The New York Times
Biden will be the oldest president to take the oath
When Joe Biden takes the oath on Wednesday, he will be the oldest person ever sworn in as president. Biden turned 78 in November. During the campaign, Biden addresses his age in advance in interviews and introduces himself as a ‘transition candidate’ who will help cultivate new democratic talent. “It’s a legitimate question to ask my age,” Biden told The View. “Hopefully I can not just show wisdom and experience with age that things can get much better.” Sign up for The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times Biden took advantage of his age as a strength in the election and, according to two historical experts, fought on two important messages. “The first one: ‘I’m not him, what Trump means,'” Jeffrey A. Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said last week. “The second was, ‘I’m an adult and I’ll be normal again and give a sense of decency and maturity. ” Here’s a look at some of the oldest and youngest presidents taking office. Who were the oldest presidents? Until Biden is sworn in on Wednesday, President Donald Trump will hold the record for the country’s oldest CEO at the inauguration. He was 70 in January 2017, when he became the 45th president. Before him, President Ronald Reagan was the oldest president. He was 69 in 1981 when he was inaugurated for his first term. In a debate with Walter Mondale during his re-election campaign in 1984, Reagan raised the issue of age lightly. “I want you to know that I will not make age a problem of this campaign either,” he said. “I’m not going to exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience for political purposes.” Reagan was 77 after his second term, the oldest president to leave office. More than a century before him, William Henry Harrison had the distinction of being the oldest president at the time, when he was inaugurated in 1841 at the age of 68. Harrison, who contracted a cold that developed into pneumonia, died after 32 days in office. . He became the first president to die in office and has so far served the shortest term in U.S. presidential history. At 96, Jimmy Carter is the oldest living former president. Who were the youngest presidents? Many people may think that John F. Kennedy, who was inaugurated at the age of 43 in 1961, was the youngest president. But the distinction belongs to Theodore Roosevelt, who was 42 in September 1901 when he took over the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley. “I don’t think most Americans have ever seen a moving picture of Teddy Roosevelt, and certainly not while he was president,” Engel said, explaining why people might consider Kennedy the youngest American president. “They do not have a spiritual image of a young man in the White House at that age, while John F. Kennedy is all about the image and gripping images.” Other youth presidents include Ulysses S. Grant, who was 46 when he took office in 1869; Bill Clinton, who was also 46 at his first inauguration, in 1993; and Barack Obama, who was 47 at his first inauguration in 2009. Three of the five youngest presidents were Democrats; Roosevelt and Grant were Republicans. What are the requirements to be president? As prescribed by the U.S. Constitution, the president must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, at least 35 years old, and a 14-year-old resident. According to the Library of Congress, the qualifications for president have not changed since George Washington first took office in 1789. He was sworn in on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, then the capital of the United States. The average age of a president at the inauguration: 55 In a 2011 JAMA article on presidential aging, which Trump did not include, it was noted that the average age of a U.S. president at the inauguration was 55.1 years. . A similar ranking found that presidents are sworn in at an average of 55, according to potus.com, a project Bob Summers created in 1996 as part of a graduate project at the University of Michigan School of Information. “Most people who become president usually have to build a lot of work to prove to voters what they stand for and how they will get things done,” Summers said. “This usually excludes much younger presidents,” he added. “And with the shorter life expectancy in the early days of the US, there were not as many people who would be candidates as older candidates.” How many father and son couples took office? There were two sets of father-and-son presidents, and both were similar in age when they first took office. John Adams was 61 when he became the second president, in 1797. His son John Quincy Adams was sworn in as the sixth president at 57 in 1825. George Bush was 64 at his inauguration in 1989. Twelve years later he watched his eldest son. , George W. Bush, inaugurated at 54. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company