Coins and presidents

How many different U.S. coins have portraits of presidents on them, and who chooses the presidents?

Even though millions of Americans come in daily contact with pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, I suspect that very few of us could list the presidents we routinely "handle."

I'll answer your question in short order, but first some little-known background: Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress "to coin money." The first federal building constructed under the new Constitution was the U.S. Mint, in Philadelphia, which in the 1790s served as the nation's capital. It is said that President George Washington, who lived just a few blocks from the mint, personally donated some of the silver for the new republic's first coins.[1] That's better than providing a portrait!

Since the 1790s, the U.S. Treasury Department has been responsible for minting coins. I am told that no president's portrait appeared on a coin until the Lincoln penny came out in 1909 to commemorate the centennial of the 16th president's birth. (From the 1790s to the 1890s, however, presidential portraits appeared routinely on peace medals that were given to the Indians.) Traditionally Congress has gotten to choose which presidents are on which coins. Presidents are on at least a half-dozen coins in circulation today. They make up the lion's share -- but not all -- of portraits on circulating coins.

OBVERSE PORTRAITS

As the old saying goes, there are two sides to every coin. The portrait is on the front or obverse side, everything else on the reverse side. Following are the presidential portraits on the obverse side of currently circulating U.S. coins:

- penny: Abraham Lincoln, looking right;

- old nickel (before March 2005): Thomas Jefferson, looking left;

- new nickel (after March 2005): Thomas Jefferson, looking right;

- dime: Franklin Roosevelt, looking left;

- quarter: George Washington, looking left;

- half dollar: John F. Kennedy, looking left.

In addition to the circulating coins, listed above, you may encounter commemorative coins that are also minted by the U.S. Treasury Department:

- bicentennial dollar: Dwight Eisenhower, looking left (1976);

- half dollar: George Washington 250th commemorative coin (1982);

- dollar: Eisenhower centennial silver dollar (1990);

- dollar: Thomas Jefferson 250th silver dollar (1993);

- five-dollar coin: Franklin Roosevelt gold commemorative coin (1997);

- there were also commemorative coins of George Washington and Dolley Madison minted in 1999;[2] she is, I believe, the only first lady whose portrait is on a coin.

LEFT- VERSUS RIGHT-FACING

On circulating coins until recently, all the portraits but Lincoln's looked left. (Now Jefferson has joined Lincoln in looking right.) Why was Lincoln virtually alone in looking right? The answer has nothing to do with politics. The portrait of our 16th president was based on a plaque by Victor David Brenner done at the beginning of the 20th century. So taken was President Theodore Roosevelt with Brenner's Lincoln that he asked his Treasury secretary to use the design on a coin that was to be put into circulation in 1909, in celebration of the birth of Lincoln 100 years earlier.[3]

MORE COINS, MORE PRESIDENTS?

Collectors may get a new burst of coins to collect. Congress is currently considering minting dollar coins to commemorate all our past presidents. This follows the Mint's wildly successful state quarter program, which has generated $5 billion in revenue and turned some 140 million Americans into coin collectors. The coins would be minted at a rate of four presidents per year, starting with George Washington. Only sitting presidents would be excluded.[4]

THE STORIES BEHIND THE PORTRAITS

There is a story about the presidential portraits on each of our coins. Following is from the Website of the U.S. Mint:

The presidents that appear on the obverse (front) side of our circulating coins were all selected by Congress in recognition of their service to our country. However, they were chosen under slightly different circumstances.

Designed by Victor Brenner, the Lincoln cent was issued in 1909 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Felix Schlag's portrait of Thomas Jefferson, which began to appear on the obverse side of the nickel in 1938, was chosen in a design competition among some 390 artists.

The death of Franklin Roosevelt prompted many requests to the Treasury Department to honor the late president by placing his portrait on a coin. Less than one year after his death, the dime bearing John R. Sinnock's portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt was released to the public on FDR's birthday, January 30, 1946.

The portrait of George Washington by John Flanagan, which appears on quarters minted from 1932 to today, was selected to commemorate the 200th anniversary of our first president's birth.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy generated such an outpouring of public sentiment that President Lyndon Johnson sent legislation to Congress to authorize the Treasury Department's new 50-cent pieces. Bearing the portrait designed by Gilroy Roberts, the first Kennedy half-dollars were minted on February 11, 1964.[5]

(Question from Lupe M. of Fresno, CA)
_______________________________

[1] See the U.S. Mint Website at http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/mint_history/

[2] http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/CoinLibrary/index.cfm

[3] http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?action=fun_facts4

[4] Jennifer Brooks, "Presidents May Replace Sacagawea on Some $1 Coins," Lansing State Journal, April 27, 2005, p. 1A.

[5] http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?action=fun_facts3

Inaugurations in American history

Question: Which inaugurations have been the most memorable?
From: Brenda T. of Colorado Springs
Date: January 19, 2005

Gleaves answers: The president is the one individual upon whom all the American people can cast their cares. So the formal installation of a president is a major event, the American equivalent of a coronation.

The most significant inauguration in U.S. history was arguably the first. Aware of the importance that this national ritual would take on, George Washington established several precedents during his first inauguration. The swearing-in took place outside. The oath was taken upon an open Bible. Washington added the words "so help me God" to the constitutionally prescribed oath of office. Immediately after the oath, he bent over to kiss the Bible.[1] An inaugural address was given to the Congress assembled inside Federal Hall, the building in New York City that served as the Capitol in those days. The contents of that first inaugural address served as a model for subsequent addresses. Also festivities accompanied the inauguration, including a church service, a parade, and fireworks.[2]

Although inaugurations are like coronations, it's no guarantee that inaugural addresses will be great or even good orations. There have been 55 inaugural addresses, but only a half dozen or so are truly memorable. Many people wonder why this is. Robert Dallek explains that these orations reflect the broadest consensus in American culture. In trying to reach out to as many citizens as possible, presidents do not attempt to be innovative but massage the tried-and-true themes of freedom, unity, American exceptionalism, and the goodness of the American people.

SEVEN MEMORABLE INAUGURAL ADDRESSES

George Washington's first Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789, put the new nation in world historical context: "the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

Thomas Jefferson's first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801. After a bitter election that resulted in the first transfer of power from one party to another, he tried to unify the young nation, exclaiming, "We are all Federalists; we are all Republicans."

Abraham Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865, during the closing days of the Civil War, called for "malice toward none," and "charity for all."

Franklin Roosevelt's first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression, proclaimed, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Franklin Roosevelt's third Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1941, was a paean to the idea and reality of American democracy when Europe and Asia were being ripped asunder by the Axis juggernaut.

John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961, challenged fellow citizens: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Ronald Reagan's first Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981, pressed a new idea to reverse the growth of big government: "In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem."

OTHER FACTS AND HIGHLIGHTS

The longest inaugural address was William Henry Harrison's in 1841. He delivered the 1 hour 45 minute oration without wearing a hat or coat in a howling snow storm, came down with pneumonia, and died one month later. His was the shortest tenure in the White House.

