By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
Clinton in 1991.
The 42nd president of the United States just turned 80 this past week, and you have to be pretty long in the tooth yourself to remember how very young Bill Clinton seemed when he first ran for the White House in 1992. He was objectively pretty young, actually; 46 when he took his first oath of office, he was the third-youngest president in U.S. history. But beyond the biological facts, his campaign relentlessly promoted the idea of party and national reform and renovation, a theme of youthful vigor reinforced by Clinton’s very unconventional choice of 44-year-old Al Gore as his running mate against 68-year-old George H.W. Bush. One campaign poster at the time showed Clinton and Gore together over the caption “Young Guys. Great Hair.” (This was before Gore began losing his hair and Clinton’s turned prematurely grey).
