Trivia Questions

[james_davis_nicoll]

What's the average lifespan for Presidents, excluding those who died or were killed in office, as compared to the lifespans of their contemporaries? Do they live longer or does the stress of the job wear them down?

What's the fewest number of former Presidents that have been alive at a given time? If Ford [1] doesn't make it, that leaves us with, hrm, Clinton, Bush and Carter, right?

ObCanCon: Former PMs who could be said to be alive include Chretien, Campbell, Mulroney, Turner and quite possibly Paul Martin. At 76, Turner is the oldest former PM.

1: Rather interestingly for a man who once had his finger on the Button, according to Herman Kahn Ford was one of two people Kahn met in the 1960s who could not grasp the idea of a limited response in the context of nuclear weapons.

Comments

[jkling.livejournal.com]

I think you'd be hard-pressed to come to a meaningful conclusion, though the thesis is interesting. The trouble is that if presidents have different lifespans than their contemporaries, there are too many confounding factors -- first and foresmost social status, which means better healthcare. They're also inherently ambitious and (I suspect) more likely to take care of themselves, get regular exercise, etc. Putting differences down to the stress of office would be overly simplistic, I think.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

To be honest, what made me wonder about how stressful high office is was a single data point I noticed in the 1980s, that Deputy PM Erik Nielsen looked like hell compared to his brother Leslie. Of course, Leslie was (and is) an actor and so presumably had some professional incentive to take care of his looks, while Canadians do not seem to put a particularly high value in attractive politicians, particularly the more powerful ones.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Too bad you can't do a study on Presidents with identical twins.
Coincidentally, I was just wondering yesterday if it would make sense to raise the minimum age for presidency, given the longer average lifespans.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Did age give Reagan a particular edge over Clinton, doing the jobwise?

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

ROFL! Good point.
I think I was just getting annoyed at all these ex-presidents lolly-gagging around.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

You could compare presidents to presidential candidates who didn't win, since they'd tend to be from similar backgrounds. (However, that doesn't tell you anything about the stress of politics in general, just about the President vs. lesser politicians.)

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

The U.S. presidential "before and after" pictures have always been a bit staggering. Seeing how 4 years can age someone...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A lot of that probably is the stress of the job, but I sometimes wonder how much of it is a deliberate change in the president's hair and makeup regimen, as the desired look changes from youthful vigor to elder statesmanship.