Why Senators Never Become President

[RedScare]

the only way that clinton will win is if a third party candidate splits the republican vote. she is too despised in republican circles. if she is the democratic nominee, it will mobilize the republican base, regardless of whose running on their side.

The ONLY way? Not what the polls say. Clinton is not nearly as despised by independents and Republican women as Republican males wish to believe. Many of her stances, such as hawkish on defense while opposing the Iraq war, and improved access to health care, have good majorities among Americans. "Republican circles" are shrinking. I agree that Republican leaders HOPE she mobilizes the base, but so far nothing indicates that this will in fact happen.

[bachanon]

she has consistently had 45-50% negatives in polling that asked who you "definitely would not vote for". she's having a grand time in the press because the press likes her. i have yet to meet a republican woman who likes her, but i'm in texas. she may as well have horns and a pitchfork around here. she could not win texas, i'm certain of that.

[TheNiche]

I don't think a Senator exactly parallels squad and platoon leadership roles. Consider also that said committees are nothing more than organized circle jerks and I will continue to deny that a Senator is a leadership role. That doesn't mean that some don't have leadership qualities or even lead within their groups. But Senators do not lead the way a chief executive of a city, state or country do.

I think the military analogy served my point well. The chief executives of political bodies may have what is referred to as command experience in the military, but that does not preclude the realistic likelihood that their underlings may not only have more respect and even experience (even if the experience may not be qualitatively equal), but also that they have and exercise significant leadership qualities in the performance of their job.

There are many people that hold positions of great political power, such as would give them a type of command experience. But I would dare to say that many--if not most--are crappy leaders. True leaders are an uncommon sort. And I think that the best of them know better than to waste their talent in government.

[northbeaumont]

i remembered somewhere that senators rarely become president. david broder in a 2002 column explains why. if applying these parameters to our current election, it narrows the field quite a bit.

Why Few Senators Become Presidents

By David S. Broder

Sunday, June 23, 2002; Page B07

Once again the Senate is full of presidential wannabes. Three Democrats, John Edwards of North Carolina, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, are out most weekends, cultivating friends in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and wooing contributors everywhere. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut reportedly are weighing the possibility of joining the chase. And the boss man, Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, has carefully left the door open for himself.

In all of American history, only two men -- Warren Harding and John Kennedy -- have gone straight from the Senate to the White House. Bob Dole in 1996 was the last sitting senator to win a party nomination (though he resigned his Senate seat a few months before the convention) and, like most of his predecessors, he was whomped in the election.

In 2000, two men who had spent most or all of their public careers as senators, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, and a sitting senator, John McCain, were in the race -- and all three lost.

The statistics show that vice presidents (many of them, like Gore, former senators) and governors and former governors (such as George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter) have far greater success in winning nominations and in making it to the White House than do senators.

full article

Yes, only two U.S. Senators were elected President in the 1900s: Warren G. Harding of Ohio and John F. Kennedy of Massachusettes.

[Guest danax]

Yes, only two U.S. Senators were elected President in the 1900s: Warren G. Harding of Ohio and John F. Kennedy of Massachusettes.

And I remember reading that Harding was nominated by the Republicans because he "looked presidential" and apparently the voters agreed, but he himself admitted that he wasn't qualified to be president. In fact, the idea of falling for the way someone looks had been called after that the "Harding syndrome" or something like that.