YOU'RE FIRED!
Many of those in favor of term limits cite the unfair advantage enjoyed by the incumbent in any political race. This is especially true of the President. An incumbent President running for re-election has immediate access to publicity and coverage on a national scale, to show one of many built-in advantages. But in spite of all the advantages an incumbent President enjoys over any opponent, he isn’t always re-elected. A number of Presidents have been given their “pink slip” by the American electorate.
The first President to be ousted by the voters was John Adams in 1800. This election is often called the “Revolution of 1800” because it was a complete change of government as complete as any revolution. John Adams and the Federalists were defeated by Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. Not only did the voters choose a new President, but a new party and a new philosophy. John Adams was not a good loser, and left town the night before Jefferson’s inauguration rather than participate in it. Adams may have been a poor sport, but he was a patriot. He never considered using force to maintain himself in office, as many Europeans expected.
Oddly enough, the next President to get the axe was the son of the first one. John Quincy Adams was defeated in something of a landslide by Andrew Jackson and the new Democratic Party. Like his father, John Quincy Adams left town the night before Jackson’s inauguration. He later served a long career in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1840, Martin Van Buren tried to discuss the issues, such as the depression and the Independent Treasury System he established. William Henry Harrison and the Whigs staged parades and parties, and sung their way into the White House by avoiding any discussion of the issues. They also managed to blame the depression, and almost everything else wrong at the time, on Van Buren. As a result, he was defeated for re-election.
In 1856, Franklin Pierce wanted to be re-elected, but never got the chance to face an opponent in the election. His own party refused to re-nominate him, and chose someone else. To this day, Pierce remains the only President to be denied re-nomination by his party. Even Herbert Hoover, in the midst of the Great Depression and facing certain defeat at the polls, won re-nomination on the first ballot.
When Grover Cleveland ran for re-election in 1888, he won the popular vote by almost 100,000 votes. But the distribution of votes produced an anomaly in the Electoral College. Cleveland won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote. Cleveland left the White House and spent the next four years preparing to run again. Four years later, Cleveland defeated the man who had beaten him four years earlier. In the process, Cleveland became one of the few men to win his party’s presidential nomination three times.
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