Good luck, Mr. President.
As we continue the journey towards Election Day, we also continue our look at the data and statistics from nearly 225 years of Presidential history in order to compare the Presidents and Vice Presidents with each other and see where Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would fit in if they happened to win in November.
Today, we look at the Presidents and Vice Presidents organized by their age upon taking office. In most instances, this reflects their age on Inauguration Day when they proudly stood in front of the nation and their fellow Americans and took the oath of office. However, some instances reflect more somber, tragic moments when a Vice President was required to fulfill his Constitutional responsibilities and assume the Presidency upon the assassination, sudden natural death, and, in one case, resignation of the elected leader.
PRESIDENTS: AGE AT INAUGURATION
We look first at the ages of our Presidents, from oldest-to-youngest, on the day that they assumed office. The oldest President, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated just 17 days short of his 70th birthday and was nearly 78 years old when he left office in 1989. He fared much better than the second oldest, William Henry Harrison, who was 68 on Inauguration Day 1841 and dead one month later. The youngest President ever was Theodore Roosevelt, who assumed office upon President McKinley’s assassination and wasn’t elected in his own right until 1904. The youngest person to be ELECTED President was John F. Kennedy.
Age | President | (Term as President)
69 years, 349 days: Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
68 years, 23 days: William Henry Harrison (1841)
65 years, 315 days: James Buchanan (1857-1861)
64 years, 223 days: George H.W. Bush (1989-1993)
64 years, 100 days: Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
62 years, 98 days: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
61 years, 354 days: Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
61 years, 125 days: John Adams (1797-1801)
61 years, 26 days: Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
60 years, 339 days: Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
58 years, 310 days: James Monroe (1817-1825)
57 years, 353 days: James Madison (1809-1817)
57 years, 325 days: Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)
57 years, 236 days: John Quincy Adams (1825-1829)
57 years, 67 days: George Washington (1789-1797)
56 years, 223 days: George H.W. Bush (1981-1989)
56 years, 107 days: Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)
56 years, 65 days: Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
56 years, 11 days: Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
55 years, 351 days: Grover Cleveland-2nd term (1893-1897)
55 years, 196 days: Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
55 years, 122 days: Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
55 years, 87 days: Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)
54 years, 206 days: Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
54 years, 198 days: George W. Bush (2001-2009)
54 years, 151 days: Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
54 years, 89 days: Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)
54 years, 34 days: William McKinley (1897-1901)
52 years, 253 days: Jefferson Davis (1861-1865) [Confederate President]
52 years, 111 days: Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
52 years, 20 days: Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)
51 years, 350 days: Chester Alan Arthur (1881-1885)
51 years, 170 days: William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
51 years, 33 days: Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)
51 years, 30 days: Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
51 years, 8 days: John Tyler (1841-1845)
50 years, 184 days: Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)
49 years, 304 days: James Garfield (1881)
49 years, 122 days: James K. Polk (1845-1849)
48 years, 101 days: Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)
47 years, 351 days: Grover Cleveland-1st term (1885-1889)
47 years, 169 days: Barack Obama (2009- )
46 years, 311 days: Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
46 years, 149 days: Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
43 years, 236 days: John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
42 years, 322 days: Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
2012 NOTE: If elected, Mitt Romney will be 65 years, 314 days old on Inauguration Day (January 20, 2013). Somewhat surprisingly, that would actually make Romney the 4th OLDEST President in American history. In fact, he’d very nearly be among the top three oldest Presidents since Romney would be just one day younger than the third oldest President, James Buchanan, was when he was inaugurated in 1857.
VICE PRESIDENTS: AGE AT INAUGURATION
The Vice Presidency seems to favor youth more than the Presidency. Including Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens, we have had 13 Vice Presidents under the age of 50, including the youngest person ever elected to national office, 36-year-old John C. Breckinridge, as well as Richard Nixon, who was elected VP before his 40th birthday. Yet the oldest man elected to national office (outside of Reagan’s second term) was 71-year-old Vice President Alben W. Barkley, and the two longest-living men ever elected to national office were Vice President John Nance Garner (died two weeks shy of his 99th birthday) and Vice President Levi P. Morton (died on his 96th birthday). Also, despite the Vice Presidency’s youthful history, a whopping SEVEN Vice Presidents have died in office — all of natural causes.
