In their collective wisdom, they set minimum ages for elective federal office—25 for the House, 30 for the Senate, and 35 for President.

Because folks didn’t live as long in those days when bleeding was considered a cure for many ailments, the founders did not think to set maximum ages.

As one result, today, there’s one senator being wheeled around at 90. The sitting president, a Democrat who falls frequently, turns 81 this year, wants to stay in office til he’s 86. And his leading White House Republican rival at the moment just turned 77 but often acts much, much younger.

The most senior senator is California’s Dianne Feinstein. She’s so old and frail she has named a daughter guardian to make her legal decisions. Yet, Feinstein still votes (as someone tells her) on new laws affecting healthy Americans now and in future generations.

Of the 10 oldest senators, seven are Democrats.

Then, there’s Joe Biden, who sets a new record for oldest sitting president every day, though nearly half of his days are spent on vacation out of town.

It’s a scary time for many Americans who think about this. Then, there are the emerging details of corruption among members of the Biden family syndicate on a stunning multi-million dollar scale. No wonder Joe Biden says he wants to keep this gig for five more years, and his 72-year-old wife is all for it too.

There are Trump’s serial indictments, all of them unprecedented and some of them legal reaches, designed to soil him during an election year and drain his campaign time and financial resources with legal fees.

The enthusiastic media attention to Trump starves his opponents for oxygen, which makes the race seem all but over, though the GOP convention is still 11 months away this week. That’s dangerous for Trump’s overconfidence, and it’s dangerous for the divided country seeking fresh, likely younger leadership because it denies voters a detailed examination of the entire GOP field.

My advice: Let things play out.

Once, advanced age was a sign of political wisdom. As one example, Dwight Eisenhower, a veteran of two world wars and supreme Allied commander of one, took office at 63. He ended the Korean War and avoided at least two others.

His successor John Kennedy was a Navy lieutenant in World War II. Kennedy was hailed as the exciting, youngest elected president ever at 43. Four months after taking office in 1961, he launched the nation’s nightmarish involvement in Vietnam.

There is no legal or practical way to force these old-timers from office. Even if the barely Republican House voted to impeach Biden, the barely Democrat Senate wouldn’t convict.

Americans could impose term limits on their own if they paid attention and didn’t just vote for the most familiar names. But members of Congress are not going to pass a term-limit constitutional amendment to limit their own employment tenure.

And, let’s be honest, 37 state legislatures would never agree to ratify a national pie these days, let alone congressional term limits.

Then, there’s the question of money. Regular members of Congress make $174,000 a year. Yet somehow, 40 percent of members become millionaires.

The allocation of power in those bodies is based on tenure. Which virtually guarantees an aged membership. The longer you can hang on, the more clout you accrue. It has nothing to do with smarts or skills or production.

The more clout you acquire, the stronger the argument to voters back home that they benefit from additional reelections.

Delaware voters sentenced Joe Biden to ride Amtrak daily for six consecutive six-year terms.

There were ample warning signs about Biden’s deteriorating mental and physical condition during the 2019-20 campaigns. He called persistent questioners rude names. In one town hall, Biden asked Iowans what they thought of Ohio’s aging infrastructure.

He used COVID as an excuse to spend much of the campaign talking from his basement. Remember, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

In late fall of 2020, Biden was wrapping his daily campaign efforts by 10:30 a.m. or so. Now, the short work days in his short work weeks rarely begin before 10:30 and rarely go past 5:00. He’s away by Friday lunch and not back til Monday afternoon.

Polls in 2020 showed a majority of Biden supporters were not choosing him so much as choosing to defeat Donald Trump. Voting against a candidate without thoroughly examining the alternative is a dangerous thing to do. Ask people who endured Jimmy Carter’s malaise years.

Now, Trump says some juvenile things. He punches everything in sight, even when it doesn’t help his cause. His supporters love it, and he loves being cheered.

Some polls now have Trump around 50 percent of self-proclaimed GOP primary voters. His hardcore supporters are maybe 40 percent of his party, enough to win some primaries if sufficient other Republicans split the non-Trump vote.

But his hardcore was not enough last time. With a 66.6 percent voter turnout nationally, Trump got 46.8 percent of the popular vote (to Biden’s 51.3), which only got Trump 232 Electoral Votes.

Four years before, his 46.1 percent of the popular vote trailed Hillary Clinton’s 48.2. But Trump’s came in just the right places to give him 304 Electoral Votes.

Trump says the other 10 significant GOP primary candidates, including Ron DeSantis, should just give up because polls have him far ahead.

This is still early. So much can happen, and usually does. The real 2024 issue now comes down to two questions:

How badly, if at all, will Trump’s indictments and trials hurt him, being set for the most politically damaging times next year?

And how badly will the unfolding Biden payments scandal hurt him, especially if mainstream media continue to minimize scandal details emerging from GOP House investigations?

My concerns are more immediate. We still have 36 percent of Biden’s term to endure. That’s going to seem like every one of its 757,440 minutes.

Biden picked Kamala Harris as his VP because she checked important boxes on his identity politics shopping list. She’s turned out to be so incredibly dumb and ineffective, with lower approvals even than Biden, that she’s become a kind of insurance policy against his impeachment.

I don’t know what they’re pumping into Biden every weekend away. But it’s not working. Look into his eyes. There’s no one home.

He needs staff notes to remind him to say hello in meetings. He calls Harris the president. He falls asleep in meetings with foreign leaders. He’s now using the shorter nose-stairway on Air Force One because there’s less chance of another public splat.

To the thousands of oil and automotive workers endangered by Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, the Democrat suggests only, “Something good will come if you look hard enough.”

All politicians tell lies, or at least stretchers. Biden has refined this to a sick art. Instead of listening to a devastated Gold Star mom’s mourning story about her child killed because of Biden’s bolloxed Afghan exit, he talked about his own son dying in Iraq and coming home in a flag-draped coffin.

Beau Biden died of brain cancer in a Houston hospital suite. That’s stolen valor, plain and simple.

He has trouble reading jumbo-sized teleprompter letters, difficulty with even common names, and frequently goes off-script into nonsense rambles.

He dodges serious media interviewers who might press him on his family’s China payments and personal involvement in son Hunter’s influence-peddling, which he still denies, despite convincing evidence to the contrary.

He boasts about planning to stop all domestic oil and gas drilling, and he claims, falsely, “We passed a $368 billion climate control facility.” What do you think that is?

Last week in an alleged effort to talk about global warming, he sat for an interview with The Weather Channel. Here’s one complete exchange:

Question: Is it the responsibility of the U.S. to protect migrants who might be fleeing extreme weather in their countries?

Biden: We’re replacing every single lead pipe in America!

Scan that again. We’re all dumber now for having read it.

Someday, a local reporter somewhere not from within the collegial cloisters of DC may listen to something like that and say: “Sir, what you just said makes absolutely no sense. Can you please explain yourself or answer the question I asked?”

And Biden will likely attempt escape with his favorite dismissive line, “Anyway…”

RealClearPolitics poll reports now have Biden and Trump running even nationally and the 44-year-old DeSantis only two points behind.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin didn’t start organizing his invasion of Ukraine until Biden’s White House arrival. Watching this ongoing mess surrounding our aged leadership with its glaring signs of weakness, you have to wonder what nation adversaries or terrorist groupings are thinking – or plotting – for these next 76 weeks.