 |
| Sen-Elect Mitt Romney (R-UT) |
Arguably the best trivia moment of Romney's win is that he is the first person since Sam Houston, the famed military leader, to be a governor of one state and a senator from another state; Romney served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007 and is now Utah's senator, while Houston served as governor of both Tennessee & Texas, as a senator from Texas, and as a congressman from Tennessee (he also, unlike Romney, served as president, in this case of the Republic of Texas). The only other person in American history to do both is William Bibb, a largely now-forgotten politician from the early 19th century who is most-noted as Alabama's first governor, but also served in the House and Senate from Georgia. But what I want to focus on today is Romney's status as a failed presidential candidate, a slightly less exclusive club than "men who have served in the Senate from one state and governor from another," but one with a bit more data to compare Romney's run for the Senate against.
Since the Election of 1824, the election that started the two-party system, 43 men and 1 woman have gotten "second place" in the electoral college, and therefore lost the presidency (four of those people got "first place" in the popular vote & therefore were the first choice of the country, but that's a gripe for a different day). It's a pretty select list of individuals who were near giants of their era, people who came so close to glory but never got there, and Romney is one of them. All of these 44 people had to get past an enormous number of hurdles to even get to the point to lose the White House, that I wondered what most of them did with the rest of their lives. Below you will find what happened to the 44 presidential candidates after losing the White House, and how Romney's decision to run for the Senate is odd, but not so odd when you look at 200 years of presidential losers.
 |
| Sec. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) |
Until the retirement of Sen. Orrin Hatch, Romney appeared likely to join the presidential candidates' most common post-loss activity: just fading into history. Of the 44 individuals who lost the White House, 17 of them never again held political office. One of them, Horace Greeley, didn't have much of a choice as he died before the next inauguration. Others, like Samuel Tilden, Benjamin Harrison, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter were courted to make a comeback and run for the presidency again, but declined, instead choosing a life of retirement. It's worth noting for this column that many of these people remained active as local powerbrokers and statesmen. Carter, for example, arguably had the most successful period of his public life after serving as president, with his work for Habitat for Humanity and with the Carter Institute. It's also worth noting that of these 17, six of them are still alive (Carter, Michael Dukakis, George HW Bush, Bob Dole, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton), so there's always a chance that they change their mind and throw their hat into the ring, but only Gore or Clinton are even under 80, and it's doubtful they will join Romney in making a political comeback.
 |
| Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes |
Only one failed "second place" candidate for the White House went on to join the highest court in the land: Charles Evans Hughes. Few American politicians have as storied of careers as Hughes does without also having the line "President of the United States" on his resumé, and one of the oddities of Hughes' career is that he gave up a seat on the Supreme Court to run for the White House, lost the White House, and then was returned to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice years later by President Hoover. Despite being 68 when he was appointed (something we would never see in the era of "make a lasting imprint on the Court for decades"), Hughes served as Chief Justice for 11 years, throughout all of the first two terms of President Roosevelt's time in office.
No other second place finisher has ever been put on the Supreme Court, though it's worth adding the caveat that a third place finisher, President Taft, did make it to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice after being appointed early during the Harding administration. Taft is the only person who has ever served as president and as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
 |
| Sec. John Kerry (D-MA) |
Though private citizen is by-far the most common post-presidential election career path after losing the White House, the second most common is a tie between the next two spots on this list. Nine former presidential candidates have served in future administrations in varying capacities, something Romney considered when he publicly courted being Secretary of State for President Trump. Secretary of State is, in fact, the most common position that a man who came so close to the White House was willing to accept-five men have done so. Lewis Cass, James Blaine, William Jennings Bryan, Charles Evans Hughes, and John Kerry all followed their losses with service in the next administration of their party as Secretary of State. It's hard to tell how many of these men envisioned the position of Secretary of State (historically a very strong spot to launch a bid for the presidency from), as a stepping stone back toward the White House, but I suspect at least a few had such aspirations. In recent years, a common post-loss career path would be as an ambassador of sorts. Adlai Stevenson served as UN Ambassador for Presidents Kennedy & Johnson. George McGovern also served as a UN Ambassador under the Clinton and Bush administrations, and Walter Mondale was Ambassador to Japan (a position frequently filled by "political celebrities" as Tom Foley, Mike Mansfield, and Caroline Kennedy also had this job at some point) for President Clinton.
The most notorious losing presidential candidate, though, would surely be John Breckenridge, who did in fact serve in a presidential cabinet after his loss to Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but the presidential cabinet for Jefferson Davis. After being expelled from the Senate for joining the Confederate Army, he served as a military leader for the South, eventually rising to the position of Secretary of War for Davis. It's worth noting in a war that pitted "brother against brother," that Breckenridge's cousin Mary happened to be the wife of President Abraham Lincoln.
 |
| Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN) |
We now move into those people who decided to stay on the ballot after losing their election, ten of whom didn't even want to leave DC-those who ran for Congress after their time in office. This is of course what Romney did, though his return is unusual compared to the majority of these men, as the bulk of them were already sitting members of Congress, so they simply ran for reelection in order to stay in Congress. Romney is, in fact, the only former presidential candidate to start a congressional career after losing the White House (Romney ran for the Senate in 1994, but lost that bid to Ted Kennedy). Sens. Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, John Kerry, and John McCain all ran for at least one term in office post their losses for the White House, in the case of Goldwater he served the bulk of his career after his 1964 loss. Hubert Humphrey and Lewis Cass both had served in the Senate prior to their runs for president, and then returned quickly after to that body. Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams are unusual in that they had congressional careers prior to their losses, but both men chose to serve in a different branch of Congress after being denied the White House. Clay went from being Speaker of the House to serving multiple abbreviated terms in the United States Senate, while Adams had served for five years in the Senate before his presidency and then spent the vast majority of his time in elected office post-presidency in the United States House of Representatives, frequently as a foil to his nemesis President Jackson.
