There have been five Presidents who took office without winning the popular vote.
The first was John Quincy Adams, a second-generation President. His presidency ended with his rematch with Andrew Jackson. Afterwards he had a distinguished career as Congressman and abolitionist.
Rutherford B. Hayes didn't even with the Electoral College outright. Rather, Congress decided the winner in his race with Samuel Tilden. Not too surprisingly his reputation never recovered.
Benjamin Harrison did at least with the Electoral College, but like Hayes he was mostly forgotten after his single term.
More recent are the cases of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. And they both present a change from their predecessors in that they lost the popular vote the first time and came back to win it the next time. But even between them their stories are more different than alike.
Bush was reelected and improved his share of voters for a very straightforward reason: 9/11 made him a War President. His big war was neither particularly just nor particularly well-prosecuted, but most Americans weren't going to criticize him. Not in 2004 at least.
Trump's story takes a more circuitous path. He was impeached twice and then spent four years out of office before winning a nonconsecutive second term. What drives the story here is that Joe Biden successfully campaigned on a return to decency, for which you can substitute "establishment norms." But then during his Presidency and the campaign of Kamala Harris, voters got a look at what the 2020s political establishment was. Not too surprisingly they ran screaming in the opposite direction.
2 comments:
"They ran screaming in the opposite direction"
That's a very concise and accurate take on the recent election.
I must admit my knowledge of the history of American presidents is as bad as what I recall about Canadian Prime Ministers. I'm sure it was the subject of some history class or other but it must have gone in one ear and out the other - after exams, of course.
Come to think of it John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson are very familiar names but not Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden or Benjamin Harrison - never heard of them, but as you described it sounds as if none of the three ever did make a lasting mark in public life.
You're right George W. Bush and Donald Trump are different in more ways than one. 9/11 set Bush well on the way to a second term and the Covid fiasco stopped Trump from having a second term. That may sound overly simplistic but it's what I've believed for a while. It would appear they can only play these tricks just so many times before the public gets wise. People can and do learn from the past. Nothing is hopeless, and nihilists are lazy and incompetent.
Americans are very angry about the Democrat/globalist attempt to establish a medical tyranny and they aren’t going to forget what happened.
For another interesting take on recent events you might enjoy David Samuels' long yet refreshing article on Unherd:
https://unherd.com/2024/11/how-trump-crushed-obamas-legacy/
It's also something the previous guard will have to deal with. Time will tell if they can do so constructively.
The nineteenth century Presidents who weren't Jefferson, Jackson, or Lincoln tend to be rather obscure, even to Americans. It's a mixture of a bunch of things: mostly short and/or unsatisfying terms, the lack of moving pictures, the fact that most political issues of the day don't mean much to people of our time.
People can learn from the past, which doesn't mean they never forget the lessons. Over time it may be inevitable. But this is the very recent past, and it's stuck for a lot of people.
In this country Democrats were the main force trying to institute medical tyranny. Of course when it came to COVID a lot of Republicans were more than willing to go along with it. This included Trump in many ways. If his recent appointments--such as Jay Bhattacharya--are any indication, he seems to have learned from his mistakes.
Oh yeah, I read that Samuels article before. Makes a lot of good points. Is the Long Obama Era over? In a lot of ways I hope it is.
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