about whom polls are drawing comments that both are “too old” to run again.
Though the idea, which is several steps short of an efficacious proposal, appeals at once to those who feel our society should be picking leaders who are not in their last years, it raises a variety of legal, moral, political, and common-sense questions.
That the idea is “ageist” is without question. We all age differently, and some 80-year-olds are both sprier and wiser than some who are decades younger. The idea of a competency test is as lacking in legal terms as any top age limit since the Constitution’s meager eligibility requirement just outlines a minimum age and American birth.
Setting all that aside, the question of whether our presidential candidates should indeed have to persuade voters that they can handle the complexities of the demands of running the country doesn’t sound all that crazy.
Indeed, given the number of truly incompetent statements and deeds coming from across our political world, the real question might be why all candidates don’t have to show that they are mentally competent. Why limit this to electable candidates rather extending the idea of competence to judges, transportation secretaries and police officers?
In fact, why stop at “mental competence”? Maybe they should be able to show that they can distinguish fact from opinion or political expediency, recognize and be able to explain democracy in something more than a slogan, or be able to tell the truth about their background, the source of their campaign funds and whether they would, say, make up an entire fictitious campaign resume?
Whose Mental Competence?
Why not implement mandatory testing for lawmakers to check for alcoholism, gambling, or sex addictions, asks a headline in Slate.com. How does a rule about testing those over 75 stop a Rep. George Santos (R-New York) from having to face up to daily disclosures about something else that he has invented about who he is or how he came up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to run? Where was the objective test for Republican Senate candidate Hershel Walker’s denials about domestic abuse or the “mental competency” of Republican House members who voted to overturn the very election results that put them in office?
Where is the competence standard for Justice Clarence Thomas sitting in judgment of political matters in which his wife, Ginni Thomas, is heavily invested.
Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador, and South Carolina governor may be seeking out a political “lane” to follow the challenge Trump, her former boss, and to ride the currently popular notion that Biden is too old and frail to deserve reelection. But her idea here is under-done, maybe even half-baked in common parlance. What’s the test, who gives it, what do we do with the results, how do we evaluate them, and why are they age-limited?
It is difficult to hear that younger politicians are assumed to be mentally competent even if they identify Jewish space lasers as the cause for igniting California forest fires or disdain metal detectors outside congressional doors because they must be always armed or insist on deciding what books should be read by Americans.
Experts in aging who talked with Slate note that mental competency tests are not necessarily a useful tool to assess a person’s leadership ability.
We don’t even know what test to use. Donald Trump thought he “aced” a difficult mental assessment test when he memorized seven words that he could repeat on command. Trump was not 75 when he suggested that people inject bleach to ward off covid or that Vladimir Putin was more trustworthy a source for the nation than U.S. intelligence. That test hardly seems a guide for whether one can sift through the effects of a military decision affecting international survival, economic transitions, the effects on domestic policies and the like.
Some cognitive tests take five minutes, others take hours. Age may be a factor in concentration, but so might a lot of other things. Tests can measure memory, personality, the ability to manipulate information, speech, visual spatial skills and more — but are unlikely to measure leadership skills or trust. Slate’s experts were clear in saying that designating age 75 in Haley’s example is arbitrary and not based on science.
Are Tests Best?
Somehow, aren’t campaigns themselves meant to try to get at competency and leadership? Isn’t this why politicians spend two years selling themselves to the public in hopes of showing that they can take in information, speak, and lead? Isn’t it the voter who decides this rather than a test score?
This week, we’re hearing reports that Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) took himself to the hospital to deal with depression following his stroke last year. Politicos have seen both political weakness and moral fortitude in his recognition of a need for mental health treatment. But is anyone suggesting that he can’t understand the issues coming before him?
I’m in the same age group, probably too old for some and just fine for others in my circles, but not a candidate for office. I have other things to do and think about.
There is something here about a lost value of looking to our elders for guidance, a human habit that for centuries and over global societies seemed universal. Instead, we Americans are stuck in our television advertising mode in which we overly credit youthfulness with good feeling about our leaders. We liked John F. Kennedy, regardless of his specific politics, we admired Ronald Reagan’s outdoorsy self, we watched George Bush cut brush, Barack Obama play basketball and Donald Trump golf in the name of looking active.
We want to like the appearance of our leadership, quite apart from how they govern.
There is little about Biden’s specific age that has decided the policies he has promoted in government. There is a lot about Biden’s age that has guided the image he presents, his care in walking, his choices in speech. “Malarkey” utterances are from some other era, and his stutter adjustments are lifelong. But those have not proved questions of mental competence in leading an international alliance over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or over dealings with Congress about infrastructure and spending.
In fact, Biden had a full medical review this last week — not including mental competency testing. According to what was released, he’s good to go in his job.
But there are no promises for four years from now.
We just don’t like old. In pursuit of leaders whom we want to recognize as energetic, we don’t like fat either, or too often traits that get associated with gender, orientation, race, or other nonsensical distinctions.
We should remind Haley that we are individuals. Competence is a good goal for selecting politicians. Pushing half-finished ideas about testing is not a good sign of her policy-making skill, but rather of her desire to sell a television image of herself.
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