Can a Former President Run Again if It Was Only 4 Years
Leaving Washington, D.C., backside, the Trumps board Air Forcefulness Ane at Joint Base of operations Andrews in Maryland on January. xx, hours before President Biden'due south inauguration. Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images hibernate explanation
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Leaving Washington, D.C., behind, the Trumps board Air Forcefulness One at Articulation Base Andrews in Maryland on Jan. twenty, hours before President Biden'south inauguration.
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The Senate had a test vote this calendar week that cast deep doubt on the prospects for convicting former President Donald Trump on the impeachment accuse at present pending against him. Without a ii-thirds bulk for conviction, there volition non be a 2nd vote in the Senate to bar him from hereafter federal role.
Also this week, Politico released a Morning Consult poll that found 56% of Republicans saying that Trump should run again in 2024. As he left Washington, D.C., on January. 20, he said he expected to be "back in some form."
And then will he seek a comeback? And if he does, what are his chances of returning to the White Business firm?
History provides little guidance on these questions. There is little precedent for a old president running once again, let alone winning. Just since when has the lack of precedent bothered Donald Trump?
Simply one president who was defeated for reelection has come back to win again. That was Grover Cleveland, starting time elected in 1884, narrowly defeated in 1888 and elected again in 1892.
Another, far better-known president, Theodore Roosevelt, left office voluntarily in 1908, believing his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, would go on his policies. When Taft did non, Roosevelt came dorsum to run against him four years after.
The Republican Political party establishment of that time stood by Taft, the incumbent, then Roosevelt ran as a third-political party candidate. That split the Republican vote and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
And that'due south it. Bated from those 2 men, no defeated White House occupant has come up dorsum to claim votes in the Electoral Higher. Autonomous President Martin Van Buren, defeated for reelection in 1840, sought his party's nomination in 1844 and 1848 simply was denied it both times. The latter time he helped plant the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and ran as its nominee, getting x% of the pop vote but winning no states.
More a few former presidents may have been ready to exit public life by the cease of their time at the summit. Others surely would have liked to stay longer, but they were sent packing, either by voters in November or by the nominating apparatus of their parties.
In that location have also been eight presidents who have died in role. Four in the 1800s (William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield) were succeeded by lackluster vice presidents who were not nominated for a term on their own. 4 in the 1900s (William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) were succeeded by vice presidents whose parties did nominate them for a term in their own right (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson).
Each of these 4 went on to win a term on his own, and each then left office voluntarily. As noted above, Theodore Roosevelt later inverse his mind, and Johnson began the 1968 primary season as an incumbent and a candidate but concluded his run at the end of March.
The Jackson model
A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Foursquare near the White House in June. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square almost the White Business firm in June.
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One model that might exist meaningful for Trump at this stage is that of President Andrew Jackson, who ran for president iii times and arguably won each time. His first campaign, in 1824, was a four-way contest in which he conspicuously led in both the popular vote and the Electoral College but lacked the needed majority in the latter.
That sent the issue to the House of Representatives, where each state had ane vote. A protracted and dubious negotiation involving candidates and congressional power brokers subsequently denied Jackson the prize. He immediately denounced that event as a "decadent bargain," laying the groundwork for another bid. In 1828, Jackson was swept into part, ousting the incumbent on a wave of populist fervor.
It is not an accident that Trump, following the advice of onetime adviser Steve Bannon, spoke approvingly of Jackson in 2016. When he entered the White Business firm, Trump hung Jackson's presidential portrait in the Oval Function overlooking the Resolute Desk.
It is not hard to imagine Trump invoking the spirit of Jackson'due south 1828 campaign confronting the "decadent bargain," if he runs in 2024 confronting "the steal" (his shorthand for the issue of the 2020 ballot, which he falsely claims was illegitimate).
Jackson, the ultimate outsider in his own fourth dimension, makes a far better template for Trump than either Cleveland or Teddy Roosevelt — even though the latter two were New Yorkers similar Trump.
Ii New York governors, two decades autonomously
For now, Cleveland remains the only two-term president who had a time out between terms. When he first won in 1884, he was the first Democratic president elected in 28 years, and he won by the micro-margin of just 25,000 votes nationwide. He won because he carried New York, where he was governor at the time, calculation its balloter votes to those of Democratic-leaning states in the South – which preferred a Democratic Yankee to a Republican Yankee.
The latter, James Blaine of Maine, was widely known as "Slippery Jim," and his reputation made him repugnant to the more reform-minded members of his ain political party. Blaine was also faulted in that campaign for declining to renounce a zealous supporter who had called Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion." That phrase, which has lived on in infamy, was a derogatory reference to Democrats' "wet" sentiments on the issue of booze as well as to the Roman Catholics and former secessionists to be constitute in the party tent.
