Presidential Election Of 1840

Concept Of Political Coalition Against Donald Trump: Does History Tell Us It Could Work In America?

Ronald 6 Comments

Thomas Friedman, esteemed columnist for the NEW YORK TIMES, suggested in a recent column that the concept of a political coalition against Donald Trump might be the way to prevent him from coming back to power in the Presidential Election of 2024.

So Friedman suggests the following possible coalition tickets of a Democrat and an anti Trump Republican:

Joe Biden–Liz Cheney

Joe Biden–Lisa Murkowski

Kamala Harris–Mitt Romney

Stacy Abrams–Liz Cheney

Any Klobuchar–Liz Cheney

Friedman makes the comparison to the present coalition government in Israel, but Israel has a Prime Minister and a parliamentary system, which is totally different than our Presidential-Congress system of separation of powers.

And if one looks at past past attempts to have a Vice President who is not part of the majority party at the time, just look at John Tyler, not a Whig, under William Henry Harrison, who then had horrible time and constant turmoil after Harrison died after one month in office in 1841.

Or even better, Andrew Johnson, NOT a Republican, running with Abraham Linoln in 1864, and succeeding him after six weeks, and the horrible relationship and disaster of Johnson as President, facing impeachment and constant vitriol, much of it incited by his own prickly personality.

There was talk in 1968, of Hubert Humphrey selecting Nelson Rockefeller; of 2004, of John Kerry selecting John McCain; of 2008, of John McCain selecting Joe Lieberman. None of those would ever have been able to work out, and elect Humphrey, Kerry, or McCain.

Also, in the run up to 2020, some thought of a John Kasich-John Hickenlooper unity ticket, as an alternative to Donald Trump, and it never got off the ground!

And really, Liz Cheney, with strong right wing views on every topic except the danger of Donald Trump, paring with Biden? That is NOT serious, and Stacy Abrams or Amy Klobuchar paring with Cheney, so two women on the ticket, really?

And Mitt Romney running with Harris, really, with his strong criticism of Biden policies, and unwillingness to even back voting rights legislation?

The only one of these pairings that sounds at all logical, but really is not so, is Biden with Lisa Murkowski, the most acceptable Republican in national office, but how would Biden convince Harris why he has to “dump” her as Vice President?

Presidential Losers Who Ran Again, And Donald Trump!

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It has been reported that a former Trump advisor is planning to convince Donald Trump NOT to run again in 2024.

According to the report, this person has, or will tell Trump, that he would not wish to be a two time loser for the Presidency, amidst the belief that Trump’s ego could not handle that idea.

Former two time Democratic Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson (1952, 1956) is mentioned as the example of the most recent two time nominee who lost twice for the White House.

One would think that this advisor would have more knowledge than just mentioning Stevenson, as five other Presidential candidates lost either twice or three times.

These include Republican Thomas E. Dewey (1944, 1948); Democrat William Jennings Bryan (1896, 1900, 1908); and Whig Henry Clay (1824, 1832, 1844), along with Democrat Martin Van Buren (elected in 1836 but losing in 1840, and 1848 (Free Soil Party), and Federalist Charles C. Pinckney (1804, 1808).

All six of these two or three time losers had real credentials and validity, unlike Donald Trump, who will go down as the worst or near worst President in American history!

But also, Andrew Jackson lost the Presidency in 1824, but won in 1828 and 1832, and William Henry Harrison lost in 1836 but won in 1840.

Also, there is the example of Richard Nixon, who lost in 1960, but came back successfully in 1968 and 1972.

And finally, there is Grover Cleveland, elected in 1884, but losing reelection in the Electoral College in 1888, and yet coming back to a second nonconsecutive term in the White House in 1892!

March 4 Presidential Inauguration History Significant So Many Times In American History

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Today is the original Presidential Inauguration Day through 1933 every fourth year.

Some March 4ths stand out.

1801–Thomas Jefferson is inaugurated, the first time an opposition party takes over the Presidency, and without any bloodshed or violence.

1829–Andrew Jackson is inaugurated, and a mob descends on the White House to celebrate, and windows, glasses, and China are broken.

1841–William Henry Harrison is inaugurated, gives the longest inaugural address in history, and takes sick with pneumonia that evening, and dies after one month in office.

1861–Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated at a time when Southern states have broken away from the Union and declared their independence.

1865–Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated for his second term, and gives the greatest Inaugural Address in American history, calling for peace and reconciliation when the Civil War ends, and his future assassin, John Wilkes Booth is in the crowd and moving toward the inaugural stand as Lincoln speaks.

1913–Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as the Democrats, after a half century of Republican dominance of national government.

