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Posted on 02/20/2007 5:37:09 AM PST by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON – Morris Udall. Dick Gephardt. John Kasich. Bob Dornan. Jack Kemp. James Garfield. Dennis Kucinich.
What these gentlemen have in common – other than having all served in the House of Representatives – is that each ran for the White House while he was still a congressman. Only one of them made it.
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And he got shot.
Now that Duncan Hunter has taken the plunge for the Republican presidential nomination official, the Alpine congressman may soon encounter the peculiar challenges that face a sitting House member who wants to be president.
“Many House members feel the urge (to run) in spite of their public invisibility, lack of national stature and limited access to campaign funds,” said Thomas Mann, a presidential campaign scholar at the Brookings Institution. “History suggests they should resist.”
Be certain that Hunter, a former House Armed Services Committee chairman, has thought of all this. But he's betting that his conservative stands on defense matters, international trade and border enforcement will distinguish him from other Republican candidates now hogging the headlines, including a Sept. 11 hero (former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani) and a war hero (Arizona Sen. John McCain).
Plenty of sitting House members have aimed for the Oval office, some more successfully than others.
Morris Udall, the Democratic congressman from Arizona, may have run the most credible campaign in recent decades: He narrowly lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential primaries. Experts attribute his success in part to his stature in the House, his famous sense of humor and his engaging, self-deprecating manner.
“He didn't come across as either arrogant or as a lightweight,” said David Rhode, a political science professor at Duke University. “He was a skilled politician, but he wasn't too full of himself. With just a little more luck, he might have been president.”
Having clout in the House offers no guarantee. Most people have probably heard of Richard Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader who tried twice to win his party's nomination. He was widely respected in Congress, had strong ties to key party constituencies and performed well in debates, but lost the nominations in 1988 and 2004.
The only sitting House member ever to win the presidency was James Garfield. Back in 1880, he was the Republican leader of the House, in a day when candidates were chosen within the party. Garfield became the dark-horse candidate when the Republican convention became deadlocked, and he won the White House in 1881.
Two months after his inauguration, he was assassinated by a disgruntled lawyer in a Washington, D.C., train station. Since Garfield's time, the nominating process has become public and the financial demands are enormous, requiring candidates to lure early “seed” money that might give their campaigns stature. While Hunter raised more than $1 million for each of his last two congressional campaigns, being little known outside his district will make it difficult to attract the $50 million to $100 million each presidential candidate may need to be a serious contender.
“Money is very important in the year before the primary, because it's used to judge the viability of a candidate,” said Stephen Wayne, a presidential scholar at Georgetown University. “He's going to have a tough time, because financial backers like to get behind people who have a chance.”
John Anderson, an Illinois congressman who ran for the Republican nomination in 1980, was in a situation that resembles Hunter's, experts say. But although only a third-tier candidate, he ran second to George Bush Sr. in the Massachusetts primary and second to Ronald Reagan in Vermont. Overnight, he became a household name, though he could not maintain his momentum in later primary states. In the general election, he ran as an independent against Reagan and then-President Jimmy Carter, taking 7 percent of the national vote.
Anderson's presidential campaign spokesman, Mark Bisnow, attributed Anderson's initial success to the campaign's media focus in early-voting states and to worry among conservatives about Reagan's movie-actor status.
“Even though he was one of the most respected congressmen of his day, a person of towering integrity, as articulate as they come and very moderate, nobody knew him outside Washington,” said Bisnow, who wrote a book about the campaign titled “Diary of a Dark Horse.”
“All the attention was showered on the people who were already well-known.”
The list of House members who sought the presidency goes on. There was Jack Kemp, the New York Republican winnowed out during early primary voting in 1988; Bob Dornan, the Orange County Republican who made a brief bid for the nomination in 1994; John Kasich, the Ohio Republican who faced a dozen primary candidates in 2000; and Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who placed far behind in almost all primary states in 2004.
Kucinich is running again and he believes national stature will matter less in the 2008 election than in the past.
“This goes beyond your rank in the political firmament,” he said. “This election is going to be about the war, and anyone who wants to be president will have to explain why they voted for the war.”
One thing that dark horses have going for them is that no one expects them to do well. It helps, Wayne said, if such a candidate “can do something in the beginning – like raising lots of money or performing well in New Hampshire or Iowa – something that makes the media and activists say, 'Wow, this person has really surprised us.' ”
“It happened with Jimmy Carter,” Wayne said. “And it happened with Bill Clinton.”
Richard Daley.
Bush is not insane like McCain. He is also not delusional like Giuliani. He did fly aircraft for the Air National Guard. He dis serve in the military, albeit not in actual combat. So what?
Somebody here does not know fun from gravitas!
I made this point on another thread recently. Hunter is wasting his time, as is Tancredo and Ron Paul. Bush 41 had been a congressman but then did many things before being president, including being VP. Nixon was in congress long before being President, also including being VP. Congressman and Senators don't become President.
As the obvious stares you in the face, very few get the message.
Why did it happen with Carter? Clinton?
In both cases the electorate was in a pissed, punishing mood.
After Watergate and the pardon, Bozo the Clown, if a Democrat, may have beaten Ford.
After the early 90's recession and disappointment that Bush I was no Reagan, and in a three way race, Clinton had it easy.
In both instances the voters were angry at the Party of the President in power.
Today the voters are coincidentally, again, very angry at the same Party- the Republicans.
