HIP HIP HOORAY ANOTHER TOPIC....

[dsteele]

Here is OGE' original question:

 

"What are George W Bush's chances for re-election, in your opinion of course?"

 

I think that he needs to be keenly aware that he could lose -- provided he wants a second term. He may not . . . I don't think he's said one way or the other.

 

I respect our current President because he faces his challenges head on and doesn't back down. I think that as long as he continues to be perceived as a strong leader (the image is slipping) that he has a pretty good chance of being re-elected if he decides to run. However, he needs an economic upturn that is felt by folks like you and me and touted by more than just economists to assure re-election.

 

I also find it ironic that people tend to blame the President for economic problems. It takes more than a year or two for the economy to turn around. Each President -- at least in his first term -- lives or dies by the economic policies of his predecessor. And each two-term president leaves his successor economic blows or glows.

 

Nixon hurt Carter, Carter helped Reagan, Reagan hurt Bush, Bush helped Clinton . . .

 

At least that's my theory at the moment. It's been a while since I took economics in literally the same classroom that Reagan took economics, but at a different desk.

 

DS

 

[LovetoCamp]

Dave, a good friend of mine was recently elected to the Red Devil Sports Hall of Fame. What a beautiful little college!

[NJCubScouter]

DS, are you seriously suggesting that there is some doubt that GWB wants to run for a second term? I don't think there is any possibility at all that he will run. I don't think I have ever even heard or seen anyone suggest this before.

[NJCubScouter]

Oops. I mean, no possibility that he will NOT run. I am overrun with negatives, and I left one out. It's a bad thing.

 

Let's try this again:

 

He will run for re-election. There's no doubt about it.

[dsteele]

NJ --

 

I''m not a liberal, nor am I a staunch conservative -- however much my liberal mother would disagree.

 

I have no doubt that GW Bush will run for re-election, but he hasn't said yet that he will. That's all I wanted to point out. We can't make assumptions on his part. Running for re-election is up to him.

 

And people wonder why professional scouters stay away from politics. It's technicalities like that that bother us.

 

DS

[NJCubScouter]

DS, after I thought a bit more about your statement about GWB, it occurred to me that I thought he had made it pretty clear that he was going to run, though perhaps not with a formal announcement. Certainly every media outlet and politicians from both parties seem to also be under the assumption that he is running. That made me wonder, if he has not started raising money, he would be at a huge disadvantage.

 

Here's the answer:

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/24/politics/main555427.shtml

 

This is a story from May of this year entitled "Bush Jumpstarts '04 Fundraising." Here are the first 2 paragraphs:

 

(AP) President Bush is asking more than a million potential donors to give money now for his 2004 re-election bid so he can focus on fighting terrorism and running the country.

 

I'll be depending on friends and supporters like you to get my campaign organized and operating across our country, Mr. Bush wrote in a letter dated May 16, the day he began his re-election campaign.

 

So, in other words, he's running. He's raising money like there's no tomorrow. Some of these recent speeches he has made have been on fund-raising trips also. He probably has not made the "official" announcement because there is no real need for him to do so. Incumbents generally do that toward the end of the year before the election unless there is a real challenger within his own party on the horizon. I don't think any Republicans (other than crackpots anyway) are even thinking about it.

[dsteele]

Well, Hot Dog! Thanks NJ.

 

Now that I know he's running, unless he has an affair with an intern, he's got my vote! ;)0

 

NJ, you'll probably know better than I do, but I vaguely remember hearing about a president or two who didn't want to run for re-election . . . but I can't remember who or when.

 

Trail Pounder -- what's your friend's name? How do you know about Eureka College? It seems to few do.

 

You can private message me if you'd like. A friend of Eureka is a friend of mine.

 

DS

[OldGreyEagle]

I beleive Lyndon Baines Johnson said if nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve, which sounded really cool unless you know WIlliam Tecumseh Sherman first said that almost 100 years before LBJ did. Of course Sherman was quite the sound bite in his day, he also coined the term "War is Hell", its just to bad World Civilization cant see to quite comprehend what Sherman said

[Twocubdad]

It wasn't LBJ, but I think Mo Udall. And he was making a joke of Sherman's joke. He said "If nominated I will not run, if elected I will leave the country."

