I was ruminating, today, on this idea I’ve been repeating that the next President will be an exception of one kind or another, whether it’s the first female president, the first black president, the first Latino president, the first Mormon president, the first former P.O.W. president, the first president to never hold higher office than mayor, or none of those. And it occurred to me that in the last fifty years, every Presidential election has been won by either the sitting president (in 56, 64, 72, 84, 96 and 2004), the sitting vice-president (in 88), somebody who defeated the sitting president (in 76, 80 and 92), or somebody who defeated the sitting vice-president (in 60, 68 and 2000*). This is the first time since 1952 that neither the incumbent President nor the incumbent Vice-President will be on the ballot. Before that, there were four consecutive victories for incumbent Presidents, and before that, a defeat for the incumbent.
These days, by which I pretty much mean after The War, the White House changes Parties quite often, and Our Only President’s father winning a third term for his Party was far more unusual than I had noted at the time. Of course, at that time, there were only three post-war vice-presidential runs following two-term Presidents, and now there have been all of four. Although the fourth is yet another exception.
It’s just another thing to underline my point that there are so few Presidential elections, it’s impossible to make any general rules for predicting them. This election won’t be anything like the last one, where the incumbent President was running for reelection, or the one before that, where the two-term incumbent’s Vice-President was running. It won’t be like 1952, which was before television. It’ll be different. It’ll be an exception. Like all the others.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.