The shortest inaugural address was George Washington's second, in 1793. Yet he had the most important administration in American history. So the longest inaugural address was followed by the shortest administration in U.S. history, and the shortest inaugural address occurred at the midpoint of the most important administration in U.S. history.

Most meaningful ad libbed line and gesture: George Washington added the words "so help me God" to the oath of office (the original text of which is prescribed by the U.S. Constitution), then bent forward to kiss the Bible. How did these words and this gesture come about? Supposedly the chief justice of New York's Supreme Court admonished Washington and others that an oath that was not sworn on the Bible would lack legitimacy. As no Bible could be found in Federal Hall, where the swearing in was to be held, one was borrowed from a Masonic lodge a few blocks away.

First president inaugurated in Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson, on March 4, 1801. George Washington had been inaugurated in New York City (1789) and in Philadelphia (1793), and John Adams had been inaugurated in Philadelphia (1797).

First president to eschew his successor's inauguration: John Adams, on March 4, 1801. The campaign of 1800 between the sitting president, Adams, and his vice president, Jefferson, had left deep wounds. Adams was in no mood to celebrate and left town.

Tradition of attending a religious service on the way to the Inauguration: began with Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. George W. Bush is attending St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House.

Striking moment from today's perspective: when Dwight D. Eisenhower asked listeners to bow their heads: "...[W]ould you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own?" Some reference to God, or asking for God's blessings on the United States, has been a part of all 55 inaugural addresses. But Ike's gesture was a first.

Funniest line in a first inaugural address: Presidential historian Paul Boller has read every inaugural address (for which, he says, he deserves a medal), and he claims that there is not a single funny line in the official texts. However, our eighth president, Martin Van Buren inadvertantly made the audience laugh when he said, "Unlike all who have preceded me, the [American] Revolution that gave us existence as one people was achieved at the period of my birth; and whilst I contemplate with grateful reverence that memorable event...." Van Buren meant that he revered the American Revolution, but to the audience it sounded as if he revered his own birth.

Most surprising moment at an inaugural ceremony: on January 20, 1953, when Texas-born Dwight Eisenhower, in the reviewing stand, was lassoed by a cowboy who rode up to him on a horse.

Rowdiest inaugural celebration: at Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, the crowd grew so rambunctious that the police had to be called in.

Dumbest thing a president did at his inauguration: in March of 1841, William Henry Harrison gave his Inaugural Address -- the longest in presidential history, nearly two hours in length -- in a snow storm without wearing a hat or overcoat. He came down with a bad cold that developed into a major respiratory infection (probably pneumonia), and was dead within the month. (Of course, many other presidents have acted similarly in extremely cold temperatures during their inauguration. The night before John Kennedy was sworn in, a cold front hammered the East Coast, leaving snow and frigid temperatures in its wake. Watch the film clip: JFK removed his overcoat before standing up to receive the oath of office and deliver his address.)

Warmest inauguration: Ronald Reagan's first, on January 20th, 1981, when the temperature at the swearing in was 55 degrees.

Coldest inauguration: Ronald Reagan's second, on January 20th, 1985, when the temperature at noon was 7 degrees. The events were moved inside the Capitol. By the way, Congress had to pass a last-minute resolution to give permission to use the Rotunda for the event.

Best book about inaugurations: Presidential historian Paul F. Boller Jr. of Texas Christian University has written the best historical overview titled Presidential Inaugurations.

As a rule, second inaugural addresses are not as long as first ones. As in so much else, George Washington set the example, with an extremely brief second inaugural address that would endure as the shortest in American history. Abraham Lincoln explained why brevity was called for the second time around: "At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented." And then Lincoln went on to deliver arguably the most memorable Inaugural Address in U.S. history, contemplating an inscrutable God's just punishment on the North and South because of the existence of slavery.
_______________________

[1]Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Inaugurations: From Washington's Election to George W. Bush's Gala (San Diego: Harcourt, 2001), p. 13.

[2]From the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/inaugural-exhibit.html.

Christmas at the White House

Question: How have the holidays been celebrated by our presidents?
From: Hauenstein Center staff and friends, Grand Rapids, MI
Date: December 18, 2004

Gleaves answers: To our visitors, holiday greetings from the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies! Around Grand Valley I have run into several people who have asked if there would be something on the website talking about how our presidents have traditionally celebrated the holidays.

It surprises many Americans to learn that Christmas was not celebrated by every community in the early years of the United States. Some descendents of the New England Puritans, for example, avoided placing special emphasis on the Yuletide season. But in states like Virginia, Christmas enjoyed more popularity. At Mount Vernon on Christmas morning, the festivities organized by George and Martha Washington began at daybreak with a fox hunt. A hearty midday feast followed in a celebration that included Christmas pie, music, dancing, and visits with friends and relatives that sometimes continued for a week.

One of the most unusual Christmas celebrations was hosted by James Buchanan, our nation’s lone bachelor president. In 1857 he threw a party for 30 American Indians representing the Ponca, Pawnee, and Pottawatomie tribes. An eyewitness account reported that while the Pottawatomie arrived in “citizen’s dress,” the Pawnee and Ponca “were in their grandest attire, and more than profuse of paint and feathers.”

Half a century later, Theodore Roosevelt almost forbade bringing a Christmas tree into the White House. A staunch conservationist, TR didn’t believe in cutting down conifers for decoration. Two of his boys, Theodore Jr. and Kermit, got into a bit of trouble when their father caught them dragging two small trees into their rooms. After the incident, Roosevelt spoke with Gifford Pinchot, the famous forester, who persuaded TR that selectively cutting down trees helped forests thrive. That was enough for TR, and the first family kept the trees Theodore Jr. and Kermit had dragged in, and every year thereafter brought a Christmas tree into the White House.

In 1923 First Lady Grace Coolidge accepted the gift of a large Christmas tree given by the District of Columbia Public Schools, and it became the first cut tree ever displayed on the grounds outside the White House. The balsam fir was decorated and displayed on the South Lawn. To dazzle citizens with new technology, President and Mrs. Coolidge were able to light the tree by merely pushing a button – a feat that we take for granted today but that caused wonderment then!

The idea of having themes for official White House Christmas trees was championed by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961. A tree decorated with ornaments reminiscent of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite stood in the Blue Room. Some of the ornaments were reused on the next year’s tree and included brightly wrapped packages, candy canes, gingerbread cookies, and straw ornaments crafted by disabled persons and older citizens from all over the United States.

With the growth of the environmental movement in the late 1960s and early ’70s, President Richard Nixon took an environmentally friendly step. In 1972 he planted a Colorado blue spruce on the Ellipse south of the White House. By 1978 the spruce was large enough and sturdy enough to be designated the National Christmas Tree. It is lit up every year in early December and tended by the National Park Service.

Back in the residence, topping the official White House Christmas tree has become another holiday tradition, and that feat has been accomplished by former First Lady Barbara Bush a record twelve times. She had the honor from 1981 to 1992, during President Reagan’s and her husband’s combined three terms.

Increasingly, American presidents have been sensitive to the fact that the holiday season is not just celebrated by Christians, but by believers of other faiths and people from other traditions. For instance, several presidents – among them Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – have participated in Hanukkah celebrations. In 1998 President Clinton joined Israel’s President Weizman in Jerusalem to light the first candle of Hanukkah. And this year a 100-year old menorah, borrowed from the collection of the Jewish Museum in New York, was lit in the White House residence for the first time. President and Mrs. George W. Bush celebrated the holiday with staff members and their families by lighting the second candle on December 10th.

As Americans, we have much to celebrate this holiday season among our family, friends, and colleagues, and we at the Hauenstein Center wish you a happy holiday and productive 2005.

Assassinations

Question: Today is the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas. How many other presidents have been assassinated in U.S. history?
From: Bill B. of Ft. Worth, Texas
Date: November 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: ASSASSINATIONS

In U.S. history, four presidents have been assassinated, each by a gunman:

1. The first American president to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln, who was shot five weeks into his second term by John Wilkes Booth, in Washington, DC, in a Good Friday performance of a play at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865; he died within hours. As part of the same conspiracy, Secretary of State William Seward was attacked the same evening; he survived the assassination attempt by an accomplice of John Wilkes Booth who was known as Lewis Powell or Lewis Paine.

2. James A. Garfield was shot just months into his term of office by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881, in Washington, DC; he died September 19, 1881, making his administration the second shortest in American history.

3. William McKinley was shot a few months into his second term, in Buffalo, New York, by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901; clinging to life barely a week, he passed away on September 14, 1901.

4. John F. Kennedy was shot three years into his presidency by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Because of number of people believe that Oswald was part of a conspiracy, it has become the most investigated murder mystery in human history.

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS

In addition to the four presidents who have been assassinated, there have been assassination attempts against five presidents:

- Andrew Jackson was an assassin's target in 1835.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt was the intended victim in Miami on February 15, 1932, when he was president elect; the mayor of Chicago, Anton J. Cermak, was between FDR and the gunman Giuseppe Zangara; he paid with his life three weeks later.

- Harry S. Truman escaped injury on November 1, 1950, in Washington, DC, when Puerto Rican nationalists tried to shoot their way into Blair House, where the president was staying as the White House was undergoing renovation. One of the White House Police, Officer Leslie Coffelt, died in the line of duty.

- Gerald R. Ford was targeted for assassination twice in September of 1975 by women in California. The first attempt against his life occurred on September 5, 1975, in Sacramento, when Lynette Alice (Squeaky) Fromme aimed but did not fire a .45-caliber pistol at the president. The second attempt occurred in San Francisco, just a little over two weeks later, on September 22, 1975, when Sara Jane Moore fired one shot from a .38-caliber pistol that was deflected.

- Ronald Reagan was seriously wounded by John W. Hinckley, Jr., on March 30, 1981, as he emerged from a speaking engagement; three other people were also seriously wounded.

There was a serious assassination attempt against one former president, Theodore Roosevelt, who was shot in Milwaukee on October 14, 1912, while attempting to make a comeback for president. When he was shot, TR was on his way to deliver a speech and famously fulfilled his duty before going to the hospital.

In sum, 10 U.S. presidents were the target of assassins:
- four were shot to death;
- five survived assassination attempts (in Ford's case, twice in one month);
- and one ex-president survived an assassination attempt.

Two other politicians with presidential aspirations were assassinated: Louisiana Senator Huey Long (1935) and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1968). Plus there was an assassination attempt against Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, who was left paralyzed from the waist down (1972).

SECRET SERVICE

The U.S. Secret Service is charged with guarding the president. What is not widely know is that the Secret Service was organized in the U.S. Treasury Department in 1865, and remained there until 2003. At the founding their primary mission was to suppress counterfeit currency; during the first decades of its existence, the official responsibility of Secret Service agents did not include protecting U.S. presidents. They began an informal relationship with the White House only in 1894, during Grover Cleveland's second administration; they were with neither Presidents Garfield nor McKinley when they were shot.

It was McKinley's assassination by a terrorist in 1901 that spurred Congress to action, and the relationship between the White House and Secret Service evolved significantly during the next two decades. Already in 1901 Capitol Hill informally asked the Secret Service to provide protection for the president. The next year, with Theodore Roosevelt in the White House, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for protecting the president; two agents were assigned full time to the White House detail. Also about this time, the Secret Service began protecting the president-elect. Before leaving office, TR transferred eight Secret Service agents to the Department of Justice. They formed the nucleus of what is now the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Further changes occurred during Woodrow Wilson's time in office. In 1913, his first year in the White House, Congress authorized permanent protection of the president and president-elect. Four years later the next logical step was made. Congress authorized permanent protection of the president's immediate family. Moreover, anybody who made "threats" against the president committed a federal crime.

The White House Police Force was established in 1922, at Warren Harding's request. Only in 1930, during the Hoover administration, was the White House Police Force brought under the supervision of the U.S. Secret Service.

1951 was an important year for the Secret Service. Because of the attempt on President Truman's life, Congress enacted legislation that permanently authorized Secret Service protection of the president, his immediate family, the president-elect, and the vice president, if he requests it.

In 1962, during the Kennedy administration, Congress passed a law that expanded the charge of the Secret Service to protect the vice president.

One final note: "Congress passed legislation in 1994 stating that presidents elected to office after January 1, 1997, will receive Secret Service protection for 10 years after leaving office. Individuals elected to office prior to January 1, 1997, will continue to receive lifetime protection."[1]

On March 1, 2003, The U.S. Secret Service moved from Treasury to the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security, where it is today.
____________

[1] For the history of the U.S. Secret Service, see the official Website at the U.S. Department of the Treasury at http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml.

Presidents as high priests

Question: As a follow up to my last question about all the presidents' roles, would you please elaborate on the president as America's "high priest" (your term)?
From: Walter A., of Portland, ME
Date: November 12, 2004 [revised November 23, 2004]

Gleaves answers: In my last answer I said that Americans expect presidents to govern, to be sure. But they also want leaders who can inspire, console, comfort, and even lead the nation in prayer when the situation warrants -- in other words, to be their high priest. Think about it: no other individual in America can summon the entire nation to prayer when there is a D-Day Invasion, a Challenger tragedy, or a September 11th.

Nor do we look to our presidents to serve as high priests only in crises. Going all the way back to the founding, we have followed our leaders when they have called for days of "fasting, thanksgiving, and prayer." Presidents have lent solemnity to the national mood when laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And they direct our thoughts when leading us in benediction at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

There is no question that religion has been historically linked with the presidency. The question is: What are the policy implications of this relationship?

Secular-Friendly Interpretation of the Presidency

To say that presidents have served as Americans' high priest is to confirm the historical record, and to broach one of the thorniest debates in the United States today. On the one side are historians, sociologists, and political scientists with secular leanings. The most extreme secularists would share Ernest Hemingway's sentiment, "To Hell with a church that becomes a state; to Hell with a state that becomes a church."

For these, Jefferson's famous letter to the Baptists, calling for the separation of church and state, has become tantamount to a Constitutional provision (which is somewhat curious, considering that Jefferson was neither a delegate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 nor the author of the First Amendment).

One of the deans of American history, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, has weighed in on Hemingway's side of the debate. Recently the former aide to John F. Kennedy roundly attacked attempts to merge God's House with the White House by going back to our nation's origins. In the interest of balance, it is worth quoting Schlesinger at length:

"The founding fathers did not mention God in the Constitution, and the faithful often regarded our early presidents as insufficiently pious.

"George Washington was a nominal Anglican who rarely stayed for Communion. John Adams was a Unitarian, which Trinitarians abhored as heresy. Thomas Jefferson, denounced as an atheist, was actually a deist who detested organized religion and who produced an expurgated version of the New Testament with the miracles eliminated. Jefferson and James Madison, a nominal Episcopalian, were the architects of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. John Quincy Adams was another Massachusetts Unitarian. Andrew Jackson, pressed by clergy members to proclaim a national day of fasting to seek God's help in combating a cholera epidemic, replied that he could not do as they wished 'without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the general government.'

"In the 19th century, all presidents routinely invoked God and solicited his blessing. But religion did not have a major presence in their lives. Abraham Lincoln was the great exception. Nor did our early presidents use religion as an agency for mobilizing voters. 'I would rather be defeated,' said James A. Garfield, 'than make capital out of my religion.'

"Nor was there any great popular demand that politicians be men of faith. In 1876, James G. Blaine, an aspirant to the Republican presidential nomination, selected Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a famed orator but a notorious scoffer at religion, to deliver the nominating speech: The pious knew and feared Ingersoll as 'The Great Agnostic.'

"There were presidents of ardent faith in the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson had no doubt that the Almighty designated the United States -- and himself -- for the redemption and salvation of humankind. Jimmy Carter ... was 'born again.' Ronald Reagan, though not a regular churchgoer, had a rapt evangelical following. But neither Wilson nor Carter nor Reagan applied religious tests to secular issues, nor did they exploit their religion for their political benefit."[1]

John F. Kennedy is perhaps unique among the presidents. On the way to becoming the nation's first Roman Catholic president, he explicitly distanced himself from the Vatican and church teaching. His September 1960 speech to Baptists gathered in Houston was a landmark in campaign history.

Religious-Friendly Interpretation of the Presidency

Most presidents have not been like Kennedy. Most have unapologetically deployed their faith to tap into the strong spiritual beliefs of citizens. Many of our early presidents, for example, could call for official days of fasting, thanksgiving, and prayer without being criticized. Some other specific examples:

Jefferson, stung by accusations of being an atheist in the bruising campaign of 1800, proved to be more accomodating to Christianity than is generally realized. He acknowledged the beneficence of Providence in his Second Inaugural Address and funded Catholic missions to the Indians with federal dollars.

During our nation's agony, Lincoln, a man of deep faith, openly wondered in his Second Inaugural Address about divine retribution for the nation tolerating the sin of slavery and appealed to "the better angels of our nature."

Garfield was the nation's first preacher-president.

On June 6, 1944 -- D-Day -- Franklin D. Roosevelt asked that Americans stop what they were doing to pray for the success of the Allied reconquest of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Ike at his Inauguration read aloud a prayer that he himself had composed; was baptized in the White House; and hired an individual to be his liaison to the faith community.

Carter appealed directly to the "born again" for political advantage.

Reagan, who was rarely seen going to Sunday servives, nevertheless courted evangelical Protestants (known as the Moral Majority) and wrote a pro-life article for Human Life Review. He also detailed William Casey to work with the Vatican to end the Cold War.

Many was the Sunday that Bill Clinton would use going to church, with Bible in hand, as a photo-op. But those who know Clinton well say that his faith is no superficial gesture, that it is genuine and deep.

On the campaign trail in 2000, President George W. Bush famously said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ. And Democratic candidate Al Gore said he supported faith-based initiatives to help solve social problems.

There is no question that many of our presidents have been men of faith. Nor is there any question that they have served as a kind of high priest in our national life. But debate rages over the extent to which the presidents' personal religious convictions should inform public policy.

AMERICA AS A RELIGIOUS NATION

To acknowledge that our presidents from time to time play the role of high priest presupposes that the United States is a religious nation with citizens who are open to such a high priest. In fact, the U.S. is unusual in this regard. Of the twenty most developed nations in the world, the U.S. is by far the most religious. Surveys show that a large majority of Americans believe in God and in Satan and say that religion is important to them; more than half our population believes that the U.S. benefits from divine protection and has a negative view of atheists; almost half attend a worship service weekly. The extent of American religiosity contrasts sharply with that of other peoples. Only 20 percent of Germans, 12 percent of Japanese, and 11 percent of French say that religion is highly important to them.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, "religious expression in the United States seems to have grown, not diminished, with socio-economic development. According to Roger Finke, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, in 1890, 45 percent of Americans were members of a church. By 2000, that figure was 62 percent."[2]

It is fascinating to inquire why America is the most religious of the top twenty nations on the United Nations' Human Development Index. Our country hardly fits the long-espoused sociological model that held that modernization and religion do not mix; that said the more wealth a nation generated and distributed, the less religious it would be. A fascinating piece in the New York Times explains: "Old-school sociology holds that as nations become more prosperous, healthy, and educated, demand for the support that religion provides declines. People do not suddenly lose faith as they grow rich, these sociologists argue. Rather, they gradually go less to church -- reducing their children's exposure to religion. Meanwhile, secular institutions take over functions, like education, formerly controlled by the church. Religious attendence, they argue, wanes from one generation to the next. In economic terms, demand for religion drops as its perceived benefits diminish compared with the cost of participating."[3]

Certainly the old sociological model seems to account for the lukewarm state of religion in thoroughly modernized European nations, as well as in Canada and Japan. But it does not explain why the wealthiest and most modern nation of all, the United States, has remained an enclave of religiosity.

