Vice President Kamala Harris’ pick of Tim Walz as her running mate makes history in a most unusual way: There’s virtually no history between them. And by that I mean actual history. Both were born in the same calendar year, 1964. Harris was born on October 20th, Walz on April 6th, making him 198 days her elder.
Such a calendric pairing is so rare it’s happened only once before in the White House, with Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin in 1860, and once more with the losing ticket of Henry Clay and Nathan Sanford in 1824. (Lincoln and his second vice president, Andrew Johnson, were born in different years but only 42 days apart.)
Large gaps in age are far more common–usually in the other direction. Sarah Palin was 28 years younger than John McCain, the second-largest age gap behind James Buchanan and John Breckinridge; Dan Quayle was 23 years younger than George W. Bush, the same as Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower as well as Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney.
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The year that Harris and Walz were born may be even more telling: 1964 was the last year of the Baby Boom and something of a highwater mark for Democrats in postwar Washington, DC. The year began with Martin Luther King, Jr. as TIME’s Man of the Year for the prior calendar year and ended with Lyndon Johnson earning the same accolade. In between, Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act and held all three branches of government in the election. The year became the subject of Theodore White’s modern classic, The Making of the President 1964.
Nineteen Sixty-Four was also a watershed for popular culture and arguably the kickoff of the 1960s youth boom: The Beatles arrived to their screaming fans at JFK Airport on February 7, 1964, and made their earth-shattering debut on The Ed Sullivan Show two days later. Bob Dylan released his album The Times They Are a-Changin the following day, February 10; The Rolling Stones made their first U.S. tour that summer.
Landmark TV shows that began in 1964 include Bewitched and Gilligan’s Island. Disney’s Mary Poppins made its debut in 1964, as did Goldfinger. And speaking of Democrats, Barbra Streisand’s star-making turn in Funny Girl opened on March 26, 1964.
The numerological convergence of 1964 is heightened by one more detail: Harris’ husband and potential first First Dude, Douglas Emhoff, was born on October 13, 1964. And had his wife not chosen their fellow birth-year candidate Walz as her running mate, she could have gone with the country’s most popular Democrat, Michelle Obama.
She was born on January 17, 1964.
Bruce Feiler is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast. He’s the author Life Is in the Transitions and Secrets of Happy Families and writes the popular newsletter, The Nonlinear Life.
