President Biden Turns 80, Making Him the First Octogenarian in the Oval Office
Vice President Joe Biden is the oldest man to serve as president at the time of the inauguration of every incoming president in the history of the United States and the longest-serving vice president in history.
That makes him one of the longest-serving vice presidents in history among the more than 230 vice presidents who served at least four years in the White House.
The Associated Press reports that while Biden will likely be the first octogenarian to serve as president in the Oval Office, as long as the term is a few months long, he certainly won’t be the last.
He’ll be the oldest vice president to serve in the White House when President Barack Obama is sworn in on Jan. 20.
“The term I’ll be doing is, ‘Mr. President, how the hell are you?’” Biden told The Washington Post in March. “I’m not here as some kind of a father figure or whatever. This job is something that is new to me. I’m here to be the president of the United States and run the government the way the president runs the government.”
When Barack Obama took office in 2009, his two predecessors in the White House were both 77 when they were sworn in, and neither had served as president before. Yet both, at that point, were still very much in charge. Biden was the vice president of the United States, and Obama was the president of the United States.
Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He had never served in the Senate before, and when he took his seat, he had no one to take him under his wing or give him advice on how to advance his administration. He had the full support of the Democratic Party and the power of his own presidency, but he still