I submit that in 2008, every declared mainstream Democrat can, and will, likely win.
The question for Republicans is whether they even want to put up a fight.
Like it or not, only Giuliani has a good chance of winning. Romney and McCain may make it a contest but both will lose.
Notwithstanding the fantasies, Duncan Hunter is a Presidential non entity. He has no chance of winning. In fact, ask yourself if he is anyone to even be nominated for VP? What would be bring to anyone's ticket in a nationwide race?
The big question for all those who despite Giuliani, who think him the Devil incarnate, is do you prefer him with all his positives but with his social conservative flaws, which you may have the opportunity to bargain with him, or do you prefer a totally Leftist President with a Democrat Congress?
I hope the disease from the Mideast of lining up to be martyrs has not come to the Republican Party.
He kind'a looks like Paula Poundstone with the suit... the lesbians will go for it.
I agree that Rep. Hunter, Rep. Tancredo, and Rep. Paul probably won't win the nomination, since no one, during the past 125 years, has been elected President while that candidate was a U.S. rep. However, I'm glad that they're running. That will probably cause no candidate to receive the majority of the delegates before the convention. The convention will be more suspenseful and exciting, causing more people to watch and hear the great republican ideas.
I hope that at least 10 Democrats run for President. That might cause them to argue, during their convention, and cause many of them to support the Green Party candidate, helping the Republican.
So, what's that got to do with anything. Let's look at Duncan Hunter for who is.
So Giuliani is only the third NYC mayor to seek a presidential nomination.
Their arguments are not rooted in reality.
History and Giuliani’s Run: There’s Good News and Bad News
by SAM ROBERTS
No United States senator has been elected president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, but former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is challenging an even more formidable historical hurdle: No former mayor has been elected president since Grover Cleveland of Buffalo in 1884 and Calvin Coolidge of Northampton, Mass., in 1924.
And no mayor has ever become president without serving first in some other elective office beyond City Hall.
“Should Rudolph Giuliani attain the presidency in 2008 he will have faced down this longstanding record,” Michael H. Ebner, a history professor at Lake Forest College, said in a telephone interview.
Professor Ebner, writing on the History News Network, a Web site, quoted the columnist Walter Lippmann as concluding that what cost another New Yorker, Gov. Alfred E. Smith, the presidency in 1928 was voters’ antipathy to Smith’s “distinctly urban values,” rather than opposition to his Roman Catholicism alone.
Mr. Giuliani, who would be only the second Catholic president and the first of Italian heritage, faces an additional hurdle: “urban values” have tended to resonate more with Democratic voters; before he faces them, he must win the nomination from Republicans.
[snip]
Wrong. Smith polled surprisingly well in the rural South. He carried the Deep South states in the primaries.
Uncle Dave Macon - one of the original legends of the Grand Ole Opry - campaigned for him in Tennessee and wrote songs about him.
Anti-Catholicism among Northern mainline Protestants is what killed Smith's candidacy - not rural voters prejudiced against "city slickers."
Thats a good one, but I liked 'Katy and The Big Snow' the snowplow! She never gave up either. :)
Also 'Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel'!
Mike Mulligan Bump!
"You are delusional if you believe the media is behind his strength."
If Rudy had been mayor of any other city, even Chicago or L.A., no one would dream of pushing him for President. However, he's from the media capital of the world. He's hammed it up with his theatrical stunts re Arafat, climbing on the WTC rubble, etc. He's all image.
I suspect you haven't been around long enough to recognize the media's games. They would like to destroy the conservative movement and the Republican Party. They can't, but they settle for neutering them by pushing RINOs like John Anderson, William Scranton, Nelson Rockefeller, etc. It's an ancient game, going back many decades.
"In both cases [Carter & Clinton] the electorate was in a pissed, punishing mood."
That's not the key factor. Both these guys were Southern Democrats who succeeded in conning the public into thinking they were more "moderate" than most Demons. Also, their Republican opponents were anything BUT diehard principled conservatives.
The Demons won in 2006 the same way: by sounding more moderate and coopting Republican issues. Their Pubbie opponents were mostly the philosophical descendants of Bush I and Ford, not Reagan or Goldwater.
You have no idea, you can not even imagine, how wrong you are.
The MSM, particularly in NYC, is led by the NY Times. The NY Times pilloried him unmercifully for booting Arafat. The entire Liberal establishment of the city, led politically by Ed Koch, portrayed him as depraved and ignorant for not understanding that Arafat was now a statesman.
And the exact thing happened again when he went against profane art.
And many other times.
The MSM despised him. They begrudgingly saluted him only post 9/11 because it was impossible for them not to recognize what was now obvious to everyone.
You know what will make Giuliani a great President? Like Bush he will be hated but he has shown that he will do what the Liberals, and the UN, and the rest of the Saudis, et al, hate, because it's right, and not give a rat's ass what the NY Times and their sycophants think.
GHW Bush never won an election for anything on his own (without Reagan clearing the way) except to the House of Representatives. He failed in his bid for higher office in Texas. He would have to be the only U.S. President who had been CIA Chief and UN Representative! That novel status didn't keep him from getting the job. Unfortunately, his weakness as a campaigner and political thinker, which should have been evident early on, cost him reelection in 1992.
Exactly right. So it again proves the point that a congressman has little chance of being elected President, even more so if they are currently serving in Congress or the Senate. It just doesn't happen.
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