THE CANDIDATES WE TOLD “THANKS, BUT NO THANKS!”

By Edwin Cooney

Since most Americans appear to be uncomfortable with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I think a bit of perspective is in order.  So, I propose to write a bit about some of the unsuccessful Republican and Democratic presidential candidates since 1916 - exactly a century ago.

Over the past 100 years, 16 Republicans and Democrats have been elected or re-elected President of the United States.  Even more, 23 Republican and Democratic candidates have been defeated for that exultant office.  Since both space and interest are likely limited on this topic, I’ll focus on what I regard to be the most remarkable electoral episodes.

On Tuesday, November 7th, 1916 incumbent President Woodrow Wilson was narrowly re-elected over former Republican Governor and Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes of New York.  Justice Hughes, who’d not sought the nomination but resigned his seat on the court to accept it,, although he’d made no comment on public issues since his appointment by President Taft in 1910, lost by only 531,385 popular votes and by only 23 votes in the Electoral College.  Scholars generally blame his loss on his insufficient campaign in California which gave President Wilson its 13 electoral votes in the early hours of Wednesday, November 8th. (Note; take away 13 of Wilson’s 277 votes and add them to Hughes’s 254 and Wilson is a one term president by a vote of 267 to 264 out of a total of 531 electoral votes available in 1916.)

There  is a popular story that on the morning after the election a reporter knocked on Hughes’s Fifth Avenue New York City residential door and was told by the doorman “The President hasn’t yet awakened.” “Well,” replied the reporter, “When he does awaken let him know that he isn’t President.”

Justice Hughes would become Secretary of State under GOP presidents Harding and Coolidge, and after four years of serving on the World Tribunal in The Hague was appointed Chief Justice of the United States by President Herbert Hoover.  How much that or any other election mattered must necessarily be speculative.  However, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that had Hughes been elected, the United States may well have found a way to participate in the League of Nations.  Although like Woodrow Wilson, Hughes was the son of a Baptist minister, Hughes lacked President Wilson’s tendency to make every political issue a moral issue, insisting that he held the morally superior position on all issues.  Even more, Hughes lacked Wilson’s racism as well as his tendency to be jealous of his political opponents.

Ohio Governor James M. Cox was temperamentally more qualified than was his successful opponent Warren G. Harding who was elected president on his 55th birthday, November 2nd, 1920.  A progressive governor, Cox both initiated and backed many social reforms while in office and was more than familiar with the details of government administration.  However, he was the first divorced presidential candidate and as a Democrat he absorbed Woodrow Wilson’s unpopularity in 1920, even though the young and popular Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a year before his polio attack) was Cox’s vice presidential running mate.

John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, from the standpoint of experience, were reasonably comparable.  JFK won by only 118,558 popular votes.  The electoral vote, while close, was greater than that between Wilson and Hughes.  John Kennedy received 303 electoral votes to Richard Nixon’s 219.)  However warm may be our memories of “Camelot” and Jack Kennedy personally, the Kennedy administration was almost devoid of legislative success.  I’m convinced that a young President Richard Nixon, whose every act would have been scrutinized by Dwight Eisenhower, men like Dirksen and Goldwater in the Senate, and guided by a vice president of the caliber of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, and devoid of the cynicism he displayed after his narrow and some say crooked defeat by the Daley machine in Chicago, would have been a much milder politician.

As for 1968, the popular vote margin was close although not as close as was 1960.  Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon by only 510,314 votes.  The total vote for Nixon was 31,785,480.  Humphrey received 31,275,166.  Due to Governor George Wallace’s 48 electoral votes, the electoral outcome between Nixon and Humphrey was larger.  Nixon received 301 electoral votes to Humphrey’s 190.  (Note: 1968 was my first participatory presidential election and I voted for Richard Nixon.)  Both Nixon and Humphrey were well qualified to be president although Humphrey’s political scope was much broader.  From the standpoint of personal character, there was no contest.  I’m convinced that the only reason Hubert Humphrey lost was due to his inherent decency.  Although under sometimes humiliating and ego-destroying pressure, Humphrey refused to push President Lyndon B. Johnson under the proverbial political bus.  A Hubert Humphrey presidency would have lengthened the post-progressive New Deal era by at least four years.  While it would be silly to suggest a Hubert Humphrey style “Camelot,” there would have been no Watergate type of scandal, and one can reasonably presume that the political climate would have remained traditionally sharp and competitive every four years, but it would have lacked the rancor and even squalor that infects it today. 

With few exceptions (Harding and Cox in 1920; Nixon and Humphrey in 1968; and perhaps Bush and Gore in 2000 as well as Bush and Kerry in 2004), the essential candidate for the times has generally prevailed.

The general attitude in 2016 seems to be that Mrs. Clinton ought to be in jail and Donald Trump seriously needs invasive therapy.  My guess is that Hillary Clinton’s character is far superior to her reputation.

Our task as citizens is to be watchful in such a way as to insure that our presidents always demonstrate “the better angels of their nature.”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY