The president was showing his successor around the White House when suddenly he burst into tears. “I’m a one-termer!” George H.W. Bush sobbed. “I’m a Jimmy Carter!”
Actually this was the great Dana Carvey doing his Bush 41 imitation on “Saturday Night Live” in November 1992. It was just a few weeks after the election, and Mr. Bush, of course, had lost to Bill Clinton. A second term? “Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.”
Bush 41 was the most recent president to serve but a single term. We tend to think of this as a rarity in American politics, but for most of our nation’s history, one term — or less than two full ones — has been the rule, rather than the exception. Of the 44 men who have served as president, only 14 have completed two terms. (And I’d make the case that it’s really 13, since Woodrow Wilson was largely incapacitated during his final year in office, after his stroke in October 1919.)
If Donald Trump loses his bid for re-election in November, he’ll join the one-termers club. And then he’ll have to consider what his mission will be in the years remaining. Should this come to pass, history provides some good — if varied — examples of the ways ex-presidents can continue to serve.
More on that in a second. But first, let us consider how unusual it is that four of our past five presidents — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — completed two full terms. This has happened only once before: at the founding, when George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe all did it. (Of the first five presidents, only John Adams, in 1800, failed to win re-election.)
In fact, there’s a nearly 100-year stretch — from 1837 to 1933 — when only two men served two full terms: Ulysses S. Grant and Woodrow Wilson. (And again, I’d consider the post-1919 Wilson president in name only, as others — including his wife, Edith — determined his agenda.)
In all, 23 men served as president during those years, including Grover Cleveland, who served nonconsecutive terms. Wilson and Grant were re-elected and lived to see their successors inaugurated. What happened to the others?
Well, five were denied their party’s nomination for a second term: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and Chester Arthur. Five more — Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland (in 1888), Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover — gained the nomination, only to be defeated in the general election.
Six others died in office: William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and Warren Harding. Of the six, three — Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley — were assassinated.
And five more simply chose not to run for a second full term: James Polk, James Buchanan, Rutherford Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt (in 1908) and Calvin Coolidge. Cleveland also opted out of another run in 1896; apparently two terms, even if not consecutive, were enough. (He did wind up getting his picture on the $1,000 bill, though, which, as my mother used to say, is not nothing.)
In the postwar era, Dwight Eisenhower finished a second term in January 1961 — but after him came another run of presidencies suspended. John Kennedy was killed in his first term. Lyndon Johnson, worn down by Vietnam, decided not to run again. Richard Nixon was re-elected — and then had to resign. Gerald Ford wasn’t re-elected; neither was Jimmy Carter.
I’m in my 60s now. I was 30 years old before I saw a president finish a second term — Reagan, in 1989.
All of which may provide some perspective for Donald Trump, who — if the current polls hold — could find himself in Jimmy Carter’s shoes this January. If so, he’ll need to consider what role he might play as an ex-president.
Here too, history provides some good (and some not so good) models.
First the bad news: A lot of former presidents kick the bucket fairly soon after they leave office (and this, of course, is not counting the eight who didn’t reach the post-presidency, thanks either to an assassin’s bullet, heart attack or a bowl of bad cherries). Polk left office in March 1849 and was dead by June. Arthur was gone in less than two years. Four more survived less than five: Wilson, Washington, Coolidge and Lyndon Johnson.
On the other hand, there’s Ford, who left office in 1977 and lived for 30 more years. Or Hoover, who lived for 31. Or Jimmy Carter — currently at 39 years and counting. So, assuming Donald Trump stays away from the death cherries, what might he do in the years to come?
One president, Andrew Johnson, was re-elected to the Senate. This was a real vindication for the first president to be impeached, although admittedly, dying of a stroke after only five months in the Senate took some of the shine off it. Then there was Taft, who first became a professor at Yale Law School, and then, in 1921, chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Sure, I could see that. Professor Trump. Senator Trump. Chief Justice Trump. Are these titles really harder to imagine than, say, President Trump?
But if none of these career paths is appealing to Mr. Trump, another example might be found in — well, Jimmy Carter.
In 1982, he co-founded the Carter Center, devoted to democracy, human rights and curing disease. He helped provide housing for the homeless and underprivileged through Habitat for Humanity. He worked as a freelance ambassador mediating disputes around the world. He taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown Plains, Ga.
If Donald Trump has failed to make America great again — and if one tried really hard, one might just be able to make that case — he might consider whether his time post-presidency might yet give him a chance to make America, well, better.
Can you see him building homes for the homeless, given his history in New York real estate? Or negotiating peace in the world’s hot spots, given his triumph with North Korea? Or perhaps teaching Sunday school, given his not-at-all-cynical expressions of faith, what with waving that Bible around in Lafayette Square?
For a moment let us consider Donald Trump dedicating the rest of his life to helping the poor. Or to bringing about world peace through negotiation. Or to teaching the precepts of his humble Christian faith.
I want to imagine Donald Trump doing these things — honestly, I do.
But, you know. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
