Would you vote for a thirteen-year-old presidential candidate with a genius IQ, and a perfect track record, who is better than the other candidates?

Hell no. A teenager, especially one that young lacks a number of things:

• Personal stability
• Perspective
• An intuitive grasp of human nature and how people respond
• Social skills
• Vast amount of knowledge that simply cannot be acquired, much less fluidly accessible within that time frame

The personal stability one is huge. This is a kid who may have to deal with feelings for members of the opposite sex for the first time, deal with their first breakups, deal with issues with their parents, who will still have to deal with peer pressure, with changing views on a vast range of topics and political choices, on what matters in life, etc. Many to most of these during his or her presidency.

Not to mention the actual incredibly stressful and complex job of being the POTUS, and all the pressures and constraints unique to that position, only made more acute by their age.

That's an insane recipe for disaster, regardless of their IQ, which at that age is essentially just untapped potential.

Although I think 35 is a bit of an arbitrary age, it does a good job of ensuring a significant degree of personal and emotional stability, a good degree of perspective, of providing some level of understanding how people interact, and provides plenty of time to develop deep knowledge of the political process if one is so inclined.

I wouldn't lower it even to say 20 if I could.

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I'll just add to this that I think at 16 I thought I could be a decent POTUS, as did one of my brothers and at least one other friend around that age.

None of us knew shit.

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