By Daun van Ee
This year, 2024, is not the first time that a potential candidate’s age has factored into a presidential election. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his memoir Mandate for Change (p. 566), has told of his concern that, if elected in 1952 (as indeed he was), he would be taking office at the age of 62—the fourth oldest man to assume the office up to then. (Of the three older men, two—William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor—had died before their terms were even half over; the third, James Buchanan, had not served a second term.)
In 1955 Ike once more had to deal with time’s inevitable march as his supporters pressured him to run again. Eisenhower, who would soon face the first of two serious first-term illnesses, was reluctant. In a remarkable private letter (August 15, 1955) to his boyhood friend Everett (“Swede”) Hazlett, he candidly explained why. Agreeing with Hazlett that age was “a relative rather than an absolute matter,” Ike nonetheless worried about the possibility of cognitive decline. Normally, he wrote, “the last person to recognize that a man’s mental faculties are fading is the victim himself.” Eisenhower had “seen many a man ‘hang on too long’ under the definite impression that he had a great duty to perform and that no one else could adequately fill his particular position.” With the great burdens of the presidency in mind, Ike concluded: “The more important and demanding the position, the greater the danger in this regard.”
In 1956 however, President Eisenhower eventually allowed himself to be persuaded to run for a second (and, thanks to the recently ratified 22nd Amendment, final) term. After a landslide victory, he began serious discussions about providing for presidential inability or disability, discussions that would ultimately result in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution (ratified in 1967). One question that arose during these early considerations was the identity of the group or individual who would decide whether the president was capable of carrying out or resuming his duties. Eisenhower thought that only the president himself could make that decision, reasoning that if the chief executive “should insist upon retaining his office when he was manifestly incapable of doing so, he would be certain to do things that would expose him to impeachment proceedings” (letter to Milton Katz, April 9, 1957). The 25th Amendment, however, would provide otherwise.
Eisenhower left office in 1961, at the age of 70. He was then the oldest person ever to occupy the White House—a distinction that has since been lost (Presidents Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and Joseph Biden were, and are, older). He had survived three health scares—a heart attack in 1955, ileitis in 1956, and a stroke in 1957—but by most informed accounts suffered no significant diminution or impairment of mental ability.
Dr. Daun van Ee is an historian and editor for the Eisenhower Papers Project at Johns Hopkins University and a Trustee of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Society. The Eisenhower Society is dedicated to promoting the memory and legacy of leadership of Dwight D. Eisenhower through educational programs, scholarships, grants, and special events. Learn more at dwightdeisenhowersociety.org.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Society is dedicated to promoting the memory and legacy of leadership of Dwight D. Eisenhower through educational programs, scholarships, grants, and special events.