Interesting fact I noticed: If Biden is to take the presidency after the Electoral Collage voted that would make him the oldest president to take office yet, also interesting that wikipedia already marked Biden as president-elect [0].
It would also make him the only person from the Silent Generation [0] to ever be elected President of the United States. As Biden is at the very youngest end of the generation, he will likely remain the only one.
Edit: Silents were born 1925-1942. Just thought I should mention it here so you don't have to click the link. Biden was born in November 1942, so he's just before the cutoff.
It's chilling how nobody born between 1924 and 1942 (or 1946 if Biden doesn't count yet) became the President or even tbe candidate of any major political party during a US election.
Maybe people who grew up during the Great Depression had less opportunities? Or maybe baby boomers born right after the war overcame the silent generation in influence by numbers.
I think part of it was also how long the G.I. Generation stuck around. At the time when you'd expect to start seeing Silent presidents, Reagan won election as the then-oldest person to have ever been elected president and was popular enough he had two terms and got his VP elected afterwards. If Reagan's first term had flopped (or maybe even if he'd never run at all, though that's really speculative), we would've gotten President Mondale in 1984. Or we might have seen a Silent as early as 1980 if Ted Kennedy won his primary challenge.
I think we're starting to see a similar phenomenon with Generation X being pushed out by long-lived Boomers and even a couple of Silents, but at least we had Obama (born 1961, so he barely counts) in between Boomers.
With that said, it's not for lack of trying that we haven't had a Silent president. Aside from the aforementioned Mondale and Kennedy's attempt, we've also had Michael Dukakis and John McCain as major-party nominees, the only third-party candidate who had a chance in Ross Perot, plus Bernie Sanders was a major contender and runner-up for the Democratic nomination twice.
> also interesting that wikipedia already marked Biden as president-elect
It has long been standard to refer to candidates as President-Elect once one the results of the election of electors is reasonably clear. One might argue that it is not technically accurate until after the Congress tallies the votes of the Electoral College and announces the result of that tally, but it is the long accepted usage and the use of it to refer to Biden at this point is in no way noteworthy or a deviation from what long-established practice.
Futher, Donald Trump's wikipedia page is currently fully-locked, a rare classification for a wikipedia page. Biden is currently only under extended-confirmed protection.
Of course this is necessary but one of my favorite pasttimes is to look at vandalism changes in the history, and I would have loved to see some of the stuff people came up with on either side.
If you look at the protection log and follow the links, the request which led to that full protection is interesting: "Temporary full protection: The article is going crazy with everyone trying to add their version to the lead. There is so much edit conflicting it took me eight tries to bring the article back to a neutral version. Would anyone consider a few hours of full protection to let things calm down?"
This is actually, in any jurisdiction, what I take the most issues with: presidential systems headed by practically very soon-to-be-dead men. I have changed with age; surely the flexibility, inventiveness, and power an individual can constructively wield on his own is highly impacteded by age. Half-dead men should retire, not take office, or consult, at the utmost.
This fact is more illustrative of whatever divide the US is under than anything else. It's generational conflict. And face it, the American president is not of any generation that has yet to build their future. A waxy president who is full of thought and reflection might not be the wise emperor who is still mighty enough to control the backstabbing theatre that is politics.
Effectively, in terms of foreign policy, I think nothing, absolutely nothing will change. From a non-American point of view, Trump did nothing too different from what Clinton would have done, and a Biden will not do something too different from what a Trump would do. Or do what he is told, for that matter.
Undoubtedly a significant consideration for VP choice (Harris in this case) is the statistical likelihood that a 78-82 year old might pass away from natural causes some time in the next four years.
Three US presidents born in a 4 month period in 1946.
[edit] - You have to be 35 or older to be president, which for people born in 1946 would be 1981. Clinton was president for 8 years, Bush for 8, Trump for 4, so 20. For the majority of the time since people born in 1946 were eligible to be president, they have been.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...