The way to understand American exceptionalism may lie in thinking by means of an analogy. The analogy that suggests itself is supply-side economics, long associated with America's fortieth president, Ronald Reagan (which is apt, considering the extent to which the Gipper reached out to evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics, and pro-Israeli Jews). Here is what the same New York Times piece observes: "over the past 10 years or so a growing group of mostly American sociologists has deployed a novel theory to explain the United States' apparently anomalous behavior: supply-side economics. Americans, they say, are fervently religious because there are so many churches competing for their devotion."[4]

More specifically, "demand for religion has little to do with economic development. Instead, what creates change is the supply of religious services. That is, Americans are more churchgoing and pious than Germans or Canadians because the United States has the most open religious market, with dozens of religious denominations competing vigorously to offer their flavor of salvation, becoming extremely responsive to the needs of their parishes. 'There's a lack of regulation restricting churches, so in this freer market there is a larger supply,' said Mr. Finke."[5]

What's more, "The suppliers of religion then try to stoke demand. 'The potential demand for religion has to be activated,' said Rodney Stark, a sociologist at Baylor University. 'The more members of the clergy that are out there working to expand their congregations the more people will go to church.'"[6]

Further, "Mr. Finke notes that this free-market theory fits well with the explosion of religion across Latin America, where the weakening of the longstanding Catholic monopoly has led to all sorts of evangelical Christian churches and to an overall increase of religious expression. The supply-siders say their model even explains secular Europe. Europeans, they argue, are fundamentally just as religious as Americans, with similar metaphysical concerns, but they suffer from an uncompetitive market -- lazy, quasi-monopolistic churches that have been protected by competition by the state. 'Wherever you've got a state church, you have empty churches,' Mr. Stark said."[7]

Historian Garry Wills makes the trenchant observation that the American tradition of separating church and state "protected religion from anticlericalism." This fact, combined with our pluralism, would help religion flourish in the U.S.[8]

All these factors help explain why Americans do not shy away from seeing their president occasionally play the role of high priest. But this statement must be qualified. If the president is to play the role of a "pope" in America's civil religion, he must be respectful of America's tradition of religious pluralism. He must not be perceived as a proselyte or apologist for his particular denomination. He must take care to avoid using symbols and words that are peculiar to his denomination.

___________________________________

[1]Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Los Angeles Times.

[2]Roger Finke quoted in Eduardo Porter, "Give Them Some of That Free-Market Religion," New York Times, November 21, 2004, p. 14 in Week in Review.

[3]Porter, "Give."

[4]Porter, "Give."

[5]Finke quoted in Porter, "Give."

[6]Rodney Stark quoted in Porter, "Give."

[7]Stark quoted in Porter, "Give."

[8]Garry Wills quoted in Porter, "Give."

Cabinet members from the opposing party

Question: With all the talk about Bush's cabinet leaving or changing posts, I was wondering how often a president reaches out to the other party to fill vacancies.
From: Rachel R. of Salt Lake City, UT
Date: November 9, 2004 [revised January 20, 2005]

Gleaves answers: As a nation we will probably never again achieve the balance that George Washington did when there were just three cabinet members. He hired the nation's brilliant Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, to serve as secretary of the Treasury at the same time that he had the nation's stellar Democratic-Republican, Thomas Jefferson, come on board as secretary of state. That was an era -- brief in duration -- when a lid was kept on openly partisan politics because Washington willed it so.

Washington's precedent of trying to bridge factional differences has held up symbolically. It is not unusual for a president to nominate a cabinet secretary from the opposing party, even in the harsh climate of modern politics. For example, Republican Dwight Eisenhower had Democrat James P. Mitchell serve as secretary of labor. Because of his efforts on behalf of migrant laborers and other working people, Mitchell was called "the social conscience of the Republican party."

Democrat John F. Kennedy had Republican C. Douglas Dillon serve as secretary of the Treasury. Dillon had previously been in the Eisenhower administration and was known as a strong advocate of tax cuts. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, kept Dillon on.

Democrat Bill Clinton had Republican William Cohen serve as secretary of defense during his second term.

Republican George W. Bush has had Democrat Norm Mineta serving in the top spot at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Prior to that post, Mineta served as secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration.

As you suggest, the question at the beginning of the second term is whether President Bush is inclined to expand the Democratic roster among his cabinet. David Frum puts the matter in historical perspective: "The only president to have derived political benefit from naming members of the opposing party to his cabinet was Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, when he named Henry Stimson secretary of war and Frank Knox secretary of the Navy. But Roosevelt was accepting a tough bargain: Bidding for an unprecedented and shocking third presidential term, he tried to allay Republican fears by handing operational control over the pending war in Europe to the leading GOP foreign-policy figure of the day and over the pending war in the Pacific to the most recent Republican nominee for vice president. It would be as if George W. Bush made Richard Holbrooke secretary of state and John Edwards secretary of defense."[1]

Much of the post-election discussion over the composition of the cabinet is symbolic, in any case. As Thomas Patterson points out, "Although the cabinet once served as the president's main advisory group, it has not played this role since Herbert Hoover's administration. As national issues have become increasingly complex, the cabinet has become outmoded as a policymaking forum: department heads are likely to understand issues only in their respective policy areas. Cabinet meetings have been larely reduced to gatherings at which only the most general matters are discussed."[2]

Looking further back in American history, we see that there was an attempt to elevate the status of the cabinet in the nineteenth century. Bret Stephens briskly observes in the Wall Street Journal: "Although the administration of William Henry Harrison isn't the most acclaimed in American history, it did contribute one intriguing idea to the theory of executive government. According to historian John Baker of Louisiana State University, 'Harrison had agreed that executive decisions would be based on a majority vote among members of the cabinet, with the president having one vote.' As fate would have it, Old Tippecanoe died within a month of taking office and his successor, John Tyler, promptly did away with the cabinet government concept. Good thing, too: Had Abraham Lincoln allowed his cabinet to govern with him (or for him) the Union would probably have gone to war against Great Britain, per the suggestion of his Secretary of State William Seward, instead of the Confederacy."[3]

In the end, having cabinet members from the opposing political party or contrary viewpoints must not mask a chief requirement of the presidency -- that "the executive office must be single -- that is, occupied by only one person -- to guarantee the necessary executive power and responsibility." This follows from Alexander Hamilton's defense of the presidency in Federalist 70, where he called for "energy in the executive."[4]

CABINET TURNOVER

According to presidential historian Richard Shenkman, 60 percent of George W. Bush's cabinet had changed over by Inauguration Day -- the highest over the past century. The average is about 50 percent.

___________________

[1]David Frum, "A New Style for a New Mandate," Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2004, p. A18.

[2]Thomas E. Patterson, We the People: A Concise Introduction to American Politics, 5th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004), p. 386.

[3]Bret Stephens, "What Is a Cabinet For?" Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2004, p. A15. It should be noted that William Seward had not been thinking of threatening war just with Great Britain. Between the Inauguration and the Sumter crisis, the secretary of state wrote a letter to the new president headed, "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration." Geoffrey Perret records that Seward "wanted Lincoln to unite the country by waging war -- or at least threatening war -- against France and Spain. The Spanish had recently seized Santo Domingo and, with French connivance, were poised to grab Haiti. This violation of the Monroe Doctrine could not be allowed to stand. Tell them to get out of our hemisphere, or else, he urged." [Geoffrey Perret, Lincoln's War: The Untold Story of America's Greatest President and Commander in Chief (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 23.

[4]Peter Woll, ed., American Government: Readings and Cases, 15th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004), p. xv.

