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There would seem to be a special circle in (living) hell
lined up for those who shoot for the biggest job in America--the Presidency--and fail.
While Michael Dukakis, Adlai Stevenson, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, George
McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, Alf Landon and Barry Goldwater (just to name a few
relatively recent examples) all carved exceptional careers in the service of
their nation, each of their legacies carries the hard-to-shake whiff of
loser, based on the varying degrees of stomping that they received at the
hands of their presidential opponents.
When these statesmen’s biographies are written and the historians synopsize
them for popular consumption, it will undoubtedly be their failed campaigns
that top their lists of accomplishments. But despite their dubious lack of
achievement in the most scrutinized contests in America, these recent Presidential losers are actually in pretty good
company, when one takes the long view of electoral history.
Consider the era between Presidents Jefferson and Lincoln, a period when most
casual students of history would be hard pressed to name many of the largely
undistinguished (with the possible exceptions of Andrew Jackson and James K.
Polk) line of Presidents who led their nation on its inexorable march first
to the Pacific, and then to the War Between the States. The three greatest
political minds and forces of that era, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and
Henry Clay, however, meanwhile managed to pull together precisely zero
successful presidential campaigns between them, with Webster losing to Martin
Van Buren in 1836, and Clay falling to John Quincy Adams (in 1824), Jackson
(1832) and Polk (1844).
Calhoun, for his part, managed to be elected as Vice President during
Jackson’s first term, and should have been King Andrew’s heir
apparent--except for the fact that he was unceremoniously dumped as Veep before Jackson’s second term, replaced by Van Buren,
who rode his boss’ coat-tails to his own victory over Webster four years
later. Nevertheless, the legacy of their age was, in large part, shaped more
in Congress by these three Presidential failures than it was by the men who
defeated them for the biggest prize in the land. History has certainly been
kinder to them than it has to Presidents Fillmore, Buchanan, Taylor and
Pierce. And history could have been kinder to Van Buren, too, who could also
be listed as one of the most influential power-brokers and policy makers of
that same era, except for the fact this his Presidency was the most marginal
part of his career--and that’s what tends to be remembered, his other
accomplishments paling in hindsight into insignificance.
In the twentieth century, we have been graced with a series of habitual
presidential losers, largely from outside of the traditional two-party
system. Socialist Norman Thomas ran (and lost) six times, in each campaign
between 1928 and 1948, inclusive. He never captured the big prize, but he did
get to watch Franklin D. Roosevelt implement many of the policies for which
he had advocated during his early campaigns, and his insightful thoughts,
writings and speeches against the Cold War arms race, poverty, racism, the
war in Vietnam and the military-industrial complex in general were often
prescient, and frequently pilfered by major party opponents.
Thomas followed in the oft-defeated footsteps of Eugene V. Debs, the
Socialist Party’s candidate from 1900 to 1912 (inclusive), and again in
1920--when he ran his campaign from his prison cell in Moundsville, West
Virginia, to which he had been convicted for speaking out against American
involvement in the Great War in Europe, in violation of the war-time
espionage law. While Debs never slept in the White House, he was the
lightning rod of the labor movement in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, and is still regarded as one of the most eloquent and
passionate orators of his era.
Third party losing candidates Theodore Roosevelt (1912), Robert LaFollette (1924), Strom Thurmond (1948) and George
Wallace (1968) all merit mention for actually having managed to win electoral
votes, a feat that Debs and Thomas never managed. Roosevelt (already a former
president at the time), the Progressive "Bull Moose" Party
candidate in 1912, actually managed to win more electoral votes than
incumbent William Howard Taft, who rebounded from his humiliation at the
hands of his former mentor (Roosevelt) and Woodrow Wilson (who actually won
the election, in part because of Roosevelt’s maverick campaign) to ultimately
become Chief Justice of the United States--the only man ever to hold both
positions. All things considered, Taft would have been happier to be a
failure in his first campaign as well: "I don’t remember that I was ever
President," he remarked late in his life.
Ross Perot didn’t manage any electoral votes, but he did pull enough popular
votes to materially impact the outcome of the 1992 election, when Bill
Clinton unseated George H.W. Bush. Eight years later, Ralph Nader’s Green campaign sucked enough votes out of the
Democratic side to throw a squeaker of an election towards the Republican
George W. Bush, leaving Al Gore to bear perhaps the heaviest tang of failure
in recent electoral memory, since he actually managed to lose an election
despite getting more popular votes than his foe--making his failure seem more
his own fault than the fault of a superior opponent. Perot and Nader lost like gangbusters, sure, but they made a
difference in tight campaigns, and that difference has helped spark
additional interest in third party candidates and causes--and the impacts
(intended and unintended, good and bad) that they can have on the nation’s
discourse and governance.
Our current President appears to have studied past failed presidential
candidates as well, and taken to heart some of their policy proposals. One
such failed candidate once proposed an amendment to the Constitution that
read: "All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the office of the
President. He shall have power to lay and collect taxes to provide for the
common defense and general welfare of his family and friends. If the country
is in peril for the lack of essential minerals, oil and land necessary for
its citizens, he may encourage incursions into other lands not belonging to
the United States for the procurement of these valuables."
The candidate in question? The late sad sack actor/comedian and The Smothers
Brothers Comedy Hour writer Patrick L. Paulsen, a fringe candidate of the
furriest variety from 1968 to 1996, proving that even the biggest losers
sometime manage to influence the biggest winners--even if no one knows (or
wants to admit) that they’re doing it.
Copyright 2003: J. Eric Smith.
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