1933–Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated at the worst moments of the Great Depression, and FDR talks of a New Deal for the American people, the second greatest Inaugural Address, and the Congress pushes through the 20th Amendment, setting up future inauguration dates to be on January 20, starting in 1937.

One Term Presidents Who Lose Reelection Reassessed

Ronald 3 Comments

The historical image of One Term Presidents is that it is the worst thing imaginable to lose reelection, and that their historical image is damaged.

Actually, though, it could be argued that a one term Presidency often is a blessing in disguise in the long run.

Let’s examine what happened to the lives of Presidents defeated for a second term.

John Adams lost reelection to Thomas Jefferson in 1800, but went on to live another 25 years, see his son John Quincy Adams be elected and inaugurated President, and die at the age of 90 years and seven months, the all time record until the 21st century, when four other Presidents surpassed him in age.

John Quincy Adams lost reelection to Andrew Jackson in 1828, but went on to live another 19 years, and be elected to nine terms as a Congressman from Massachusetts, engaged in the fight against slavery as the only President elected by popular vote to an elected office after being President.

Martin Van Buren lost reelection to William Henry Harrison in 1840, but went on to live another 21 years, and be the Presidential nominee of the Free Soil Party in 1848, winning about 10 percent of the national popular vote, the first such third party to have an impact on a national election.

Grover Cleveland lost reelection to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, but came back to the White House by election in 1892, and later served on the Princeton University Board of Trustees after his retirement.

William Howard Taft lost reelection to Woodrow Wilson in 1912, but went on to become the only President also to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1921-1930.

Herbert Hoover lost reelection to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, but went on to the longest retirement of more than 31 years, only surpassed by Jimmy Carter in 2012, and Hoover having growing respect for his post Presidential activities, and dying at the age of 90 in 1964, only five months less lifespan than John Adams, and the second President to reach that age.

Gerald Ford lost election to Jimmy Carter in 1976, after succeeding Richard Nixon under the 25th Amendment, but went on to growing recognition and respect in his nearly 30 years after his Presidency, setting the record for longevity until 2018, dying at the age of 93 and five months.

Jimmy Carter lost reelection to Ronald Reagan in 1980, but went on to become the most outstanding former President in his activities and commitments to public service, and has had the longest retirement of any President, nearly 38 years, and has just reached the age of 94, being 111 days younger than George H. W. Bush.

George H. W. Bush lost reelection to Bill Clinton in 1992, but went on to see his son, George W. Bush be inaugurated and serve two terms in the Presidency, and growing respect as he set the all time record of age 94 in June 2018.

Donald Trump Declares War On Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, And Sean Hannity Calls On McConnell To Resign

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Donald Trump has declared war on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Twitter and in person, an unprecedented action for a President to break with the leader of his party in the US Senate. And his lackey, talk show host Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel, has called on McConnell to resign.

Trump is angry that McConnell was unable to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare, and has called upon him to resign or be replaced as leader of Republicans in the Senate, if he cannot get that accomplished, along with other priorities of Trump, including tax reform, and infrastructure spending, and getting the Mexico Wall built.

This is ironic, as Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, is Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, so one has to wonder how she feels about this attack on her husband by her boss.

It is clear that McConnell, for all his faults, and the strong dislike of progressives and Democrats for him, is still well respected, and fully supported by his Republican Senate colleagues. So this will not make Trump’s relations with the Senate Republicans improve, but rather will worsen them dramatically.

And this comes after Trump’s earlier criticisms of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who has been attacked by Trump, and even more viciously by the Alt Right faction led by Stephen Bannon, and his former home, Breitbart News.

Donald Trump seems to be moving toward severing his bonds with the party that elected him, and to declare himself an independent, unprecedented in American history, and if that happens, he will be a man without a party, who is attempting to grab more executive authority.

Two earlier Presidents, who had been Vice President and succeeded upon the death of the Presidents (William Henry Harrison and Abraham Lincoln) they served under, John Tyler and Andrew Johnson, also were Presidents without a party, when they alienated the Whig Party and Republican Party, respectively, by their policies, and Tyler faced impeachment, which was unsuccessful, while Johnson was impeached, and then found not guilty by the Senate by a margin of one vote. They had both been Democrats who agreed to run on a Fusion ticket in 1840 and 1864, and this blogger wrote about this on the History News Network on July 30, 2017, and can be found on the list of my published articles on the right side of the blog.

Trump has the makings of a Fascist dictator, and this will spur the move by Republicans to go after him, and impeach and remove him, as he is a menace to the party and to the nation.

Is Donald Trump The Third President Without A Party, As Was The Case With John Tyler And Andrew Johnson?