Best signs for predicting the winner

Question: Which polling organization has the best track record of predicting who will win the presidency?
From: Tara C. of Grand Rapids, MI
Date: October 24, 2004 [revised November 2, 2004]

Gleaves answers: Eat crow, Gallup. Move over, Zogby International. Eat dirt and die, NBC/Newsweek. You don't even come close to being as good as WRC readers when it comes to predicting who wins presidential races.

As good as who?

The Weekly Reader Corporation (WRC) publishes a newspaper for school kids, and in every presidential election since Dwight Eisenhower's re-election it has invited our youngest citizens to predict who will win the November contest. Since 1956, the WRC poll has correctly dubbed the winner in 11 of 12 contests.

That's saying something, considering some of the close presidential elections in the last half century. In 1960 school kids correctly predicted that Kennedy would come out on top in a breathtakingly close contest with Nixon. Same with the fiercely fought battle in 1976 when incumbent President Gerald Ford was eventually overcome by Jimmy Carter, and the bitter contest in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore that held the nation in suspense for more than a month.

The only election the kids got wrong was 1968, when they thought Robert F. Kennedy would beat out the Republican nominee. However, that survey was gathered in the spring of '68, months before the election and before RFK was assassinated in June.

Whom do school kids think will win in 2004?

The news release available this morning from Weekly Reader opens: "The students who read Weekly Reader’s magazines have made their preference for President known: they want to send President Bush back to the White House.... Hundreds of thousands of students participated, giving the Republican President more than 60% of the votes cast and making him a decisive choice over Democratic Senator John Kerry."[1]

It was almost an electoral sweep at every level. Elementary school kids in every grade voted overwhelming for George W. Bush. Among middle school kids the president also won, but by a narrower margin. Most high schoolers also preferred President Bush; only 10th graders voted in greater numbers for Senator Kerry.[2]

Besides the Weekly Reader poll, other indicators have traditionally presaged who wins in November.

For instance, The stock market's performance in the two months leading up to an election can tell you who will win. There have been 26 elections since 1900. In 16 of those elections, the Dow Jones industrial average trended up in September and October, and in all but one of those 16 elections, the incumbent party candidate won in November. In 10 elections since 1900, the Dow trended down in September and October, and in all but one of those elections, the incumbent party candidate lost in November. What is more, no president running for re-election has ever lost if the Dow in October is up at least 3 percent compared to one year earlier. But no president has been re-elected if the Dow in October is down by 5 percent of more, according to Jeff Hirsch in the Stock Trader's Almanac. [The less than stellar performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in September and most of October would seem to favor Kerry; however, there was a surge of earnings at the end of October, which might have reflected confidence in a Bush victory.]

Moreover, for the last 40 years the road to the White House has gone through the sunbelt; every winner since 1964 has been from the west or the south. Going further back, to 1948, candidates who came from sunnier, warmer states -- a home base to the south or west of their opponent's home base -- tended to win the White House. So:
- 1948: Missouri (Truman) beat New York (Dewey).
- 1952: Kansas (Eisenhower, who was actually born in Texas) beat Illinois (Stevenson).
- 1956: ditto
- 1960 is the clear exception to the rule: Massachusetts (Kennedy) beat Southern California (Nixon).
- 1964 saw two sunbelt contestants, as Texas (Johnson) beat Arizona (Goldwater); in this case, the candidate from the state with both western and southern elements won.
- 1968: Southern California (Nixon) beat Minnesota (Humphrey).
- 1972: Southern California (Nixon) beat South Dakota (McGovern).
- 1976: Georgia (Carter) beat Michigan (Ford).
- 1980 saw two sunbelt contestants, as Southern California (Reagan) beat Georgia (Carter).
- 1984: Southern California (Reagan) beat Minnesota (Mondale).
- 1988: Texas (with more than a touch of New England in George H. W. Bush) beat Massachusetts (Dukakis)
- 1992: Arkansas (the unambiguously southern Clinton) beat Texas (the ambiguously southern Bush who, remember, had New England roots).
- 1996: Arkansas (Clinton) beat Kansas (Dole).
- 2000: Texas (Bush) beat Tennessee (Gore).
- 2004: [The trend favors Bush of Texas over Kerry of Massachusetts.]

But don't count northern states out for their usefulness in determining the winner. Watch, for example, how the state of Ohio leans. Republicans have never won the White House without carrying the Buckeye State. [Bush is leading slightly in Ohio.]

Also, look at the "right track" or presidential approval poll numbers for the incumbent. If the last sizeable, reputable poll before the election shows that more than 50 percent of likely voters believe that the nation is on the right track, or that the president is doing a good job, then that is a common-sense sign that the incumbent will win. [Bush is at or slightly above 50 percent in most polls.]

And -- this one's really curious -- watch how the Redskins football team does in its last home game prior to the election. If the Redskins win, the incumbent's party stays in; if the Redskins lose, the incumbent's party loses too. This uncanny coincidence has prevailed for 17 straight elections -- all the way back to 1936. So:

1936 -- [Boston] Redskins beat the Chicago Cardinals 13-10; Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected.
1940 -- Washington Redskins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 37-10; Roosevelt was re-elected.
1944 -- Redskins beat the Cleveland Rams 14-10; Roosevelt was re-elected.
1948 -- Redskins beat the Boston Yanks 59-21; Democrat Harry S. Truman was elected.
1952 -- Redskins lost to the Pittsburgh 24-23; Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected.
1956 -- Redskins beat the Cleveland Browns 20-9; Eisenhower was re-elected.
1960 -- Redskins lost to the Cleveland Browns 31-10; Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected.
1964 -- Redskins beat the Chicago Bears 27-20; Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson was elected.
1968 -- Redskins lost to the New York Giants 13-10; Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected.
1972 -- Redskins beat the Dallas Cowboys 24-20; Nixon was re-elected.
1976 -- Redskins lost to the Dallas Cowboys 20-7; Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected.
1980 -- Redskins lost to the Minnesota Vikings 39-14; Republican Ronald Reagan was elected.
1984 -- Redskins beat the Atlanta Falcons 27-14; Reagan was re-elected.
1988 -- Redskins beat the New Orleans Saints 27-24; Republican George H. W. Bush was elected.
1992 -- Redskins lost to the New York Giants 24-7; Democrat Bill Clinton was elected.
1996 -- Redskins beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-16; Clinton was re-elected.
2000 -- Redskins lost to the Tennessee Titans 27-21; Republican George W. Bush was elected.
2004 -- Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers 28-14.... [The pattern suggests Kerry will win, eh?]

There are other "signs" that are watched to predict the presidential race -- like the Iowa Electronic Futures; like Nickelodeon viewers' preference (there the kids accurately picked the winner from 1988-2000); like the top sales of Halloween masks of the candidates (sales of Bush masks are selling 10 percent better than Kerry masks this fall), to name just three. These offbeat "polls" are considered by many to be eerily accurate. But because of all the contradictory signals this year, all bets are off. What we know for certain is that some of the traditional "reliable predictors" are going to be wrong. Ultimately, the one poll that counts will be taken on November 2, when the ballots are counted.

