Our lost “sure” shot to defeat Bush

Robert Novak informs us of a fascinating piece of presidential trivia, or not so trivia: that “No 20th-century president unopposed for renomination was denied another term.” Novak’s rule is incorrect, however, since Hoover was unopposed for renomination yet lost in the general election. However, it is the case that no twentieth-century incumbent president who was opposed for the nomination of his party was elected to the term he was seeking, as can be seen in the below table:

TR only ran once.
Taft was opposed for renomination (by TR) and lost election.
Wilson was unopposed for renomination and won election.
Harding only ran once.
Coolidge only ran once.
Hoover was unopposed for nomination, but lost election anyway.
FDR was unopposed for renomination three times, won all three re-elections.
Truman was opposed in early primaries, dropped out.
Eisenhower was unopposed for renomination, won re-election.
Kennedy only ran once.
Johnson was opposed for renomination (by Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy), and dropped out.
Nixon was unopposed for renomination (not strictly true—see discussion below) and won re-election.
Ford was opposed for nomination (by Reagan), and lost general election.
Carter was opposed for renomination (by Edward Kennedy), and lost re-election.
Reagan was unopposed for renomination and won re-election.
Bush was opposed for renomination (by Patrick Buchanan), and lost re-election.
Clinton was unopposed for renomination and won re-election.

To the extent that this pattern holds, it would mean that dissidents have the power in their hands to deny re-election to a president of their own party—all they have to do is challenge him for the nomination, and he will either withdraw from the race or be defeated in the general election. It would also mean that we conservatives who oppose George W. Bush have already lost a “sure” shot to topple him. One of us should have run against him in the primaries, but didn’t, and now it’s too late.

Of course, all such historical patterns, no matter how long they last, eventually break down. From 1952 to 1992, as remarkable as this seems, no one was elected to the presidency without having won the New Hampshire primary. Clinton broke the New Hampshire spell, sort of, in 1992, by coming in second but billing himself the Comeback Kid, and G.W. Bush shattered the spell in 2000, losing by a crushing 19 point to McCain in New Hampshire, then going on to win the presidency. From 1840 to 1960, every president elected in a year ending in zero died in office, until lucky Ronald Reagan broke the spell, though an assassin’s bullet came within in inch of taking his life. Historical patterns such as these, as impressive (or as creepy) as they may seem for a while, are of course not based on any law or necessity, and sooner or later they are bypassed by events. Also, the pattern we’re discussing here only means that the incumbent president in order to prevail in the general election must be unopposed for the nomination. It does not mean that the absence of such opposition ensures victory. As already indicated, Hoover was unopposed for renomination, yet lost to Roosevelt. Dubya could be the next Hoover.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 02, 2004 11:09 AM | Send
    

Comments

The GOP thinks all they have to do to win is call Kerry a “Massachusetts Liberal.” The Democrats could counter this by saying, “Bush doesn’t stand for any kind of serious conservatism. His stance is to pander to liberals in a me-too fashion. He’s a phony. We Democrats are authentic in our beliefs. We serve the people who vote for us.” Is Kerry adroit enough to do this?

Posted by: David on February 2, 2004 11:40 AM

I’m confused. “[N]o twentieth-century president who was unopposed for renomination was denied the term he was seeking”? But the list clearly shows that Hoover was unopposed for renomination, yet was denied the second term he was seeking.

Also, the list shows Nixon as unopposed, when in fact he was opposed by both John Ashcroft and Pete McCloskey. (McCloskey actually got one delegate to vote for him at the convention.)

So it’s simply not true that “all they [dissidents] have to do [to beat an incumbent of their own party] is challenge him for the nomination, and he will be defeated in the general election.” In fact, that’s not even what Novak was claiming. He was saying that unopposed incumbents always won re-election, not that opposed incumbents always lost.

Posted by: Seamus on February 2, 2004 12:13 PM

Seamus is correct. I misstated the point both in the first sentence of the article and in the last paragraph, and have now corrected it to say that if the incumbent is challenged, he loses, not that if he is not challenged, he wins. In fact, it was Novak, on whom I was basing myself, who misstated the point, when he wrote: “No 20th-century president unopposed for renomination was denied another term.”

A more serious objection is the fact that Nixon was challenged in 1972, which I (and I guess Novak) had forgotten, yet won the election. I suppose one could argue that the challenges to Nixon were so weak that they don’t really count. Similarly, President Bush had about 13 opponents in the New Hampshire primary this year, but they are not considered serious opponents.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 2, 2004 12:20 PM

>>I suppose one could argue that the challenges to Nixon were so weak that they don’t really count.<<

Obviously, it’s a matter of debate how strong a challenge has to be for it not to be “too weak” to count. Stronger than Ashbrook’s and McCloskey’s, I suppose. (And please let me correct my mis-identification of Rep. Ashbrook as “Ashcroft” in my previous post.) But before we write off the Ashbrook challenge, I would point out that so august a journal as National Review (then a conservative magazine) was, if not an out-and-out supporter of Ashbrook’s candidacy, at least very sympathetic. (NR, Buckley, and other prominent conservative individuals and organizations had “suspended” their support for Richard Nixon the previous September, after Nixon’s imposition of wage and price controls proved the last straw to long-suffering right wingers.) So while others obviously might disagree, I wouldn’t consider Ashbrook so marginal a candidate that he can be disregarded. (And his example certainly shows that, even if conservatives had put forth a serious opposition to GWB in New Hampshire, that would be far from sufficient to deny him re-election.)