Age | Vice President | (Term as Vice President)
71 years, 57 days: Alben William Barkley (1949-1953)
69 years, 38 days: Charles Curtis (1929-1933)
68 years, 230 days: Elbridge Gerry (1813-1814)
66 years, 331 days: William Rufus DeVane King (1853)
66 years, 165 days: Nelson Rockefeller (1974-1977)
66 years, 61 days: Joe Biden (2009- )
65 years, 221 days: George Clinton (1805-1812)
65 years, 178 days: Thomas Andrews Hendricks (1885)
64 years, 292 days: Levi P. Morton (1889-1893)
64 years, 102 days: John Nance Garner (1933-1941)
61 years, 16 days: Henry Wilson (1873-1875)
60 years, 257 days: Harry S. Truman (1945)
60 years, 145 days: Gerald Ford (1973-1974)
59 years, 356 days: Dick Cheney (2001-2009)
59 years, 189 days: Charles Gates Dawes (1925-1929)
58 years, 355 days: Thomas Riley Marshall (1913-1921)
57 years, 247 days: William Almon Wheeler (1877-1881)
57 years, 132 days: Adlai E. Stevenson (1893-1897)
56 years, 138 days: Richard Mentor Johnson (1837-1841)
56 years, 65 days: Andrew Johnson (1865)
53 years, 325 days: Thomas Jefferson (1797-1801)
53 years, 238 days: Hubert H. Humphrey (1965-1969)
53 years, 173 days: John Adams (1789-1797)
53 years, 131 days: James Schoolcraft Sherman (1909-1912)
52 years, 297 days: Charles Warren Fairbanks (1905-1909)
52 years, 274 days: Garret A. Hobart (1897-1899)
52 years, 237 days: George Mifflin Dallas (1845-1849)
52 years, 146 days: Lyndon B. Johnson (1961-1963)
52 years, 105 days: Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945)
51 years, 189 days: Hannibal Hamlin (1861-1865)
51 years, 72 days: Spiro Agnew (1969-1974)
50 years, 340 days: John Tyler (1841)
50 years, 150 days: Chester Alan Arthur (1881)
50 years, 89 days: Martin Van Buren (1833-1837)
49 years, 56 days: Millard Fillmore (1849-1850)
49 years, 15 days: Walter Mondale (1977-1981)
49 years, 0 days: Alexander Hamilton Stephens (1861-1865) [Confederate VP]
48 years, 243 days: Calvin Coolidge (1921-1923)
45 years, 346 days: Schuyler Colfax (1869-1873)
45 years, 26 days: Aaron Burr (1801-1805)
44 years, 295 days: Al Gore (1993-2001)
42 years, 351 days: John C. Calhoun (1825-1832)
42 years, 256 days: Daniel D. Tompkins (1817-1825)
42 years, 128 days: Theodore Roosevelt (1901)
41 years, 351 days: Dan Quayle (1989-1993)
40 years, 11 days: Richard Nixon (1953-1961)
36 years, 42 days: John C. Breckinridge (1857-1861)
2012 NOTE: If elected, Paul Ryan will be 42 years, 356 days old on Inauguration Day (January 20, 2013), which is nine days before his 43rd birthday. That would make Ryan the 7th youngest Vice President in American history — a few days older than John C. Calhoun, but nearly a year younger than Al Gore.
March 4, 1865
All dreaded it
All sought to avert it
Both parties deprecated war
One would make war
Rather than let the nation survive
One would accept war
Rather than let it perish
And the war came
Neither party anticipated
That the cause of the conflict might cease
With or even before
The conflict itself should cease
Both read the same Bible
Pray to the same God
His aid against the other
It may seem strange
That any men should dare to ask
A just God’s assistance
In wringing their bread from the sweat
Of other men’s faces
Let us judge not
That we be not judged
Woe unto the world because of offenses!
For it must needs be that offenses come
Woe to that man by whom the offense cometh
American slavery is one of the offenses
Which must needs come
Fondly do we hope
Fervently do we pray
That this mighty scourge of war
May speedily pass away
If two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil
Shall be sunk
Until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
Shall be paid
By another drawn with the sword
It must be said:
The judgments are true and righteous
With malice toward none
With charity for all
With firmness in the right
As God gives us to see the right
Let us strive
Finish the work we are in
Let us strive
Bind up the nation’s wounds
Let us strive
Care for him who born the battle
For his widow
For his orphan
Let us strive to do all
Let us strive to achieve
Let us cherish
A just and lasting peace
Among ourselves and with all nations.