Potent equally information technology was, that language backfired past alienating plenty Catholics in New York to elect Cleveland, himself a Protestant. His margin in his domicile country was a mere chiliad votes, but it was plenty to deliver a majority in the Electoral College.
Afterward Cleveland's kickoff term, the election was excruciatingly close again. The salient issue of 1888 was the tariff on goods from strange countries. Republicans were for it, making an argument not unlike Trump's ain America First rhetoric of 2016. Cleveland, on the other hand, said the tariff enriched large business organization but hurt consumers. He won the national popular vote but not the Electoral College, having fallen 15,000 votes short in his home land of New York.
Only Cleveland scarcely broke pace. He connected to entrada over the ensuing years and easily won the Autonomous nomination for the tertiary consecutive time in 1892. He and then dismissed the 1-term incumbent to whom he had lost in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, who received less than a third of the Electoral College vote.
A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. Later leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to return to the White House. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images hibernate explanation
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A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. Later on leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to return to the White Firm.
David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Cleveland stepped down after his second term, every bit other reelected presidents had seen fit to practise in emulation of George Washington. The Republicans reclaimed the presidency with William McKinley in 1896 and four years later renominated him with a new running mate who brought youth and vigor to the ticket. Just 41 at the fourth dimension, Theodore Roosevelt had all the same been a police commissioner, a "Crude Passenger" cavalry officer in the Castilian-American War and governor of New York.
Less than a yr into that term, McKinley was fatally shot, making Roosevelt president at age 42 (notwithstanding the tape for youngest chief executive). He won a term of his own in 1904 and promptly pledged non to run once again. True to his give-and-take, in 1908 he handed off to his manus-picked successor, Taft.
Roosevelt did so believing Taft would continue his policies. But if Roosevelt had managed to notice appeal as both a populist figure and a progressive, Taft more often stood with the party'due south business organisation-oriented regulars. So "T.R." decided to challenge Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912.
He did well in the nascent "primary elections" held that year, only Taft had the party machinery and controlled the convention. Roosevelt led his delegates out of the convention and organized a 3rd party, the Progressive Party (known colloquially as the "Bull Moose" party).
That fall, Roosevelt had his revenge on Taft and the GOP. The incumbent Taft finished a poor third with just eight votes in the Balloter College. Merely Roosevelt was not the primary beneficiary, finishing a distant 2d to Wilson, the Democrat, who had 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 88. Although the ii Republican rivals' combined popular vote would have hands bested Wilson, dividing the party left them both in his wake.
A alert to the GOP?
That is the model some Republicans may fearfulness seeing played out in 2024. If nominated, Trump would need to replicate Cleveland'southward unique feat from the 1890s, and he would need to overcome the demographics and voter trends that have enabled Democrats to win the pop vote in 7 of the concluding eight presidential cycles.
And if he is non nominated, Trump running as an independent or as the nominee of a tertiary party would surely split the Republican vote and make a repeat of 1912 highly likely.
Nonetheless, the grip Trump has on half or more of the GOP voter base makes him non just formidable simply unavoidable as the party plans for the midterm elections in 2022 and the ultimate question of a nominee in 2024.
To exist clear, Trump has not said he will run once more in 2024. On the day he left Washington he spoke of a return "in some form" but was vague about how that might happen. He has sent aides to discourage talk of his forming a third party.
For the time being, at least, Trump seems intent on wielding influence in the Republican Party he has dominated for the past v years — making it articulate he will be involved in primaries in 2022 confronting Republicans who did not support his campaign to overturn the election results.
That is no idle threat. Most Trump supporters have shown remarkable loyalty throughout the post-election traumas, even after the anarchism in the U.S. Capitol. The fierceness of that attachment has sobered those in the GOP who had thought Trump's era would wane after he was defeated. But Trump has been able to hold the popular imagination within his party, largely by convincing many that he was non defeated.
The results of the election accept been certified in all 50 states past governors and state officials of both parties, and in that location is no bear witness for any of the conspiracy theories questioning their validity. Yet, multiple polls have shown Trump supporters continue to believe he was unjustly removed from office.
Assuming Trump is not bedevilled on his impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection before the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, he will non face a ban on hereafter campaigns.
Some believe Trump might still be kept out of federal office by an invocation of the 14th Amendment. That part of the Constitution, added after the Civil State of war with old Amalgamated officers in mind, banned any who had "engaged in coup" against the government.
Only that wording could well be read to require action against the government, non just incitement of others to action by incendiary speech communication. It could also require lengthy litigation in federal courts and a balancing of the 14th Subpoena with the gratuitous voice communication protections of the First Subpoena.
All that tin be said at this signal is that the former president will settle into a post-presidential routine far from his previous homes in Washington and New York City. And the greatest obstacle to his return to power would seem to exist the design of history regarding the postal service-presidential careers of his predecessors.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/30/961919674/could-trump-make-a-comeback-in-2024
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