Joe Biden and the revenge of the septuagenarians

In January 2021, an incoming President Biden would be the same age as our oldest president (Ronald Reagan) was at the end of his second term. To be sure, people are living longer these days, and given the baseline, Biden’s mental capacity is not likely to be noticeably reduced by that time. But the two most recent “popular former vice presidents” who ran for the White House—Richard Nixon, who was 55 in 1968, and Walter Mondale, 56 in 1984—were practically a generation younger than Biden will be four years hence.

In the Age of Trump, none of this suggests that a Biden candidacy is unlikely or even implausible since, as Roberts reminds us, voters “don’t really care about conventional wisdom anymore.” Yet even as Biden, who clearly regrets last year’s decision not to run, sends the customary smoke signals into the air—a memoir about to be published, a fundraising PAC (American Possibilities), even academic sinecures (the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, a Biden Institute at the University of Delaware)—the only surprise is that Biden’s inability to withdraw from the limelight is also the only sign of life in current Democratic ranks.