Analysis | Biden has spent more time running for president than almost anyone

This is true no matter how you slice it and what significance you ascribe to it. But it’s especially true when you focus on high-profile candidates. Biden has already done it longer than almost any serious candidate in history, and if all goes according to plan, he could set and extend a record that will be tough to match.

Biden’s four runs are fewer than perennial candidates such as Harold Stassen (10 campaigns) and Lyndon LaRouche (eight). Among more serious candidates, Henry Clay ran five times in the 1800s, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan each ran four times. (Others such as William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Richard M. Nixon and George H.W. Bush ran three times each.)

But because primaries are longer affairs these days — nominations used to just be handled at party conventions, and primary campaigns until recently began late in the off-year, at the earliest — the amount of real time on the campaign trial is a different story.

Even upon launching his 2024 campaign, Biden had already campaigned for president for more than 1,000 days — 1,002, to be exact. That accounts for nearly three out of his 80 years.

Were he to make it to the general election and run a full campaign, that number would rise to more than 1,560 days, or 4¼ years spent running for president.

Biden currently comes up just shy of Reagan’s 1,018 days during the 1968, 1976, 1980 and 1984 campaigns. Reagan’s campaigns generally began late in the off-year, and his 1968 campaign was a brief, convention-only affair.

Nixon ran three ample campaigns in 1960, 1968 and 1972, but his successful ones in 1968 and 1972 began in the election year itself. (That means they were shorter even than Biden’s 2008 run, which began in January 2007 and ended after a poor showing in the first contest — in Iowa in January 2008.)

Of course, as that 2008 campaign goes, it’s not as if all of Biden’s experience has been particularly encouraging. His 1988 campaign ended late in 1987 due to a series of problems including plagiarism allegations. His 2008 campaign ended after he took less than 1 percent in Iowa.

Others have also won nominations more than he ever will, even if he nabs the 2024 nod. That includes FDR (four), Clay, Bryan and Nixon (three each).

This is to a large degree a function of how modern campaigns are run.

But it’s certainly a commentary on our time that our oldest president might soon have spent 1 out of every 11 days that he was eligible to be president running for that job.