_______________________________________________________

[1]http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_vote.asp

[2]http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_results.asp

[3]The pattern holds for the team specifically called the Redskins, whether in Boston (during the 1936 election) or in Washington (since the 1940 election). Interestingly, the Boston team had been called the Braves until 1933, when the name changed to the Redskins. Source: USA Today, November 1, 2004, p. 3C.

If a president dies during the campaign

Question: What would happen if the president died during a campaign for re-election? And has this ever happened?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at the start of the 1964 presidential race. (In fact, he was in Texas to shore up support among wobbly Southern Democrats, who distrusted Massachusetts liberals.) But Kennedy had not yet been officially renominated by his party.

That, more precisely, is what I believe your question is getting at. The fact is, death has never struck down a renominated president campaigning for re-election. It happened to a vice president shortly before the election in 1912, when William Taft’s running mate, incumbent Vice President James Sherman, died of Bright's Disease. Just days later, Taft went on to lose the election to Woodrow Wilson, so it didn’t matter that there wasn’t a VP candidate.

Expanding your question a bit, Hauenstein Center Associate George Nash points out that there are at least four possible scenarios to think through if death, disability, or resignation occurs when a president is running for re-election:

a. Say the president dies after the convention that renominates him, but before the November election. There is no Constitutional provision or federal law governing such a scenario, but by custom it is the party that would determine who would then be the presidential nominee. In other words, if the incumbent president died during the re-election campaign, then the national committee of the president's party would convene to select a new nominee. Both parties have such a procedure in place. Party leaders might promote the vice presidential candidate, but they wouldn't have to; they could turn to another party leader, and that person would stand for election. You have to go back to 1972 to see anything remotely resembling this scenario. That was the year when Thomas Eagleton, who was George McGovern’s vice presidential running mate, was forced to confirm that he had undergone shock therapy. Public opinion did not support the Democratic ticket. So he resigned, and leaders of the Democratic party convened and selected Sergeant Shriver to replace Eagleton. (McGovern-Shriver lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide.)

b. What about the gray area between the November election and the December meeting of the Electoral College? This scenario, remarkably, is the subject of unsettled debate. It is not automatic that the vice president-elect would become the president-elect. Nor is it a sure bet that the impacted party could pick a new person to step into the role of "president-elect." After all, the election would have already taken place, and electors technically would have pledged their vote to the deceased president-elect and not be bound to vote for a new person.

c. Yet another gray area lies between the December meeting of the Electoral College and the date when the House of Representatives convenes to count and certify the results. This scenario, too, is the subject of unsettled debate. It is not a given that the vice president-elect would slide into position as the president-elect.

d. What if death, disability, or resignation occurred after the House of Representatives certified the results? Here we are back on terra firma, as the 20th Amendment, Section 3, would kick in: upon the death of the president-elect, the vice president-elect would become president on January 20.

It surprises most students of American history and politics to realize that the Constitution only speaks to one of the four scenarios outlined above. The fact that parties still call the shots in scenario one, and may have an impact on scenarios two and three, shows the power of America’s unwritten constitution. Political parties in the U.S. did not exist in when the Constitution was drafted in 1787; they only appeared in something resembling their modern form in 1831. Yet parties, developing organically as opposed to existing by constitutional stipulation, play the major role in determining who can serve as president.

No veep

Question: On the occasions when we have not had a vice president -- in the administrations of John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt (first term), Calvin Coolidge (first term), Harry Truman (first term), and even LBJ (first term) -- who presided over the Senate and performed any other vice presidential duties?
From: Dave M. from Rockford, Michigan
Date: August 26, 2004

Gleaves answers: Here is a fact that surprises most Americans: during one in every six years of U.S. history, there has been no vice president. For the equivalent of 38 years of our nation's existence -- 17 percent of our history -- no VP. This is because of three situations that arose between our nation's founding and passage of the 25th Amendment in 1967, which finally addressed the vacuum:
- eight presidents died in office, necessitating the vice president to move into the presidency; that left the nation without a VP for 287 months of our history;
- six vice presidents died in office -- eerily, four of them during the third week of November; worse, James Madison had two VPs die on him; this situation left the nation without a VP for 140 months; and
- two vice presidents -- John Calhoun and Spiro Agnew -- resigned from the office, leaving the U.S. without a VP for some 4 months.

Add the numbers up, and you'll see that there were 431 months in which the U.S. had no VP: 38 years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT WHO DUELED

The nation came close to experiencing an additional period without a VP -- and under less than savory circumstances. Early on July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton and sitting Vice President Aaron Burr met to defend their honor on a dueling ground in Weehawken, New Jersey. Historians are not sure who fired first. But that morning Burr was more accurate with the hair-triggered .54-caliber pistol, and his shot felled Hamilton, who died the next day in New York City. The event caused such an uproar that Burr was indicted for murder in New York and feared that a mob would break into his house to do him harm. To keep passions from escalating, Burr left New York, sought refuge for two months on an island off the Georgia coast, and then returned to the capital to serve out his remaining six months as vice president under Thomas Jefferson. How different our nation's history might have been had Hamilton killed Burr.

RUNNING DEBATE FROM 1841-1967

Remarkably, when the first president died in office back in 1841, Americans were not quite sure what to do. William Henry Harrison expired after only 30 days in office. Debate ensued over whether Vice President John Tyler was merely acting president or was really, truly, constitutionally president. Tyler, ambitious and possessing a strong personality, asserted that he was not merely a place-holder (i.e., not merely acting president); he asserted that he was constitutionally authorized to be president for the 47 remaining months of his term. Following Tyler's example, it became customary for the vice president to assume the presidency without ambiguity, and this turn of events came about on seven subsequent occasions -- upon the deaths of Presidents Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, and Kennedy.

Nevertheless, our nation had a running debate from 1841 to 1967 about how to turn the custom into law. In 1967 the debate was settled with the ratification of the 25th Amendment, and now there is a clear constitutional procedure to nominate a new vice president, should the previous vice president die, become disabled, or resign. Spiro Agnew's resignation in October of 1973, then Gerald R. Ford's nomination later that fall, triggered the 25th Amendment for the first time; it had been ratified only six years earlier.

APPENDIX A: DEATH

It's amazing to think that, just due to presidents' deaths, our nation lacked a sitting vice president for the equivalent of 24 years of our history. John Tyler served for 47 months without a VP; Millard Fillmore for 32 months; Andrew Johnson for 47 months; Chester Arthur for 41 months; Theodore Roosevelt for 42 months; Calvin Coolidge for 19 months; Harry S. Truman for 45 months; and Lyndon B. Johnson for 14 months. That's a total of 287 months -- almost 24 years -- 11 percent of our nation's history -- without a vice president.