It has to be noted that Walter Mondale tried to be on this list, but failed. Mondale, a Minnesota Senator from 1964-1976 before becoming Vice President and then failing to win the White House in 1984, was a substitute candidate for the Senate in 2002 after the death of Paul Wellstone. Mondale lost that bid (which would have put him among these men, even though Mondale didn't actively pursue the office in the same way), and as a result became the first (and to date, only) person to have lost an election in all fifty states.
 |
| Gov. George McClellan (D-NJ) |
Three men decided to stick to the ballot box, but didn't want to pursue time in DC post their runs for the White House. Unlike the Senate, here it appears to be unusual for you to be running as an incumbent and continue on-only Thomas Dewey ran for his (at the time current) office of Governor of New York again after losing the presidential election of 1944. John Fremont and George McClellan, both major figures in the Civil War, both became governors after their runs for the White House. Fremont eventually became the Governor of the Arizona Territory, while McClellan toward the end of his life served as Governor of New Jersey. And like Mondale above, we also have a man who couldn't win the office even after being the presidential nominee for his party. Richard Nixon, after his election in 1960, ran for Governor of California in 1962 but lost to Pat Brown. This is the source of the famed phrase "you want have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore," not as it is frequently attributed to his failed run against John F. Kennedy.
 |
| Sec. William Jennings Bryan (D-NE) |
It has to be assumed that all of the candidates who lost their bid for the White House eventually explored another run for the office, even if it was just mumbling to themselves over a glass of whiskey at the end of the day in the comfort of their living room. Some even speculated publicly about another run (Romney did this in 2016, and I'm guessing Hillary Clinton will do this at least to test the waters before deciding against it in the coming months). However, by my count only nine actually ran for the office again...and still couldn't sink the basket. Since the modern primary system is very different from the backroom choices of previous generations, it's hard to tell who did this unsuccessfully even in the primaries, but it seems like four couldn't even get the nomination again. Al Smith tried again for the nomination in 1932, but lost it to his arch-rival Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Wendell Wilkie made an ill-informed campaign in 1944 after losing in 1940 (Wilkie probably could have gotten the nomination that year, but seemed to be a bad campaigner). Hubert Humphrey ran what he hoped to be a coronation run in 1972, but couldn't get past the insurgent George McGovern, who in turn made a half-hearted attempt to win the nomination in 1984.
It's easier to find the five men who did get nominated again but weren't successful. Martin van Buren lost reelection in 1840, then lost his party's nomination in 1844, and then again ran for president under the Free Soil party's nomination in 1848 but got third place in a contest against the victorious Zachary Taylor and Lewis Cass. Thomas Dewey followed his 1944 defeat (closer than history remembers it) with a stunning defeat in 1948 against Harry Truman, eliciting one of the most famous photos in American politics. And Adlai Stevenson ran against Ike Eisenhower twice in 1952 and 1956 as the Democratic nominee, losing both times by a pretty robust margin.
Finally, there's the cases of Henry Clay and William Jennings Bryan. Clay received second place in 1832, but at that point he had already run for president in 1824 (getting third and striking up a deal that would doom the presidency of John Quincy Adams by basically cheating Andrew Jackson out of the White House...an act Jackson would get revenge on both of them for by defeating them both in subsequent elections). Clay would be the nominee of his party in 1844, and also run for the nomination in 1840 & 1848, but despite a distinguished career as a senator, Secretary of State, and Speaker of the House, would never be the president. The only person who approaches him in this regard is William Jennings Bryan, a man who served as both a congressman and Secretary of State, and had the ignoble fate of being his party's presidential nominee thrice (1896, 1900, 1908), but got a silver medal each time. In 1912, after three defeats, Bryan refused to pursue the Democratic nomination, which went to Woodrow Wilson instead...who then became president.
 |
| President Richard Nixon (R-CA) |
The final career option for losing presidential candidates? Winning presidential candidate. Four men in American history have turned a second place loss in a presidential race into an eventually winning run for the White House. The first was Andrew Jackson, who took the 1824 election (essentially stole from him), and turned it into two successful campaigns in 1828 and 1832. William Henry Harrison is most frequently remembered as the shortest-served president in American history, but he actually might have had a full term if he'd won in 1836 when he was first nominated rather than in 1840. Grover Cleveland is the best-remembered of this bunch since he won the White House in 1884, lost it in 1888 (though he won the popular vote), and then won it back again in 1892; I'd like to imagine that every one-term president from Hoover to Carter has had a secret photo of Cleveland hidden in their house that they whisper "someday" to each night. Finally, there's Richard Nixon, who is the only person to lose the presidency, skip an election, and win the White House later. Nixon did this by losing a nailbiter in 1960, the California's governor's race in 1962, and yet still defeated George Romney (Mitt's dad) at the 1968 convention and with the two leading Democrats out of the race (Johnson declining and Robert Kennedy assassinated), the Democrats lost in a close race that year, with Nixon following four years later with a hugely successful reelection campaign (and then a disgraceful second term).
In an era where political comebacks are increasingly common, it's entirely possible a fifth person could make it onto this list. Though it's hard to tell how seriously their names are bandied, some have discussed John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore as potential candidates in 2020, and Romney's ascension to the Senate gives him a perch if the opportunity ever presents itself for him to run for POTUS. I guess we'll just keep watching, but don't forget in all of the hubbub of new names headed to DC that there's one who has been trying for decades to make it, and will likely be a pretty loud voice when he gets there.
No comments:
Post a Comment