Will VP Biden Retire In 2012?

The Obama-Biden administration has been in power for nine days already, so you'd figure it's time to start thinking about 2012. Well, maybe not for everyone, but certainly for Noemi Levine of Berkeley, Calif., who asks this question:

Do you think Vice President Joe Biden will retire after his first term, giving another Democrat a foot in the door to run for president in 2016? Otherwise the Democrats will be in the same predicament the Republicans were in this go-round, and are sure to fall on their faces when Obama leaves after two terms to take up his seat in the Senate again.

Biden will be 70 years old in 2012, hardly an age where an incumbent vice president might think of retiring. As for the Democrats being without an heir apparent in '16 -- as what befell the Republicans last year -- that's less of a concern than what the state of the union will be by then. With or without a president-in-waiting, Democrats will have no shortage of candidates ready to succeed Obama, should he be re-elected in 2012. And, in case you are wondering, Hillary Clinton will be only 69 in 2016.

And speaking of Biden's age, there's this question from Ron Merlo of Glendale, Calif.:

Except for Alben Barkley, who was 71 on Inauguration Day, how would Biden's age compare with other vice presidents?

Only five were older. Barkley, as you correctly note, was 71. Charles Curtis, VP under Herbert Hoover, was 69 years old when he took office in 1929. Elbridge Gerry, the fifth vice president who served under James Madison, was 68 (and died in office a year and a half later). William King (VP under Franklin Pierce) was 66 years and 11 months old when he became vice president; he died of tuberculosis 45 days after he was sworn in. Nelson Rockefeller, appointed vice president by Gerald Ford, was 66 years and five months. Biden was 66 years and two months old at his swearing in last week.

Staying on the Biden theme, Jean Seibel of Bellevue, Neb., wants to know why his oath -- that of the vice president -- was different from Obama's.

I don't know the answer to that, though while the 35-word oath for the president is in the Constitution, there is no mention of a VP oath. Biden's oath was the same one he took as senator, so I suspect the reason for that is, as president of the Senate, the vice president was seen as more like a senator than as the chief executive. Anyone have a more coherent answer?

And then there was this from Mark Curley of New York:

Joe Biden and Dick Cheney both come from states with three electoral votes. Has it ever happened that two successive vice presidents came from such electorally insignificant states? And, since Sarah Palin also comes from a state with only three electoral votes, I wonder if the two major parties have ever nominated two VP candidates from such small states.

Never before have there been back-to-back vice presidents from states with so few (three!) electoral votes. And never before has an election featured VP candidates from such electorally deficient states. In the old days, of course, many running mates were chosen because of their hoped-for ability to bring along their vote-rich home states.

And yes, I made a mistake in yesterday's posting about the four new appointed senators in Delaware, Colorado, Illinois and New York. I wrote that in Delaware, Ted Kaufman was chosen to fill "the last two years of the term vacated" by Biden. Not so, correctly notes Des O'Dwyer from Roscommon, Ireland:

In fact, Joe Biden got re-elected to a full six-year term last year, but Kaufman can only do two years before a special election is called. He's not filling the last two years; he's filling the first two years of Biden's latest term!

Yesterday's trivia question during the Political Junkie segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation was, with the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday, what former player on a Super Bowl team later ran for Congress. The answer was Phil McConkey of the New York Giants, who sought a New Jersey congressional seat in 1990 but was defeated in the Republican primary by Dick Zimmer.

Evan Balkan of Lutherville, Md., thinks we're mistaken:

Today's quiz answer was incorrect (I'm fairly certain anyway). Peter Boulware, a linebacker on the Baltimore Ravens' 2001 winning Super Bowl squad, ran for and was subsequently appointed to a House seat in Florida this past November.

That is not correct. Boulware ran for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives, not Congress. Last year, he was the GOP nominee for the state House seat. After he lost -- narrowly -- he was appointed to the state Board of Education by Gov. Charlie Crist.

But Mason Macklem of Halifax, Nova Scotia (one of those pesky Canadian provinces) correctly takes issue with my assertion that J.C. Watts, the former Oklahoma GOP congressman, never played pro football:

Watts had a short (1981-1986) but moderately successful professional career in the Canadian Football League, playing for the Ottawa Rough Riders, and was even the MVP of the Grey Cup (the equivalent of the Super Bowl in the CFL) in his rookie season.