{"id":3339,"date":"2005-01-10T13:03:20","date_gmt":"2005-01-10T18:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3339.html"},"modified":"2005-01-10T13:03:20","modified_gmt":"2005-01-10T18:03:20","slug":"the-most-wide-open-race-in-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-most-wide-open-race-in-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"The most wide-open race in decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to follow up for a moment on a point Tim Russert mentioned<\/a> in passing yesterday.<\/p>\n

“Before we go, Byron York mentioned Newt Gingrich, thinking about running for president. Professor Bob Shmulen of Notre Dame sent me a note the other day saying 2008 will be the first time in a long, long time where there will not be an incumbent president or vice president seeking the nomination of either party.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s true, but how long is a “long, long time”?<\/p>\n

One has to go way back to 1952 to find a race in which there was no incumbent president or vice president running. Harry Truman decided not to seek a full second term of his own, his vice president (Alben Barkley) was passed over by the Dem establishment for Adlai Stevenson, and Dwight Eisenhower won in a landslide.<\/p>\n

Before ’52, one has to turn to 1928, when Herbert Hoover beat Al Smith to find the previous race in which there was no incumbent president or vice president on either party’s ticket.<\/p>\n

Obviously, both of these races came before the modern age of presidential campaigns. Indeed, they precede the modern primary process. There have been a few races in which an incumbent VP had to work for the nomination (H.W. Bush in ’88, for example), and a race here and there in which an incumbent president faced a relatively serious primary challenge (Ford in ’76, Carter in ’80, Bush in ’92), but by and large, incumbents have had an inside track at their party’s nomination.<\/p>\n

Dick Cheney has made it abundantly clear that he won’t seek the GOP nomination in ’08. Assuming, of course, that he hasn’t been replaced as VP by then, there will be no incumbent candidate. <\/p>\n

With this in mind, 2008 will be more intense than anything we’ve seen since the dawn of TV and voter-nominated candidates. Every cycle has seen one side or the other enduring a contentious primary season, but 2008 will be the first in the modern era to have both parties going at it at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted to follow up for a moment on a point Tim Russert mentioned in passing yesterday. “Before we go, Byron York mentioned Newt Gingrich, thinking about running for president. Professor Bob Shmulen of Notre Dame sent me a note the other day saying 2008 will be the first time in a long, long time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}