The Men Who Would Be King - Part 1

(With my sincere apologies to Rudyard Kipling for appropriating – or at least slightly amending – the title of his famous novel. Good thing ol’ Rudyard was a bloody good sport about such matters.)

You have to have a relatively healthy ego (or an enormously unhealthy one) to run for public office... and the former attribute is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, a candidate should believe that he or she has something of value to offer and that – when push comes to shove – their qualifications, experience, and positions on the issues are superior to their opponent’s.

Why else would someone run… and open themselves to public scrutiny and endless criticism… while having to simultaneously beg for campaign contributions?

For instance, when I ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in New Jersey’s 1st congressional district in 2008, I was convinced that I was the better choice in the Republican primary. The voters agreed… and I won a decisive victory. Likewise, I believed that my conservative principles, personal convictions, and career accomplishments far surpassed those of the 9-term Democrat incumbent whom I was hoping to unseat in the general election.

After all, during his two decades inside the Washington Beltway, my opponent had only managed to get two of his more than 500 bills passed and enacted into law, giving him one of the lowest “batting averages” in the history of the United States Congress!

Sadly, the voters sided with my opponent and he went on to win yet another do-nothing term in office. The same scenario played out in 2010, where I won a 4-way GOP primary only to earn my second “silver medal” that November. My only satisfaction was seeing my opponent called up on House Ethics charges (for campaign contribution violations that I had uncovered) and then being forced to resign in disgrace.

Oh well, at least I didn’t run for the same seat again in 2012. Instead, abiding by the wishes of my wife and kids, we relocated to Florida where we are as happy as clams. And yet, I admire candidates who refuse to give up because their passion for public service is so great and their belief in themselves is so strong.

For example, after coming in second to William McKinley in both 1896 and 1900, William Jennings Bryan won the Democratic nomination for president for a third time in 1908. This time, the “Great Commoner” lost to Republican William Howard Taft. However, Bryan’s 493 electoral votes spread over three different elections remains the record for a presidential candidate who never won… and the “Boy Orator” went on to serve with distinction as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State.

Speaking of three-time presidential candidates and three-time losers, Henry Clay ran twice on the National Republican ticket (1824 and 1832) and once as the nominee of the Whig Party (1844). Although he failed to win the presidency, Clay was considered one of the most effective legislators in congressional history, earning the nickname “the Great Compromiser.” Along with fellow Whig senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Kentuckian Clay was part of the influential “Great Triumvirate” that dominated American politics for much of the first half of the 19th century.

There have been other – and more recent – candidates who threw their hat into the presidential ring on more than one occasion. Thomas Dewey was the GOP standard-bearer in both 1944 and 1948, losing to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, respectively. However, by most accounts, Dewey was a relatively effective governor of New York State… and closely resembled the groom on a wedding cake… so we’ll give him that.

In 1952, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois was the Democratic nominee (i.e. sacrificial lamb) who faced off against Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in the general election that fall. He met with the same results four years later, having failed to realize that when people said “We Like Ike,” they really meant it.

Back to stilted Republican candidates for a moment... Michigan Gov. George Romney lost his bid for the GOP nomination in 1968, foreshadowing his son Mitt’s 2012 general election debacle. Not to be outdone, former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen sought the nomination of the Grand Old Party in 1948. Finishing second to the aforementioned Dewey, Stassen went on to become a caricature of his former self by running again in 1964, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992… all while sporting the worst toupee this side of former Delaware Senator Bill Roth or the 80-year-old version of Frank Sinatra.

Hubert Horatio Humphrey (or Hornblower, according to the infamous Jimmy Carter gaffe), also ran for president multiple times. The closest the “Happy Warrior” came to the Oval Office – besides during Lyndon Johnson’s gallbladder surgery when Humphrey was LBJ’s vice-president – was in 1968. The final popular vote that year was 31,783,783 votes (43.4%) for Richard Nixon to 31,271,839 (42.7%) for Humphrey, and 9,901,118 (13.5%) for George Wallace. However, the electoral college vote wasn’t nearly that close.

Running again in 1972, Humphrey lost the Democrat nomination to George McGovern, who subsequently went down in flames to Nixon in November. Efforts to draft Humphrey in 1976 failed to materialize and Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter secured his party’s nomination and the White House… only to lose it four years later to another two-time presidential candidate from California by the name of Ronald Reagan.

And then there is the two-time loser, one-time winner named Joseph Robinette Biden who dropped out of the 1988 and 2008 presidential races without winning a single primary before finally ascending to the presidency on January 20, 2021. I admire Joe’s tenacity but abhor his obsession with obtaining (and now retaining) power at all costs, even to the obvious detriment of the country.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at a few more Men Who Would Be King. Stay tuned…