Biden dogged by old-age question

Both the President and Trump are dominant frontrunners for the 2024 Election, but is either one the true William Henry Harrison of our times? Plus: where else can you hear `Tippecanoe & Tyler Too'?

What’s in a number?

When it comes to the advanced ages of the two front-runners for the 2024 Presidential election, Americans generally have provided an answer: quite a bit.

A Monmouth University poll released on Monday revealed 76% of voters regard Joe Biden as too old to effectively serve a second term. Predictably, that’s the view of 90% of Republicans, though it’s a sentiment expressed by 56% of Democrats too.

By contrast, 48% of voters—and just 23% of GOP voters—see Donald Trump, only three and a half years younger than Biden, as similarly age-impaired.

As the last election cycle demonstrated, a lot can change in the year preceding a Presidential election (looking at you, COVID-19 pandemic). Therefore, it’s quite conceivable that in 13 months we won’t have a 78-year-old ex-President with a busy criminal court schedule and a nearly 82-year-old incumbent squaring off.

Meantime, questions are sure to escalate over their respective ages and the effect—whether perceived or actual—that their senior citizen status has on their capabilities.

At minimum, it’s an easy way for those favoring younger candidates—or those younger candidates themselves, like Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley—to take a jab at those who are longer in the tooth.

Haley has called for a mental competency test for politicians 75 and older, a proposal that Trump backed.

We’ve seen other instances where national political leaders are reinforcing viewpoints that they are not cognitively fit to remain in office. On the Republican side, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 81, has “frozen” in mid-sentence twice publicly in recent months.

Here was the first time, in late July:

The second time he froze after a reporter asked him about whether he planned to run for re-election as his party’s Senate leader in a little over a year. I’m not sure if that’s fitting or ironic.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, California Senator Dianne Feinstein was demonstrating memory lapses and other serious mental acuity deficits before she passed away a little over a week ago at the age of 90.

McConnell and Feinstein are outliers, age-wise, but not by very much. By nearly a decade, Senators (median age of 65) skew older than those serving in Congress, as this Axios graphic shows:

My take: Whether in the political arena or other walks of life, it’s easy to pick on older people for their “senior moments,” while overlooking the wisdom and experience that they also bring to bear on day-to-day matters.

As for the likelihood of a mental competency test for Presidential candidates being implemented, it’s the same as that of a maturity test being administered to the rest of Capitol Hill politicians—zilch.

In the end, voters are the ones who should decide an incumbent’s or challenger’s fate each time their names appear on a ballot. And collectively we aren’t getting any younger, either.

Our Nation’s Eldest (& Shortest-Lived) President for 140 Years

The whole hubbub has me thinking about our nation’s longest-running senior statesman among Presidents. That would be William Henry Harrison, our ninth President, pictured below.

For 140 years, until 69-year-old Ronald Reagan was elected to the first of his two four-year terms, Harrison was the most senior of our nation’s chief executives.

But I believe, when adjusting for the various eras of our nation’s 234-year Presidential history, Harrison should still be regarded as the eldest.

A bit of context helps make the point.

In 1980, Reagan was 2.3 times the median age in the U.S. (30) when he defeated incumbent (56-year-old) Democrat Jimmy Carter in a landslide.

By contrast, when Harrison was elected in 1840 at the age of 67.7, he was nearly quadruple the median age of an American (17.8). Viewed another way, he was almost precisely 50 years older than that statistically average-aged American.

Today’s median age is 39. Let’s set aside the notion of quadrupling (to roughly 150 years old), since that seems a bit unfair. But even applying the half-century gap from the above 1840 equation, that would mean an 89-year-old today might be a fair counterpart to Harrison in his day.

Well, Harrison in his 31 days, is more like it.

That’s the length of time he was President, from March 4th to April 4th. It marks the shortest span for any President in U.S. history, as he succumbed to either pneumonia or enteric fever.

OK, we can’t end on such a bleak note.

He was a war hero, too, which was instrumental in his being elected President in the first place. Specifically, he was the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, in Indiana, which gave rise to the Whig Party campaign song.

Those lyrics are below, from an October 20, 1840 edition of the Urbana (Ohio) Citizen & Gazette. Scroll further down to enjoy a quirky rendition of the song by They Might Be Giants.