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We have had two Presidents who lacked support of a party, and we may now have a third one in Donald Trump.

Two Presidents were elected Vice President as part of a “fusion” team to help elect the Presidential nominee, and then quickly became President upon the death of the President.

John Tyler, a Democrat, ran on the Whig Party line with William Henry Harrison in 1840, and Harrison died of pneumonia 31 days after the inauguration.

Tyler disagreed with the Whig Party principles, and came into conflict with Whig leadership, including Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and Congressman John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts.

His entire cabinet resigned after a few months, with the exception of Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and Tyler had great troubles with confirmation hearings, with four cabinet appointments and four nominees for the Supreme Court rejected by the Whig controlled Senate. The Congress refused to pass funding for fixing of the White House, which was in disrepair, and an attempted impeachment was prevented only by the Whigs losing the House of Representatives in 1842.

So John Tyler was a man without a party.

The same can be said of Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, who was the Vice Presidential nominee with Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1864, with Lincoln concerned about reelection, so choosing a loyal Southern Democrat to shore up support among some Northern Democrats.

When Lincoln was assassinated 45 days after his second inauguration, Johnson became President but clashed quickly with Radical Republicans over Reconstruction policy, and when he vetoed significant legislation, and went out and campaigned against them in midterm congressional elections in 1866, an open split was clear, and Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which prevented the dismissal of any cabinet officer appointed by the President, without majority backing by the majority of both houses of Congress, an unconstitutional action.

Johnson now faced impeachment on flimsy charges, and was found not guilty, but it weakened his ability to govern, and he was unable to gain the filling of a Supreme Court vacancy, and was truly a President without a party.

Now, Donald Trump has alienated many Republicans, who are willing to investigate his Russian ties and possible collusion in the Presidential Election of 2016. He has denounced the Freedom Caucus membership which prevented his health care legislation from passing, and many US Senators, including John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and others, have been strong critics. Additionally, he has hinted at working with Democrats, even though he has also antagonized them repeatedly with his utterances and policies. His public opinion rating is the lowest for any new President, since the beginning of polling 80 years ago.

The possibility of impeachment is there, as even top Republican leadership, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have found it difficult to work with a President who is constantly tweeting and criticizing, in a very divisive way.

So Donald Trump could end up being the third President without a party, recalling that for a long time, he was sounding years ago like a liberal Democrat!

Congressional Republicans Growing Unease About Donald Trump

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Less than two weeks in office, Donald Trump is starting to see growing unease among some Congressional Republicans about his independent, go it alone, style of leadership.

Trump clearly feels he was elected without true party unity, and intends to govern in an authoritarian manner, but there are Republicans who are unhappy with his style and manner.

These include:

Arizona Senator John McCain
Arizona Senator Jeff Flake
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham
Ohio Senator Rob Portman
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse
Maine Senator Susan Collins

Also, some Congressmen are also speaking out, so Trump may be a President without a party, and to find that, one must go back to the 19th century, where two Presidents, who succeeded a President who died, had massive headaches trying to deal with the party that had accepted them, members of the opposition party, as their Vice President, due to the wishes of the Presidential nominee, but with no expectation that the President wold die in office.

I am referring to Democrat John Tyler, who ran on the Whig Party ticket with William Henry Harrison in 1840; and Democrat Andrew Johnson, who ran on the Republican “Union” Party line with Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

Both Tyler and Johnson would have never ending headaches with their adopted party, with major battles over Supreme Court and Cabinet appointments, and a threat to impeach John Tyler, and an actual impeachment trial for Andrew Johnson.

Could Donald Trump be on the way to similar resistance and possible impeachment? He is alienating Congress by being a “lone wolf”, showing his disdain for Congress and the party line he ran on.

One must recall that his victory for President was the worst ever in popular vote loss to his opponent, and seventh lowest percentage ever, but with all those Presidents with lower percentage of vote, having had two or three opponents who gained electoral votes, instead of just one opponent.

Joint Party Tickets A Good Idea? History Tells Us NO!

Ronald 14 Comments

Recently, there has been some discussion of a “fusion” ticket as the way to stop Donald Trump.

One such scenario is to have Hillary Clinton run with John Kasich as her running mate.

That is totally preposterous, and history tells us that when the Vice President is of a different party than the President, it does not work out well.

The first contested Presidential election led to Thomas Jefferson as Vice President under his opponent, John Adams from 1797-1801, and that did not work out well, and in fact, helped to promote the 12th Amendment in 1804.

Then we had John C. Calhoun as Vice President under John Quincy Adams in the years 1825-1829, and that did not work out well.