[NJCubScouter]

OGE is correct, Lyndon Johnson was the last president to decline to run for re-election. However, he did not do so because he had decided he did not want to be president any more. He, and/or Democratic leaders at the time, realized that due to the controversy over the Vietnam War, he faced an uphill battle to get re-elected, and he withdrew in order to allow another Democrat to have a chance of winning the general election. A little-remembered fact is that at the time LBJ withdrew, Eugene McCarthy had already placed a close second in the New Hampshire primary, making clear how much difficulty Johnson was in.

 

The previous president who did not run for re-election was Harry Truman in 1952. But he had already been president for almost 2 terms (as FDR had died a month or two after he was sworn in for his fourth term in 1945.) I do not know exactly why he did not run, maybe he decided almost 2 terms was close enough to 2 terms.

 

Most of the time the question comes up is when the president had been serving as vice president, the president dies, the new president serves the rest of the term and another full term, and then has to decide whether to for a second full term. This was true for both LBJ and Truman.

 

The last president who actually served only one 4-year term and then decided not to run for a second? Probably James K. Polk, elected in 1844. That is one of the reasons historians usually rank him as one of the best presidents. He came into office seeking to do a few major things (like capturing the southeastern U.S. from Mexico, establishing the border of the northwestern U.S., little things like that), did them, and left. You don't see that much these days.

[NJCubScouter]

But TwoCubDad is also right, the "if nominated I will not run" etc. line was not spoken by Johnson. I have seen film clips of his speech, I believe what he said was much more mundane, "I will not seek the nomination of my party for another term as president" or something very close to that.

[dsteele]

Thanks guys. I thought it had happened before and that's why I brought it up. I think there's a reason the BSA requires a college degree for it's professionals and doesn't care what field it's in. One of the reasons is that after a few years of full-saturation as a professional, we forget everything execpt for the BSA stuff

 

I was going to end with a quote from Plato, but I forgot which color I was thinking of

 

DS

[NWScouter]

Just another short history lesson. One of the myths that most presidents are elected to two terms. Only fifteen out of the forty-three Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton. Another political truth, the vice presidency is a way to get elected president, only five have been elected president without having filled out term due the death of the president, J. Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, Nixon, and G. H. W. Bush. Out of the eight vice presidents to become presidents on the death of their presidents only four were elected to another term, T. Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman and L.B. Johnson. One of the two unelected vice presidents became president, Ford.

 

Now to go to the original topic. George H. W. Bush had very high poll numbers at the end of the first Gulf War, but lost two years later to Clinton. G.W. Bush looks like he will have a war dragging on to the elections. How that plays out will be interesting. Will the patriotic feelings keep him in the White House or will the inability to stop the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq doom his chances as did Carters inability to solve the hostage crisis in Iran.

 

Im life long democrat, even was an area coordinator for McGovern in 72, but I haven picked someone yet. Leaning to Kerry, Deans ideas sound good but not sure about his commitment to them, want to find out more about Clark.

 

[packsaddle]

According to The Economist, he'll run and he'll win IF the economy improves and the middle east doesn't get a lot worse than it already is. I tend to agree. There's much that can happen between now and then. I'll know for sure after the election.

[NJCubScouter]

NW, on your historical rundown, I suppose it's all in how you look at it. Five presidents died during their first term and therefore never had an opportunity to run for a second (WH Harrison, Taylor, Garfield, Kennedy, Harding.) Five were never even elected president once, having moved up from V.P. to president due to death or resignation (Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Arthur, Ford.) Of those five, Ford is the only one who even ran for his own term, or at least is the only one nominated by his party for a term as president -- the rest were either seen as caretakers or for some other reason were not taken seriously within their own party. So I think for a realistic comparison, you need to subtract from the total of 43, these nine (leaving Ford since he was a viable candidate for election and almost won), plus GWB since we do not know yet how many terms he will serve, and you are down to 33 -- of which almost half were elected twice.

 

And then I could go into the reasons why some of the one-term presidents were one-term presidents, but I'll leave that for another time.