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

[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.)