Joe Biden Becomes the First President to Turn 81 Years Old While in Office
Eighty-one is a perfectly fine number.
It’s a classic number for NFL receivers to wear, it’s a solid test score (out of a 100), and 1981 was a vastly underrated year for films (“Raiders of the Lost Ark” and a slew of classic sequels — “Superman II,” “Halloween II,” and “Friday the 13th: Part 2” — all dropped that year.)
It is also the age at which most people have long begun slowing down, and that’s not a pejorative. That’s just a simple statement of fact.
That’s notable because President Joe Biden turns 81 today — officially making him the oldest president to ever occupy the Oval Office.
Of course, it’s also worth pointing out that Biden has actually set this record several times over, when he became the first sitting U.S. president to be 78-, 79-, and 80-years-old, respectively.
Axios helpfully listed out the top five oldest presidents in history and it paints a dire picture that many Americans seem to be underestimating.
The fifth-oldest president in history, Andrew Jackson, left office at 69.
The fourth-oldest president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was 70 when he left office.
The three oldest presidents in history, however, are quite the noteworthy — and relatively recent — trio.
Former President Donald Trump is the third-oldest president, having left the White House at 74.
Beloved Republican icon Ronald Reagan, the second-oldest president, left the Oval Office at 77.
Biden, now 81, clears Reagan’s record by a full four years — and that’s just right now.
If Biden were to win re-election — a difficult but hardly impossible task for the octogenarian — he would be 82 during inauguration and, stunningly, 86-years-old at the end of a second full-term.
Eighty-six! That’s nearly 10 years older than Reagan was when he left office.
This is literally unprecedented territory in American politics and history — and Americans seem a tad bit too nonchalant about that fact.
Here are some tips for octogenarians, not presented by a partisan GOP outfit looking to diminish Biden, but presented by Kaiser Permanente, and see if you notice anything peculiar about these tips (don’t worry, this writer will spell it out for you.)
Hilariously, the first thing Kaiser recommends is for octogenarians to “avoid falls,” and well… everyone is already painfully aware of Biden’s ongoing struggles with staying upright.
Even ignoring Biden’s policies, the continuing physical mishaps of the president are becoming less and less funny as it becomes more and more likely that he will be a bona fide general election candidate.
Kaiser adds that 80-year-olds should “socialize” and “stay active.”
Well, as far as socializing goes, Biden is often treated more like a week-old piece of chicken in Tupperware than a human being by his handlers.
And as far as staying active? Well, if Biden’s beach-going activities or bicycling skills are anything to go by, it’s doubtful he’s particularly active.
Look, Biden is struggling to show signs of being a healthy 80-year-old at the very front end of this decade — there’s simply no way that another four years of White House trials and tribulations are going to help.
That alone should give any prospective Biden voters cause to pause, given the general direction that time moves in.
There’s an old math joke about how “men lie, women lie, but numbers don’t.”
Your mileage may vary on those first two points, but numbers really do struggle to lie, and the numbers are literally telling Biden, voters and America at large that this country has never had a president this old — for better and, far more likely, for worse.
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