Presidential Trivia: What to Make of It

Filed under: US Elections

It's been nearly half a century since, in 1960, Americans elected a president who had not previously been either a governor of a state or a vice president of the United States. John F. Kennedy was the last man to achieve the feat, and he (1) prevailed by one of the thinnest electoral margins in U.S. history, (2) didn't get a majority of the popular vote, and (3) was assassinated without completing his first term.

Senator Lloyd Benson famously gazed upon Senator Dan Quayle and pronounced: "You're no Jack Kennedy." Benson then went own to get blown off the map in his own bid to become the Veep.

It's interesting to ask: Are there any non-vice-president/non-governors in the current field who have enough "Kennedy" in them to overcome their overwhelming disadvantage? Or is Mitt Romney, the only governor/veep among the four front-runners from the two major parties, destined to become the next president? Will governors Bill Richardson or Mike Huckabee come from way back in the pack to challenge more seriously? Will vice president Al Gore get into the race? Or vice president Dick Cheney? Will voters treat Hillary as if she were a Veep, or Rudy as if he were governor?

What do you think?

FOOTNOTE: Before JFK, there was IKE the general. Before him, you have to go back to 1928 with Herbert Hoover before you find a non-veep-non-governor getting elected, Hoover being another failed one-term president. Before him there was Harding in 1920, but like JFK he didn't even finish one term. Before that there was Taft in 1908, another one-termer, like Hoover. Only Eisenhower the General in the 20th Century was a non-veep-non-governor elected to a second term, and only two such presidents served out a full single term in the past century. Before Taft, the last non-gov-non-veep president who was reelected was also a general, Ulysses Grant. Take generals out of the equation and you have to go all the way back to Abraham Lincoln to find a non-gov-non-veep who got reelected -- and Lincoln didn't get to finish his second term, either. Ike is the only president since the civil war to complete two terms in office without first being a governor or vice president. Eerie, isn't it?

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