It may seem spurious to you, but the fact that it hasn't happened in 126 years indicates that something is going on.
It has nothing to do with the merits of Mr. Hunter relative to any other candidate. I like him and he is a man that I could vote for.
History shows that a governor or general have a better shot. I guess it's an "executive experience" thing.
We need CONTEXT, wireman.
We know about the Congressman thing.
We also know that the others who are running, excepting Romney, Huckabee and Richardson, who were all governors, are in just about the same boat when it comes to historical precedent. McCain, Clinton, Obama, Biden, Dodd are all Senators. Also a near kiss of death in terms of going directly to the Presidency. Rudy was a mayor. When did one of those ascend directly to the Presidency?
That's why when you bring up the Congressman thing (which is all Newt was, too), we bring up the Senate and the Mayor thing.
I will concede that DH has a hurdle several of these others do
not have...lack of name recognition. On that, it could turn out to be fatal, OR it could be a plus if enough people are jaded with the names being forced on them from which they must choose.
Dear wireman,
"It may seem spurious to you, but the fact that it hasn't happened in 126 years indicates that something is going on."
Yeah, but there are LOTS of different sorts of folks that rarely or never get elected to the presidency.
No Italian-American has ever been elected president.
No one who was ever a prisoner of war was ever elected president.
Arizona has a rather bad track record with folks who run for president.
Massachusetts Republicans haven't done well in their quest for the presidency.
Folks whose only elected office was mayor have never won the presidency.
No Mormon has ever made it.
The last US Senator to be elected was nearly a half-century ago.
No one has ever been elected who has been divorced more than once, and only one divorced person was ever elected, and that was over a quarter century ago!
No one has ever been elected president whose sole experience in elective office was one term as governor.
There! There are at least three reasons a piece why it's just SO unlikely that any of Messrs. Giuliani, Romney, or McCain will be elected.
And, if it makes anyone feel better, no woman has ever been elected president, nor any former First Lady, and no sitting US Senator from New York. So, let's hope the Dems nominate Mrs. Clinton, because according to historical patterns, SHE JUST CAN'T WIN!
It may seem spurious to you, but the fact is that we've NEVER elected a twice-divorced Italian-American mayor to the presidency. SOMETHING must be going on there.
It may seem spurious to you, but the fact is that we've NEVER elected a former prisoner of war, sitting US Senator, candidate from Arizona to the presidency. SOMETHING must be going on there.
It may seem spurious to you, but the fact is that we've NEVER elected a one-term governor with no other elective experience who is a Mormon and who is a Republican from Massachusetts. SOMETHING must be going on there.
Or not.
The difficulty is that we just haven't elected many presidents in a bit over 200 years. Thus, there are all sorts of data patterns that we seem to be able to discern. Whether those patterns are meaningful or are just artifacts is kind of difficult to determine with the relative paucity of data that we have.
I'll grant that the theory that governors are more readily electable seems plausible. But that's a far way from saying that US Representatives are unelectable, or even to say that they are nearly so.
sitetest