How Old Is Joe Biden?

Joe Biden became the first octogenarian president on his last birthday, in November. Age and experience can be useful things up to a point, but the presidency really is too demanding a job for a man his age, let alone one who is — like Biden — in so visible a decline that nobody denies it except for the most dishonest partisans. Whether this will hurt him politically in 2024 is a matter of some debate: Jim Geraghty makes the case today that it will, while noting the continuing absence of a primary challenger; Michael Brendan Dougherty has made the case that Biden’s “obvious frailty — his lack of vigor — is his greatest strength” because it makes him seem less radical and ambitious than his administration’s agenda.

Let’s consider some historical perspective on exactly how long Biden has been around.

One of Queen Victoria’s children was still alive when Joe Biden was born. So was Orville Wright. So was Grover Cleveland’s widow. Martin Luther King Jr. was 13. Elvis was seven. Anne Frank had been in hiding for four months, in a country whose exiled queen had sat on the throne since 1890. Şehzade Mehmed Ertuğrul, who was heir to the throne of the Ottoman Empire when it dissolved, was 30.

More time separates the landing of the Mayflower from the birth of George Washington than separates the death of James Madison from the birth of Joe Biden. A man who was 80 years old when Biden was born would have been born before the Battle of Gettysburg. Biden is older than the NBA, the predecessor of which was founded in 1946. When Biden was born, 125 countries — more or less, depending on how you count — either were not independent or did not exist in their current form. In other words, Joe Biden is older than more than half of the earth’s sovereign nations.

Biden was nine when Elizabeth II became Queen of Great Britain. He was 49 when the Soviet Union dissolved. He went bald while Hirohito was still Emperor of Japan. China’s Qing Dynasty ended in 1912. Puyi, its last emperor, was placed on the throne by Empress Dowager Cixi, who rose to power in the 1860s. Biden was 24 when Puyi died at age 61. Biden was 66 when the last survivor of the Titanic died.

Timmy the tortoise was the mascot of the HMS Queen — the last wooden sailing battleship built by the British Royal Navy in 1839 — when it bombarded Sevastopol during the Crimean War. When Timmy died, Joe Biden was 61.

Biden was alive when the St. Louis Browns won the American League pennant, before the color line was broken. The first African-American player in major-league baseball, Moses Fleetwood Walker, played one season, 1884, for Toledo. He was sabotaged by his team’s star pitcher, the Irish-born Tony Mullane, who crossed up Walker constantly. Mullane, who won 30 games in a season five times between 1882 and 1887, was still alive when Joe Biden was born. So was Mullane’s teammate Bid McPhee, the Hall of Fame second baseman who was the last great defensive star to play baseball without a glove. The year before Biden was born, Kaiser Wilhelm II died; so did Robert Baden-Powell, the Second Boer War veteran who founded the Boy Scouts. The previous year, Leon Trotsky was killed.

Biden was six years old when six Union veterans of the Civil War met in Indianapolis for the last Grand Army of the Republic convention. He was a teenager when the last veteran of the Civil War died.

Biden was eight years old when William Randolph Hearst died. He was eleven when Pop Warner died. He was 14 when Laura Ingalls Wilder died, and 41 when Little House on the Prairie went off the air. Biden was a teenager when Cy Young, Connie Mack, and Honus Wagner died. Connie Mack had teammates who were in the National League when it was founded in 1876. He was a manager by 1894. His grandson retired from the Senate 22 years ago. Cy Young led the National League in wins and ERA in 1892, his third season in the league.

Jerry Lee Lewis’s career was derailed in 1958 by his marriage to a girl who was, at the time, two years younger than Joe Biden.

Joe Biden was 22 when Winston Churchill died. Churchill fought in the Second Boer War, was elected to Parliament while Victoria was Queen, and was in the British Cabinet before World War I. Biden was born before Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, or Jim Morrison, all of whom have been dead for 52 years. He is six years younger than Sandy Koufax, who retired 57 years ago. When Satchel Paige threw his last professional pitches in 1966, most of the batters he faced were 4–5 years younger than Biden. Biden was halfway through his first term as a senator when Agatha Christie published her last Miss Marple novel.

Biden was eleven when color television was first broadcast, and turned 16 before cars were required to have seat belts. He was 23 when the eight-track tape was popularized, 42 when the first Blockbuster Video store opened, 57 for Y2K, and 60 when MySpace was founded.

Biden was elected to the United States Senate the year Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were reelected. Harry Truman was still alive. The Vietnam War was still ongoing. The average price of a gallon of gas in the United States was 36 cents, and you could get a hamburger plus a Coke at McDonald’s for 43 cents. Biden took his seat in the Senate before Roe v. Wade was decided.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was born the year Biden was elected to the Senate; she was 14 when Biden first tried to filibuster a Republican Supreme Court nominee. Among Barrett’s colleagues, Ketanji Brown Jackson was two when Biden was elected to the Senate, Neil Gorsuch was five, and Brett Kavanaugh was seven. Biden was 50 years old when he chaired the hearings to put Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

Paul Ryan had not turned three years old when Biden was sworn in to the Senate. Ryan retired as speaker of the House four years ago. Ron DeSantis was born the year Biden was elected to his second term as a senator. Biden was older when DeSantis played in the Little League World Series than DeSantis will be in 2025.

Jimmy Carter was halfway through his one term as governor of Georgia when Biden entered the Senate, and was little known nationally; three years later, Biden would be the first senator to endorse Carter for president. Gerald Ford was still a congressman. As a senator, Biden voted to confirm Nixon’s appointments of Ford as vice president and Henry Kissinger as secretary of state. He’s a year younger than Dick Cheney, who served as Ford’s White House chief of staff. In 1975, Biden was a senator prominent in the debate over aid to South Vietnam. Where were other future presidents at the time?

Barack Obama was in high school in Hawaii in the years that led up to the fall of Saigon. Donald Trump was still just another no-name real estate developer from Queens. George W. Bush was packing off to Harvard Business School. Bill Clinton was fresh out of law school and teaching in Arkansas. Jimmy Carter was winding down his single term as governor of Georgia, still unknown on the national stage. Ronald Reagan was leaving behind his governorship of California and gearing up for his first serious national campaign.

Biden served with six men in the Senate who were born before 1900. He served with men who were nominated for president in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1984. He served for 31 years alongside a man who ran for president against Truman in 1948. He is four years older than Dan Quayle, who was elected vice president in 1988, and Bill Clinton, who was elected president in 1992. He was 41 when Ronald Reagan was reelected. He was 53 when Time said Bob Dole was too old to be president at 72. Biden is older than four of the five living ex-presidents. He was 66 when George W. Bush left office. He was 77 when John McCain’s mother died.

I’m 51. Biden’s son Hunter is older than I am. Biden was elected to the Senate when I was in diapers. He was running for president when I was a sophomore in high school.

If you turn 76 this year, and you had a child when you were 21, and that child had a child at 21, then you are five years younger than Biden but have a grandchild the same age as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who will be old enough to be president by Election Day 2024. That’s right: Joe Biden is literally old enough to be the president’s grandfather.