Best moment? I don’t know if I can narrow it down to one best moment. Because of the emotionally-charged atmosphere after 9/11, there will always be something immensely powerful about President Bush on top of the rubble at Ground Zero speaking through a megaphone after the rescue workers said “We can’t hear you!” and the President said “Well, I can hear you! And the people who knocked down these towers will hear from ALL of us soon!”, followed by the “USA! USA!” chant. Another great (somewhat related) moment was when President Bush threw out the first pitch of the World Series at Yankee Stadium a few weeks after 9/11 and fired a perfect strike despite the fact that he was wearing a bulletproof vest (and despite the pressure that Derek Jeter put on him by saying “Don’t bounce it. They’ll boo you.”)
Those two examples, of course, are just symbolic things, but they were very powerful in the wake of 9/11.
What I find to be the best about our Presidents and Presidency, though, is that on Inauguration Day, we always have a smooth, peaceful transition. It’s a very remarkable thing that we almost take for granted. Yet, every four or eight years, a new President takes over and, no matter how nasty the campaign might have been, there is never a hitch in the proceedings. The peaceful transition between Presidential Administrations is constantly extraordinary.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the last President to be inaugurated on March 4th as his first Inauguration (pictured above in 1933) was the final March 4th inaugural before the Constitution switched the date of the President’s installation to January 20th.
March 4th was the official Presidential Inauguration Day from 1793 until 1937, but the very first Presidential Inauguration actually took place on a different date. George Washington became the first President on April 30, 1789 when he was administered the oath of office by the Chancellor of New York, Robert R. Livingston, on the balcony of Federal Hall in the then-capital of the United States, New York City.
Congress passed legislation in 1792 which made March 4th Inauguration Day (a change which was officially codified in the Constitution in 1804 when the Twelfth Amendment was ratified). When President Washington took the oath of office for a second time in 1793, it was on this new date and in the nation’s new capital — Philadelphia.
The Constitution’s Twentieth Amendment, ratified after FDR took his first oath of office in 1933, changed Inauguration Day once again — this time to January 20th (in 1937 FDR became the first President sworn in on January 20th). Some people have mistakenly claimed that Inauguration Day was changed due to the bitterly cold weather that sometimes affected the March ceremonies. This argument, however, doesn’t make much sense as Washington, D.C. (which became the permanent national capital in 1800) is just as frigid, if not more so, in January as it is in March. If it good weather was the goal, George Washington’s initial Inauguration Day of April 30th would have been a better choice. Then again, if good weather was the goal, a better national capital would have been Miami.
But the reason for the change of date was not weather — it was time. Inauguration Day was moved from March to January to shorten the interval between a President’s election and his installation in office. Election Day is and always has been in November, and things move much more quickly today than they did in the time of Washington. Now, it doesn’t take nearly as long for votes to be counted, the Electoral College to meet, the winning candidate to be officially notified, and the President-elect to travel from his home to the national capital.
For decades, one of the biggest reasons for the long interval between election and inauguration was preparation time for the President-elect’s frequently lengthy and sometimes difficult trip from their home to Washington. Today, the President-elect can make it to Washington from anywhere in the country in just a few hours and his interval between election and inauguration is used to build his staff, select his Cabinet, and work with the outgoing Administration on transition.
No matter what the date of Inauguration Day is — whether it’s March 4th or January 20th — almost everyone agrees on one thing: it’s usually too damn cold.
As you might have seen elsewhere today, this is the 50th Anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration.
January 20th has been the date of the quadrennial Presidential inauguration, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second Inauguration on January 20, 1937. Previously, the Presidential Inauguration Day was March 4th. George Washington’s first Inauguration, however, was on April 30, 1789.
In an odd, personal coincidence — your humble author of all the posts on Dead Presidents (that would be me) — was born on January 20th. Technically, I wasn’t born on Inauguration Day as 1980 featured no transition or renewal of a Presidential term. However, I was born during a Super Bowl, so that’s pretty cool.