Why a President Joe Biden might end up bolder than his 2 younger Democratic predecessors

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

published 19 August 2020

The president sworn in next January will be the oldest in U.S. history to take the oath of office, whether it's Joe Biden becoming the 46th president at age 78 or President Trump starting a second term, age 74. When Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972, former President Bill Clinton — born in 1946, the same year as Trump and former President George W. Bush, boomers all — "was a law student running George McGovern's campaign in Texas," David Maraniss notes at The Washington Post. Former President Barack Obama, a de facto Gen Xer born in 1961, was an 11-year-old fifth grader.

Biden, a pre-boomer, "has been around national politics for 48 years, more than either Clinton or Obama had lived when they entered the White House," Maraniss says, but he has "somehow outlasted them into the virtual age," gunning for the top job a generation after Clinton retired. "The situation is striking for more than chronological unlikeliness," he muses:

Timing is everything in politics, and as both the first and last of the three to be in the electoral game, Biden finds himself now perhaps the freest of them all, unloosed by demographics, ideological shifts in both parties, and the spectacle of Donald Trump to make bolder choices than Clinton or Obama. It was in part because of voter exhaustion with the Clintons and a backlash against the Obamas that the metaphorical bridge eventually led to Biden, in many ways a safe and conventional everyman. But although Biden faces skepticism from the Democratic Party's left about whether he will be too accommodating, the conditions for an activist presidency are apparent. This is both despite and because of the dual crises of a pandemic and economic collapse he would face should he become president, and also because he is unlikely to be weighed down by reelection concerns, part of the calculation for Clinton and Obama. [The Washington Post]

Expectations are pretty low for a Biden presidency, according to a recent Pew poll, and most of his voters seem motivated mainly by their dislike of Trump.

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The soft burden of low expectations may help Biden as much as it hurts him, but it may also end up being misplaced. Read more at The Washington Post.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.