Updated as noted below.
Last week I noted in a blogpost that the United States has had six periods since 1789 in which there were no living ex-presidents, and I noted in my Washington Examiner column that none of Donald Trump’s living predecessors as president supported him in the election.
There’s one more point in this connection I could have made, but didn’t. We have as many living ex-presidents as at any time in our history.
Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are still alive, and four of the five were at the inaugural stand in Washington Friday. (The elder George Bush, after sending a gracious note to the incoming president, watched from a hospital room in Houston.)
There have been three other periods in which we have had five living ex-presidents, but so far as I know there was no occasion on which all five joined in a personal meeting with their successor. The first such period was in 1861, when Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were all alive. As the outgoing president, Buchanan was present for the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, but apparently none of the others was.
Certainly not Tyler, who on Feb. 13, three weeks before the March 4 inauguration, having left the Washington peace conference at which he was a member, served as the presiding member of the Virginia Secession Convention in Richmond. He was a member of the Confederate Congress until his death on Jan. 17, 1862—which ended the ten-month period in which there were five living ex-presidents. Needless to say, he was not a Lincoln supporter. (Footnote: Tyler, born in 1790, has two living grandsons. One of them, Harrison Tyler, born in 1928, owns his grandfather’s old home, Sherwood Forest; I recommend a visit.)
Also not supporting Lincoln: Van Buren, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for president as a Free Soiler in 1848. In 1860, he supported Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas; like Douglas, he supported Lincoln’s efforts to prevent Southern states from seceding.
The same for Fillmore, who had been a Whig when he was president in 1850-53 and was the American (Know-Nothing) Party nominee for president in 1856. Not only did he support Lincoln’s efforts to prevent secession, but he also hosted Lincoln in Buffalo on his train journey to Washington.
Pierce and Buchanan, staunch Democrats whose policies had been attacked by Lincoln, were certainly not Lincoln supporters; Pierce attacked Lincoln’s policies repeatedly, while Buchanan endorsed the Southern Democratic nominee, his Vice President John C. Breckinridge.
The next period of five living ex-presidents was in 1993-94, when Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were all alive. Carter and Bush were present at Clinton’s inauguration; so far as I know (corrections welcome), Nixon, Ford and Reagan watched from their homes in New Jersey and California. At the time, it struck me that it would be historic to hold a dinner or reception at which all six living presidents would be present, and I suggested to White House Social Director Ann Stock that she try to arrange one.
I don’t know if she did, but in retrospect it seems likely that President Reagan (who announced his Alzheimer’s disease in a letter to the nation in November 1994) would not have accepted such an invitation. Nixon’s death on April 22, 1994, reduced the number of living ex-presidents to four and made such a meeting impossible.
The third such period (which—mea culpa—I ignored in the first version of this blogpost) was in 2001-04, when Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton were all alive. No common appearance was possible, because Reagan had already withdrawn from public view. Reagan died on June 5, 2004 and all four surviving ex-presidents attended his state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington.
It seems unlikely today as well. George H.W. Bush was too unwell to attend the inauguration, and it hardly seems likely that Donald Trump, who in his inaugural address as in his campaign styled himself the scourge of the establishment, will stage a party for five ex-presidents, none of whom supported him.
The fact that there were five ex-presidents alive in 1861-62 was largely made possibly by the fact that no one had won a second term in the preceding 25 years. In the 1990s, only one president had served out a full second term in the corresponding period, and of course then there are the advances in longevity — both factors also explain the period during the 2000s. This time, after the nation has just gone through only its second experience with three consecutive eight-year presidencies, longevity is the key.
Will people living today last till the next time there are five living ex-presidents? It seems unlikely, at least for those in their later years. Barack Obama, born in 1961, will likely witness many more inaugurations. It seems unlikely that that will be the case for Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, both born in 1924.
That is one of two years that gave birth to two presidents — the other was 1767, the birth year of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. The year that gave us three presidents is 1946, in which Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump were all born, two months apart, and a little more than nine months after VJ Day.
Clinton and Bush, who came to the presidency at ages 46 and 54, visibly aged under the burdens of the office. Trump, who came to the presidency at age 70, may well in time.