Posted by: Seamus on February 2, 2004 3:31 PM

I have nothing against accepting Seamus’s point and acknowledging that the proposed pattern does not exist. But I still have a worm of doubt as to whether a challenger who won no or virtually no delegates counts as a serious enough challenger to count.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 2, 2004 3:46 PM

Minor point: LBJ had decided not to run in 1967, before he had an opponent, because of his heart condition. This is worth noting, perhaps, because the left still imagines it chased him out of office and cannot cease boasting about this — though even if that had been correct, they got Nixon in LBJ’s place, which they complained about ever after!

Posted by: Alan Levine on February 2, 2004 5:55 PM

I’ve never heard before that LBJ had decided in 1967 not to run for re-election. Are we to imagine that he was waiting for the right moment to announce that he was not running, and that this right moment just happened to be right after McCarthy ran very well in New Hampshire and Bobby Kennedy announced his own candidacy? That seems very unlikely.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 2, 2004 9:12 PM

As I remember (though I may be mistaken), Johnson was thinking of not running, he was dispirited and concerned about his health, but he had not definitely made up his mind. It was the McCarthy showing in N.H. and the Kennedy announcement that made up his mind for him.

Here’s a further point that didn’t occur to me before. If Johnson had decided in ‘67 not to run in ‘68, why was he still on the ballot in New Hampshire? Wouldn’t he have declared in ‘67 his intention not to run, so that Humphrey or other candidates would have the time to start up their candidacies? Instead, his surprise resignation announcement hit the country like a shock, and Humphrey had to assemble a presidential campaign very quickly because it was so late. So I think it’s apparent that Johnson did not make up his mind on this until after the N.H. primary.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 3, 2004 1:34 AM

It’s almost enough to make one long for the [not so] good old days of 1971: NR suspends its support of Nixon over wage and price controls. The wage and price controls were bad indeed, but hardly comparable to the treason of the Bush amnesty proposal. What would it take for the NR of today to suspend its support of Bush? I suspect the only thing would be his re-registration as a Democrat. HRS

Posted by: Howard Sutherland on February 3, 2004 8:56 AM

>>If Johnson had decided in ‘67 not to run in ‘68, why was he still on the ballot in New Hampshire? Wouldn’t he have declared in ‘67 his intention not to run, so that Humphrey or other candidates would have the time to start up their candidacies? Instead, his surprise resignation announcement hit the country like a shock, and Humphrey had to assemble a presidential campaign very quickly because it was so late. So I think it’s apparent that Johnson did not make up his mind on this until after the N.H. primary.<<

This reminds me that in several press conferences in late 1967 and early 1968, when reporters asked LBJ when he was going to announce his candidacy for reelection, he always answered that “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” At the time, it just sounded like he was being coy about when he was going to launch his campaign. Now, it looks like he might genuinely have been in doubt as to whether to run again, and his poor showing in New Hampshire helped him make up his mind. That’s a far cry from saying he had positively decided in 1967 not to run again. I don’t recall that even LBJ claimed that. (Although he claimed in his memoirs that he never wanted to run for president at all, that his family pushed him into it in 1960, etc. I think we can give that just as much credence as we do to the suggestion that those TV stations in Texas belonged to Lady Bird and not to him.)

Posted by: Seamus on February 3, 2004 9:20 AM

Ok, then, Seamus and I are in agreement that Johnson withdrew from the race in response to McCarthy’s strong showing in New Hampshire (and maybe also in response to Kennedy’s subsequent announcement of his candidacy). Therefore Johnson fits the pattern I enunciated at the beginning, that no twentieth-century incumbent president who was opposed for the nomination of his party was elected to a new term. Either he stepped aside, like Truman and Johnson, or else he was defeated in the general election.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 3, 2004 9:46 AM

I am sorry about taking so long to respond to the replies about my assertions about Johnson. The latter were based on LBJ’s own statements in his memoirs, supported by the testimony of General Westmoreland and Walt Rostow, both of whom had been informed by LBJ in advance of the public. I would venture to guess that he delayed the announcement because he knew it would make him a known lame duck and reduce his power. I regret raising this point, because I thoroughly agree with Mr. Auster’s point about the general pattern — Presidents challenged in their own party usually do fail. I could not resist pointing out that the left’s claim of “victory” over LBJ was false; and even if it had been correct, it was an empty victory.

Posted by: Alan Levine on February 4, 2004 3:53 PM

“my assertions about Johnson … were based on LBJ’s own statements in his memoirs, supported by the testimony of General Westmoreland and Walt Rostow, both of whom had been informed by LBJ in advance of the public.”

How far in advance? Several months, or a week?

While the truth about the timing of Johnson’s decision is interesting in itself, either way, it doesn’t bear on the thesis. If Johnson did decide to step down in 1967, before the primaries began, then that simply puts him in the category of the presidents who did not seek re-election. If he decided to step down after New Hampshire, it fits the pattern that presidents who are opposed in the primaries don’t get elected to another term.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 4, 2004 4:27 PM

Unfortunately, I do not have the references on hand, but I believe both Rostow and Westmoreland knew of Johnson’s decision in 1967. In any case, the issue does not offer much of an exception to the general pattern. Even had Johnson had been in better health, and obtained renomination, that would have little bearing on the case of Bush! LBJ, for all his tragic blunders, was one of the wiliest, smartest politicos in the United States. The present occupant of the White House is not even in the same league.

Posted by: Alan Levine on February 5, 2004 1:51 PM
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