Joe Biden and the Age-Old Question

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When it comes to President Joe Biden, no one can seem to resist making jokes about his age, including the man himself.

“I believe in the First Amendment,” Biden told the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday. “Not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.”

James Madison was, of course, born in 1751—almost (but not quite) two centuries before the current president. But the quip got me thinking about how old Biden is in relative terms. At 78, he was already the oldest president at the start of his term. The record had been held by his predecessor, Donald Trump, who was 70 when he assumed office in 2017. Biden formally announced his plan to run for re-election on April 25, four days before the correspondents’ dinner. If that effort succeeds, he’ll be 82 when his term starts and 86 at its end.

When Madison became the nation’s fourth president in 1809, he was just 57. Bizarrely, however, Madison was by one measure considerably older than Biden when he took the hot seat: compared with the life expectancy of his contemporaries.

Someone born in Colonial America in the 18th century had a life expectancy of just 28—skewed heavily, of course, by the fact that so many people died in infancy. When Madison took office, he was already more than twice as old as most of those born the same year. He was, in relative terms, much older than Biden, who is just 15 years older than the average life expectancy of his year group.

Now don’t get me wrong, that’s still a meaningful difference. Perhaps by nature of the job requirements, presidents have consistently been more senior than their contemporaries’ life expectancy: a median of 9.4 years older. It’s only in the past three decades that the commander-in-chief has skewed younger than the average. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were all younger than 55 when they first took office, when those born the same time as them could expect to live to between 65 and 70.

In US politics, the boomer generation continues to wield the greatest influence in elected office. Much has been said and written about 89-year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein’s prolonged absence with a bout of shingles and its impact on the Democratic Party’s legislative agenda. (Technically, Feinstein isn’t a boomer; she was born in 1933 and part of the Silent Generation. But close enough.)

More than half of all House members were born before 1965, as were almost three-quarters of senators, according to a Pew Research study published in January. The median incumbent Republican House member is 59, with the Democrat equivalent 61. Compare that with France’s lower house, the Assemblee Nationale, where members have an average age of 49, and Germany’s Bundestag, where they’re a sprightly 47. American politicians are old!

There are plenty of theories behind this US gerontocracy: Almost two-thirds of all registered voters are over 45; the fundraising requirements of the US system make it harder for younger (aspiring) politicians to compete; and in parliamentary democracies the parties tend to pick their leaders, making them more likely to choose someone with youthful appeal.

The key question, of course, is the extent to which voters care. About half of Democrats in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published last week said Biden is too old to run, while only 35% of Republicans said Trump, the current front-runner for the nomination, is too old. He would be 78 on Inauguration Day. Even so, the same poll found that Biden led Trump 43% to 38% among registered voters, as well as leading among independents. Biden’s lead over the 44-year-old Ron DeSantis is yet wider.

If the numbers are to be believed, they suggest that pundits’ obsession with Biden’s age is overplayed. In short, time may not ultimately tell. Alex Webb, correspondent for Bloomberg Quicktake

Lonely at the Top

The difficulty in achieving anything close to gender parity on Wall Street, particularly in leadership roles, is nothing new, but a new story by Reade Pickert examines the lack of women as primary dealers. To wit:

Among the nearly two dozen financial institutions designated by the Federal Reserve as primary dealers and that employ a chief US economist or equivalent, only Morgan Stanley currently has a woman, Ellen Zentner, in that job. Eighteen months ago, at least three women held such roles.

Why does this matter? Pickert again:

Primary dealers have prestige among financial firms, because they help the Fed implement monetary policy… The result is a shortfall of women in a position crucial to setting market expectations ahead of key economic reports, steering discourse on subjects such as inflation and the labor market, and ultimately shaping investors’ and the public’s views on the path of the US economy.

A bank’s chief US economist not only needs a deep understanding of the economy but must also play a high-profile role representing the institution with clients and polishing its image through media interviews and public-speaking engagements.

Clearly, we all lose out when only one gender gets into a role with so much influence. But how to improve the pipeline of future primary dealers? It’s going to be tricky. Read the whole piece to find out why high-profile jobs (“greedy” jobs, in the parlance of economist Claudia Goldin) are such a tough sell for potential applicants who happen to be female.

Private space travel has been with us for many decades, but there’s more competition now to set foot where that giant leap for mankind once took place. Yes, the moon.

In a new story by Bruce Einhorn, Businessweektakes a look at what’s happening on that big block of cheese. Who is trying to travel?

A spacecraft from Israel Aerospace Industries and the nonprofit SpaceIL crashed on the surface in 2019, and a lander from Japan’s Ispace Inc. suffered a similar fate in April. Later this year, two American companies, Astrobotic Technology Inc. of Pittsburgh and Intuitive Machines Inc. of Houston, each aim to give it a go.

Why do people want to go there?

Such private moon missions herald a new era of space activity, with various companies laying plans for what has long been the stuff of science fiction—growing crops in lunar greenhouses, mapping terrain with drones or extracting minerals from moondust. “We need strong commercial players” going to the moon, says Jonathan Geifman, chief executive officer of Helios Project Ltd., an Israeli startup that has signed up for a scheduled Ispace lunar landing in 2025 to test technology designed to produce oxygen and metals on the moon. “This is the beginning of a very long road.”

All of potential moon traffic brings up a key question: Who sets the rules of exploration? There’s a treaty from 1960, but as a patchwork of private and public space entities has grown, it’s not clear who will be enforcing or creating laws. Because people don’t just want to go to the moon to look around; there’s money in that moondust. —Reyhan Harmanci, Businessweek

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