Dan

Calabrese

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March 24, 2008

A John McCain Victory Would Put Bush in Elite Company

For an unpopular failure, George W. Bush is in a position to join quite an elite group of presidents.

New polling from Rasmussen Reports now shows John McCain with substantial leads over both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in nationwide, general-election matchups. Of course, it is ridiculously early, and the only thing these polls mean is that the 2008 election is not, contrary to popular wisdom, the Democrats’ for the taking.

What does this have to do with Bush? He has a chance to notch a political accomplishment that has eluded most of his 42 predecessors, and almost all since the nation has had serious two-party competition. That is the accomplishment of serving two full terms and seeing a candidate of your own party elected to succeed you.

By my count, only seven presidents have accomplished this. The first was George Washington, although his inclusion on the list requires the assumption that he was a member of the Federalist Party. It’s not as if Washington ran on a partisan ticket, but he is often labeled as a Federalist, and his vice president was elected to succeed him – so with something less than complete confidence, Washington goes on the list.

The next three – Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe – were Democratic-Republicans at a time when there wasn’t much competition from Federalists, Whigs or anyone else. Then came Andrew Jackson, the first president from what we know today as the Democratic Party, succeeded by his own vice president, Martin Van Buren.

Since then, the only presidents who have managed this feat have been Ulysses S. Grant, succeeded by fellow Republican Rutherford B. Hayes; and Ronald Reagan, succeeded by fellow Republican George Bush. That’s only two of the last 37 presidents. It’s not easy to do.

Of course, many factors outside the individual’s control enter the equation.

It could also be argued that Teddy Roosevelt deserves to be on the list, since he served almost all of William McKinley’s second term, then one of his own, and pretty well coronated William Howard Taft as his successor. But rules are rules, and Roosevelt was only elected once in his own right. So his application is denied. That goes for you, too, Calvin Coolidge.

So what, if anything, would it say about Bush if McCain succeeds him and puts him in this exclusive club? Well, first, he hasn’t done it yet. And it’s not as if previous two-term presidents who fell short were political failures because of it.

Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton each would have made the list if their respective vice presidents had not lost exceedingly close races. The 1920 election was not a referendum on Woodrow Wilson. And the only reason Franklin Roosevelt isn’t on the list is that he didn’t know when to quit!

Nonetheless, history shows how difficult it is for any party to hang onto the White House for a prolonged period of time. So considering the constant drumbeat of news about Bush’s low approval ratings and historians’ predicted rendering of him as a failure, how is he even in a position to have a shot at this?

The view here is that Bush’s unpopularity is built like a house of cards. Many of those who say they disapprove of him don’t really have a good reason. Most data shows that people disapprove of Bush because they think we’re losing in Iraq (which is not true), they’re just tired of the war, they think the economy is bad because that’s what they hear on the news or they’re just tired of Bush and want someone else.

Another factor is that Bush, unlike Bill Clinton, has not spent his second term campaigning to boost his own approval ratings. Much to the frustration of some of his supporters, he seems to be ambivalent about his own popularity, and on some level perhaps even takes pride in the fact that he is so unpopular and yet sticks to the policies that got him there.

I think Bush has been a good president on balance, but it drives me bananas that he has not rallied the American people behind the war effort. It’s almost as if he thinks he would be breaking his promise not to care about polls if he did so.

At any rate, perhaps McCain has a chance to keep the White House in Republican hands because all the grousing about Bush is disproportionate to Americans’ actual quality of life. People say they want “change,” but when they see the actual choices offered by the Democrats, maybe four more years of Bush’s policies don’t seem so bad. Maybe they never were all that bad.

Bush was elected president twice, and saw his party gain seats in Congress during the 2002 midyear election, as well as during his 2004 re-election year. The sixth year of his presidency saw his party get clobbered in congressional elections, but that is the historical norm. All told, Bush has notched some pretty impressive political achievements for such a supposedly bad and unpopular president. Now he may be on the cusp a very rare one.

Well, he’s always predicted that history would vindicate him. Maybe it’s already starting to do so.

This is Column # DC161.  Request permission to publish here.