President-elect Joe Biden celebrates his 78th birthday Friday.
On Jan. 20, Biden will become the oldest person ever to serve as president. The previous holder of that record, Ronald Reagan, did not turn 78 until after he left office. President Trump would have also turned 78 at the end of a second term.
When Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born on this day in 1942, World War II raged. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his third term as president, with one more still to go. Errol Flynn was a Hollywood heartthrob. Bambi was a brand new film released that year. Big-band leader Glenn Miller was the top recording artist in the country, with the swing era in full swing, and two years away from his disappearance.
The Biden family left his oft-mentioned hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, for Delaware, the state he would go on to represent in the Senate for 36 years, while Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. The Hudson Hornet was the most popular automobile. Biden’s father would become a used car salesman.
Even events that occurred well after his birth are either hard for most people to remember or way beyond the scope of their memory.
Biden graduated from high school in 1961, over two years before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, while Ed Sullivan was still on television and Gunsmoke and Bonanza were among the top-rated shows. Reagan was still a registered Democrat. Johnny Carson remained a year away from hosting The Tonight Show.
Biden married his first wife, who later died in a tragic car crash, in 1966. Andy Griffith was still in Mayberry. Lyndon Johnson was the president, having just advanced the Great Society. Bob Dylan had just gone electric. The Beatles performed their final U.S. concert tour, and the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds.
In 1968, Biden graduated from law school. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. There were riots in the streets, including at that year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Elvis Presley made a comeback. The Monkees’ television show was canceled. The Vietnam war divided the country.
Biden won his first elected office in 1969, the same year The Brady Bunch debuted. Led Zeppelin released their second album. The Who recorded their rock opera Tommy. Richard Nixon was sworn in as the president. Fox News host Tucker Carlson was born. Barbara Streisand won an Academy Award for her role in Funny Girl.
Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972. Nixon was reelected as president and called Biden a “damn good young candidate.” It was a year after Frank Sinatra retired and a year before he came out of retirement. Sanford and Son, M*A*S*H*, and The Waltons all made their television debut. All in the Family was in its second season.
Biden first served in the Senate minority in 1981. Reagan was president, and Democrats wondered if the former actor and California governor was up to the job at age 70. The Porky’s film series began. Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” and Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” were on the charts. Democrats would regain the Senate majority in the 1986 midterm elections, making Biden chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987. From that perch, he helped defeat the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork and oversaw contentious hearings for Clarence Thomas.
That same year, Biden began 33 years of intermittent presidential campaigns. He sought the Democratic nomination for the 1988, 2008, and 2020 cycles. But he did not actually make it to the first votes in 1988. He dropped out after charges of plagiarism and embellishment of his resume in September 1987, not long after Michael Jackson’s album Bad was first released and while the Soviet Union was still intact. Biden ended his second presidential campaign in 2008 after a disappointing showing in Iowa, where he took just 0.9% as Barack Obama won.
Obama chose Biden as his running mate, and the longtime Delaware senator served two terms as vice president. Biden then won the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. His main competition was Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, age 78.
As president, Biden would turn 80 shortly after the 2022 midterm elections. If reelected, he would turn 82 before being sworn in for a second term.