William Henry Harrison was elected in 1840 with this Whig candidate having a Democrat, John Tyler, as his Vice President.  Within a month, Harrison was dead, and Tyler had constant battles with the Whig Congress, because he did not wish to follow Whig platform ideas.

Abraham Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as his second term Vice President, despite the fact that Johnson was a Democrat in a Republican Presidency, and when Lincoln was assassinated six weeks later, we had one of the worst struggles in American history, as Johnson fought and resisted the Republican Party which had put him into the Vice Presidency, albeit briefly.

With these four examples, none of them working out well, we have never had such a situation arise again since, but we have had suggestions of doing what has never worked out well.

There were suggestions that Hubert Humphrey select Nelson Rockefeller in 1968, and that John McCain choose Joe Lieberman in 2008.

It simply will not work, and it undermines party loyalty and commitment to a President and his administration, if the next in line, in case of tragedy, transforms the power base in the Presidency.

As it is, we have had top cabinet members who are of the other party, particularly in the War Department as it was known before 1947, and the Defense Department, as it has been known since then., including:

Henry Stimson under Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1940-1945

Robert McNamara under John F. Kennedy, beginning in 1961, and continuing under Lyndon B. Johnson until 1968.

William Cohen under Bill Clinton from 1997-2001

Robert Gates under Barack Obama from 2009-2011

But the Vice President needs to be “on the team”, not a rival of the President in office!

 

Multiple Losing Presidential Candidacies, And Those Who Lost, Then Won The Presidency

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The history of multiple candidacies for the Presidency is an interesting one, with five candidates being nominated more than once and losing each time, and five candidates being nominated more than once, and losing before winning the White House (with unusual circumstances for Grover Cleveland)

Those who ran multiple times and continued to lose are:

Charles Pinckney, Presidential Elections of 1804 and 1808
Henry Clay, Presidential Elections of 1824, 1832, and 1844
William Jennings Bryan, Presidential Elections Of 1896, 1900, and 1908
Thomas E. Dewey, Presidential Elections of 1944 and 1948
Adlai Stevenson, Presidential Elections of 1952 and 1956

Those who ran multiple times and first lost, and then won the Presidency are (with unusual case of Grover Cleveland described below):

Thomas Jefferson, Presidential Elections of 1796, 1800 and 1804
Andrew Jackson, Presidential Elections of 1824, 1828 and 1832
William Henry Harrison, Presidential Elections of 1836 and 1840
Grover Cleveland, Presidential Elections of 1884, 1888, and 1892 (winning in 1884, losing in 1888, winning in 1892)
Richard Nixon, Presidential Elections of 1960, 1968 and 1972

Also, Jackson and Cleveland won the popular vote in the elections they lost in the Electoral College, so both actually won the popular vote three times, the only candidates to do that, other than Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won the popular vote and electoral vote four times, in the Presidential Elections of 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944!

Additionally, Martin Van Buren ran a third time in 1848 on the Free Soil Party line and lost; and Theodore Roosevelt ran a second time in 1912 on the Progressive Party line and lost.

History Favors Obama and Democratic Party Second Term Presidencies

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In the discussion over whether Barack Obama will have a second term of office, one must consider history as a guide.

If one looks at the facts, one discovers that only THREE Democratic Presidents have ever been defeated for re-election–Martin Van Buren in 1840; Grover Cleveland in 1888 (even though he actually won the popular vote by about 100,000 nationally); and Jimmy Carter in 1980.

So in the past 124 years, only one Democrat has lost re-election, and face the facts, Barack Obama is NOT Jimmy Carter and Mitt Romney is not Ronald Reagan!

Grover Cleveland came back to win in the following election over Benjamin Harrison who had defeated him in 1888, being the only nonconsecutive terms President in American history.

Woodrow Wilson had a very close contest against Charles Evans Hughes for re-election in 1916, but won.

Franklin D. Roosevelt still had over 20 percent unemployment when he first ran for re-election in 1936, but won a landslide over Alf Landon, as well as solid victories over Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1944.

Harry Truman overcame all polls and defeated Dewey in an upset victory in 1948, even after the opposition party had won both houses of Congress in 1946.

Lyndon B. Johnson won the biggest popular vote landslide in history over Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Bill Clinton won a solid victory over Bob Dole in 1996, despite having lost both houses of Congress in 1994.

And despite criticisms, Barack Obama has a positive record of achievement in his first term to match that of Wilson and FDR in their first term and Lyndon B. Johnson in his first year, and more than Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman, and Bill Clinton in their first term, and Jimmy Carter in his only term of office.

So don’t bet too heavily on Obama losing re-election in November!