doug toombs - dot com

There has been a lot of discussion of age during this presidential race, and while I don’t consider myself very political — I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the ages of previous US presidents - all 43 of them - on the day they assumed the oath of office of President of the United States.

Thanks to a lot of help from Wikipedia, I didn’t have to go hunting down every single president’s inauguration date and birth date. And thanks to Excel, I didn’t have to calculate anything either! I simply had Excel determine the number of days between the two dates, and then divided by 365.25 (the .25 is to account for leap-years). Not sure if this is the most accurate approach in the world, but it seems to deliver the results I was looking for. Then, I added in the current four leading candidates - Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee - into the list as well, assuming one of them will be sworn in on January 20th, 2009.

A lot of interesting facts fell out of this simple exercise.  For instance, did you know that Barack Obama, if nominated, would be older on the day he is sworn into office than Bill Clinton was on his first day?  Did you know that John McCain, if nominated and serving a single term, will exit the White House younger than Ronald Regan when his two terms were up?

Where does your favorite candidate fall in this list? Were you surprised by any of the figures here? Tell me in the comments!

The Presidential Candidate Age-O-Meter:

President #	Name	Birthdate	Assumed Office	Age at Presidency
26	Theodore Roosevelt	10/27/1858	09/14/1901	42.88
35	John F. Kennedy	05/29/1917	01/20/1961	43.65
42	William J. Clinton	08/19/1946	01/20/1993	46.42
18	Ulysses S. Grant	04/27/1822	03/04/1869	46.85
	Barack Obama	08/04/1961	01/20/2009	47.46
22	Grover Cleveland	03/18/1837	03/04/1885	47.96
14	Franklin Pierce	11/23/1804	03/04/1853	48.28
20	James A. Garfield	11/19/1831	03/04/1881	49.29
11	James K. Polk	11/02/1795	03/04/1845	49.33
13	Millard Filmore	01/07/1800	07/09/1850	50.5
10	John Tyler	03/29/1790	04/04/1841	51.01
30	Calvin Coolidge	07/04/1872	08/02/1923	51.07
32	Franklin D. Roosevelt	01/30/1882	03/04/1933	51.09
27	William Howard Taft	09/15/1857	03/04/1909	51.46
21	Chester A. Arthur	10/05/1829	09/19/1881	51.96
16	Abraham Lincoln	02/12/1809	03/04/1861	52.05
39	Jimmy Carter	10/01/1924	01/20/1977	52.3
	Mike Huckabee	08/24/1955	01/20/2009	53.41
25	William McKinley	01/29/1843	03/04/1897	54.09
8	Martin Van Buren	12/05/1782	03/04/1837	54.24
19	Rutheford B. Hayes	10/04/1822	03/04/1877	54.41
43	George W. Bush	07/06/1946	01/20/2001	54.54
31	Herbert Hoover	08/10/1874	03/04/1929	54.56
36	Lyndon B. Johnson	08/27/1908	08/22/1963	54.98
29	Warren G. Harding	11/02/1865	03/04/1921	55.33
23	Benjamin Harrison	08/20/1833	03/04/1889	55.54
24	Grover Cleveland	03/18/1837	03/04/1893	55.96
37	Richard Nixon	01/09/1913	01/20/1969	56.03
28	Woodrow Wilson	12/28/1856	03/04/1913	56.18
17	Andrew Johnson	12/29/1808	04/15/1865	56.29
1	George Washington	02/22/1732	04/30/1789	57.19
6	John Quincy Adams	07/11/1767	03/04/1825	57.65
3	Thomas Jefferson	04/13/1743	03/04/1801	57.89
4	James Madison	03/16/1751	03/04/1809	57.97
5	James Monroe	04/28/1758	03/04/1817	58.85
33	Harry S. Truman	05/08/1884	04/12/1945	60.93
38	Gerald Ford	07/14/1913	08/09/1974	61.07
	Hillary Rodham Clinton	10/26/1947	01/20/2009	61.24
2	John Adams	10/30/1735	03/04/1797	61.34
7	Andrew Jackson	03/15/1767	03/04/1829	61.97
34	Dwight D. Eisenhower	10/14/1890	01/20/1953	62.27
12	Zachary Taylor	11/24/1784	03/04/1849	64.27
41	George H. W. Bush	06/12/1924	01/20/1989	64.61
15	James Buchanan	04/26/1791	03/04/1857	65.85
9	William Henry Harrison	02/09/1773	03/04/1841	68.06
40	Ronald Regan	02/06/1911	01/20/1981	69.95
	John McCain	08/29/1936	01/20/2009	72.39