When Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes the oath of workplace on Wednesday, he would be the oldest particular person ever sworn in as president. Mr. Biden turned 78 in November.
Throughout the marketing campaign, Mr. Biden addressed his age head-on in interviews and introduced himself as a “transition candidate” who would assist nurture new Democratic expertise.
“It’s a legit query to ask about my age,” Mr. Biden stated on “The View,” including, “Hopefully, I can exhibit not solely with age has come knowledge and expertise that may make issues rather a lot higher.”
Mr. Biden leveraged his age as a power within the election and campaigned on two key messages, in keeping with one historic knowledgeable.
“The primary one: ‘I’m not him,’ which means Trump,” Jeffrey A. Engel, director of the Heart for Presidential Historical past at Southern Methodist College in Dallas, stated on Wednesday. “The second was, ‘I’m an grownup and I’ll carry again normalcy and I’ll carry again a way of decency and exhibit maturity.’”
Here’s a take a look at among the oldest and youngest presidents to take workplace.
Who had been the oldest presidents?
Till Mr. Biden is sworn in on Wednesday, President Trump holds the document for the nation’s oldest chief government. He was 70 in January 2017, when he turned the forty fifth president.
Earlier than him, President Ronald Reagan was the oldest president. He was 69 in 1981 when he was inaugurated for his first time period.
In a debate with Walter Mondale throughout his 1984 re-election marketing campaign, Mr. Reagan made mild of the difficulty of age.
“I would like you to know that additionally I cannot make age a problem of this marketing campaign,” he stated. “I’m not going to use for political functions my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Mr. Reagan was 77 after his second time period, the oldest president to depart workplace.
Greater than a century earlier than him, William Henry Harrison held the excellence of being the oldest president on the time, when he was inaugurated in 1841 at age 68. Mr. Harrison, who had caught a chilly that developed into pneumonia, died after 32 days in workplace. He turned the primary president to die in workplace and so far, has served the shortest tenure in U.S. presidential historical past.
At 96, Jimmy Carter is the oldest dwelling former president.
Who had been the youngest presidents?
Many individuals might imagine John F. Kennedy, who was inaugurated in 1961 at age 43, was the youngest president. However that distinction belongs to Theodore Roosevelt, who was 42 in September 1901, when he assumed the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley.
“I don’t assume most People have ever seen a shifting image of Teddy Roosevelt and never, definitely, whereas he was president,” Professor Engel stated, explaining why individuals might consider Kennedy because the youngest American president. “They don’t have a psychological picture of a younger man within the White Home at that age, whereas John F. Kennedy was all concerning the picture and shifting pictures.”
Different youthful presidents embrace Ulysses S. Grant, who was 46 when he took workplace in 1869; Invoice Clinton, who was additionally 46 at his first inauguration, in 1993; and Barack Obama, who was 47 at his first inauguration in 2009. Three of the 5 youngest presidents had been Democrats; Roosevelt and Grant had been Republicans.
What are the necessities to be president?
As dictated by the United States Structure, the president have to be a natural-born citizen of the US, a minimum of 35 years previous and a resident of 14 years.
The {qualifications} for president haven’t modified since George Washington first took workplace at 57 in 1789, in keeping with the Library of Congress. He was sworn in on the balcony of Federal Corridor on Wall Avenue in New York Metropolis, then the capital of the US.
The common age of a president at inauguration: 55
A 2011 JAMA article on presidential getting older, which didn’t embrace Mr. Trump, noticed that the typical age of a U.S. president at inauguration was 55.1 years.
The same rating discovered that on common, presidents are sworn in at 55, in keeping with potus.com, a undertaking created by Bob Summers in 1996 as a part of a graduate faculty undertaking on the College of Michigan Faculty of Info.
“Most people that grow to be president normally must construct a physique of labor to show to voters what they stand for and the way they are going to get issues carried out,” Mr. Summers stated.
“That normally precludes a lot youthful presidents,” he added. “And with the shorter life expectations within the early days of the U.S., there weren’t as many individuals who would run as older candidates.”
What number of father-son pairs have taken workplace?
There have been two father-and-son units of presidents, and each had been comparable in age once they every first took workplace.
John Adams was 61 when he turned the second president, in 1797. His son John Quincy Adams was sworn in because 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.
Alain Delaquérière contributed analysis.
