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Being able to beat a president of the United States who decides to run again is a rare event in American politics: it hasn’t happened in almost thirty years, since World War II it has happened only three times, compared to ten elections in which the outgoing president had the right to apply again. Donald Trump will also be added to this list, and in fact his mandate, at least on the surface, shows some traits in common with the rest of the presidents who remained in office for only four years: that is, some relevant crises that marked their administrations. .
– Read also: All US electoral maps from 1788 to 2020
If we look a little further, between the 19th and early 20th centuries it had happened several times that a sitting president could not be reelected. The first in chronological order was John Adams, who in 1801 lost to Thomas Jefferson; Then it was his son John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren – the first to lose mainly due to an economic crisis, the so-called Panic of 1837 – and Grover Cleveland, who lost his reelection but nominated again and won in his third electoral campaign. . , becoming the first and only president to obtain two non-consecutive terms. That is why Trump is considered the 45th president but there were 44 presidents in total, eventually succeeding William Taft and Herbert Hoover, who had the misfortune to govern during the crisis of 1929.
Hoover, left, with his successor Franklin Delano Roosevelt on his inauguration day, March 16, 1933 (Topical Press Agency / Getty Images).
The first postwar president not to be re-elected was Gerald Ford, a Republican, president since 1974, when he replaced Richard Nixon after his resignation over Watergate, until 1976, before being defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter. Ford was an unelected president who ran under party pressure and whose administration was associated with Watergate and the Vietnam War, now in its 20th year. In his first months in office, Ford was so unpopular that at one point the Gallup poll put him 33 points behind Carter. In the end it reached two points, thanks to a decent election campaign: so much so that in the following years Ford recalled having “almost won” the election.
Gerald Ford (a sinistra) with Richard Nixon in a 1973 photo (Ian Showell / Keystone / Getty Images)
His successor, Carter, also served only one term. Carter was a rather anomalous president, reaching the peak of his political career as a semi-unknown, and his presidency was also quite peculiar.
In many ways he was a precursor of political progressivism, environmentalism and supporter of a broad federal government, but his administration was inevitably marked by two very serious crises, both caused by the Iranian revolution of 1979: the energy crisis caused by the sharp increase in the oil prices. , and the crisis linked to the hostages in the US embassy in Tehran – that of the movie Argo, understand – that irremediably marked his chances of being reelected. It didn’t help that Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan, a figure so popular and charismatic that he won both elections in which he ran, in 1980 and 1984, with a gap of more than 400 large voters (no one has achieved such a gap since) . .
Ronald Reagan with Jimmy Carter at the White House in October 1981 (Gene Forte / Consolidated News / Getty Images)
His successor and former vice president, George HW Bush, had a similar problem: despite winning the 1988 elections with a very high percentage – he overtook his Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis by almost eight points – during his presidency there was a long economic crisis. which in fact made him very unpopular. In four years, his popularity fell by less than half, from 90 percent in the first few months to less than 40 percent in the election year (during which he was attacked from the right by his primary rival Pat Buchanan and candidate White House Independent Ross Perot).
Also for Bush, among other things, there was a challenger on the launch pad and super charismatic: Bill Clinton, who won the 1992 elections quite easily – also thanks to the candidacy of Perot, who divided the Conservative vote – and four years then he won. re-election, achieving the latest landslide victory for a Democratic president.
Bill Clinton and George HW Bush photographed in 2005 (Frank Micelotta / Getty Images)
Thus we come to Trump, whose mandate will surely be remembered for many things – the wall with Mexico, relations with the most authoritarian leaders on the planet, the appointment of three judges to the Supreme Court – but above all for the first pandemic in almost a century . , managed in a very controversial way.
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