It could have been worse. In addition to the four presidents who were assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), and the four who died of natural causes while in office (W. H. Harrison, Taylor, Harding, FDR), six presidents were the victims of assassination attempts (Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan). Others suffered such severe health problems (notably Washington, Wilson, and Eisenhower) that they easily could have died. Add these folks up, and you're looking at the nation losing or almost losing more than one-third of its presidents. It's a high-risk job.

The historical record brings us to one of the glaring oversights of the Founders who met in Philadelphia in 1787. The Constitution they drafted did not adequately answer the question of vice presidential succession. Not until the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967 did this gap in governance get solved.

Vice presidents have quipped that their job is the most useless on earth. (Some veeps have certainly lived down to that perception.) Franklin Roosevelt's first VP, John Nance Garner, summarized it this way: "The vice presidency? It's not worth a pitcher of warm spit."

As stipulated by the U.S. Constitution, the vice president is the only U.S. official who is a member of two branches of government. One of the duties of the vice president is to preside over the Senate. More specifically, the veep is the tiebreaker -- he can only vote to break a deadlock in the Senate (Article I, Section 3). As constitutional writer Linda Monk has pointed out, "The vice president's power to cast a vote in a divided Senate is one of the checks and balances that the executive branch has over the legislative branch, and it has been used several times in U.S. history to help the president win passage of controversial laws."1

When there is no vice president in the Senate -- for whatever reason -- there is no constitutional crisis. The top dog is the president of the Senate pro tempore (in daily parlance, the president pro tem). He is selected by the majority party caucus. Next down the food chain are the presiding officers of the Senate, who are appointed by the president pro tem to chair the Senate as it conducts its business. The glory of being one of these presiding officers is fleeting, usually lasting only an hour at a time, as the position continually rotates among senators in the majority party.

Prior to 1967, when there was no vice president, his tasks were picked up by cabinet members, other administration officials, and the president himself.

APPENDIX B

In the list below, note the number of instances in which there has been no vice president:

George Washington (1789-1797)
- John Adams (1789-1797)

John Adams (1797-1801)
- Thomas Jefferson (1797-1801)

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)
- Aaron Burr (1801-1805)
- George Clinton (1805-1809)

James Madison (1809-1817)
- George Clinton (1809-1812)
- VP office vacant (1812-1813)
- Elbridge Gerry (1813-1814)
- VP office vacant (1814-1817)

James Monroe (1817-1825)
- Daniel D. Tompkins (1817-1825)

John Quincy Adams (1825-1829)
- John C. Calhoun (1825-1829)

Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
- John C. Calhoun (1829-1832)
- VP office vacant (1832-1833)
- Martin Van Buren (1833-1837)

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)
- Richard M. Johnson (1837-1841)

William Henry Harrison (1841)
- John Tyler (1841)

John Tyler (1841-1845)
- VP office vacant (1841-1845)

James K. Polk (1845-1849)
- George M. Dallas (1845-1849)

Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
- Millard Fillmore (1849-1850)

Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)
- VP office vacant (1850-1853)

Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)
- William King (1853)
- VP office vacant (1853-1857)

James Buchanan (1857-1861)
- John C. Breckinridge (1857-1861)

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)
- Hannibal Hamlin (1861-1865)
- Andrew Johnson (1865)

Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)
- VP office vacant (1865-1869)

Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
- Schuyler Colfax (1869-1873)
- Henry Wilson (1873-1875)
- VP office vacant (1875-1877)

Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
- William Wheeler (1877-1881)

James A. Garfield (1881)
- Chester Arthur (1881)

Chester Arthur (1881-1885)
- VP office vacant (1881-1885)

Grover Cleveland (1885-1889)
- Thomas Hendricks (1885)
- VP office vacant (1885-1889)

Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
- Levi P. Morton (1889-1893)

Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
- Adlai E. Stevenson (1893-1897)

William McKinley (1897-1901)
- Garret Hobart (1897-1901)
- Theodore Roosevelt (1901)

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
- VP office vacant (1901-1905)
- Charles Fairbanks (1905-1909)

William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
- James S. Sherman (1909-1912)
- VP office vacant (1912-1913)

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
- Thomas R. Marshall (1913-1921)

Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
- Calvin Coolidge (1921-1923)

Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
- VP office vacant (1923-1925)
- Charles Dawes (1925-1929)

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
- Charles Curtis (1929-1933)

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)
- John Nance Garner (1933-1941)
- Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945)
- Harry S Truman (1945)

Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
- VP office vacant (1945-1949)
- Alben Barkley (1949-1953)

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
- Richard Nixon (1953-1961)

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
- Lyndon B. Johnson (1961-1963)

Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)
- VP office vacant (1963-1965)
- Hubert H. Humphrey (1965-1969)

Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
- Spiro Agnew (1969-1973)
- VP office vacant (1973)
- Gerald R. Ford (1973-1974)

Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)
- office vacant (1974)
- Nelson Rockefeller (1974-1977)

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
- Walter Mondale (1977-1981)

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
- George Bush (1981-1989)

George Bush (1989-1993)
- Dan Quayle (1989-1993)

Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
- Al Gore (1993-2001)

George W. Bush (2001- )
- Dick Cheney (2001- )

_______________________

1. Linda R. Monk, The Words We Live By (New York: Hyperion, 2003), pp. 36-37.

1000 Days

Question: [Editor's note: In a recent newspaper article, Gleaves Whitney was quoted as saying that Gerald R. Ford's administration accomplished more than John F. Kennedy's administration. That quotation prompted the following question.] Do you really think Gerald Ford accomplished more in his time as president than JFK? I had never heard this stated before so it caught my eye.
From: Pat S. of Grand Rapids, Michigan
Submitted: August 10, 2004

Gleaves answers:

Both John F. Kennedy and Gerald R. Ford served as president for about 1,000 days. Which chief executive accomplished more? Let's look at the context as well as the record of each man's presidency.

KENNEDY 1961

In 1961 the world had its share of trouble spots, and the nuclear arms race was escalating. (So what else is new?) But Kennedy inherited a nation that was in relatively good shape economically, militarily, culturally, and internationally. Economically the U.S. was emerging from the recession of 1958-1960, and on its way to unprecedented growth in the post-war boom. Militarily the U.S. was still the stronger superpower compared to the Soviet Union. Culturally the nation was not yet experiencing the burst of bitter divisions -- race riots, student unrest, Vietnam War protests, and assassinations -- that would mark the latter 1960s. And in foreign relations, the U.S. was still regarded as a moral superpower, beloved by allies in Europe, Asia, and throughout the Free World. The youthful president was wise to take advantage of the strong nation left by his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In this relatively sunny environment, there is no question that Kennedy inspired fellow citizens and people around the world with sparkling rhetoric and contagious idealism. At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, he challenged Americans to be pioneers on the New Frontier, where there were "uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus." To pull off such soaring rhetoric was a significant achievement in itself.

It was also an achievement to debate and defeat a tough opponent in sitting Vice President Richard Nixon. It was certainly an achievement to be the youngest man elected president (he was 43). It was an achievement to be the first Roman Catholic elected president. But when one actually looks at the record following Election Day, it is not particularly distinguished. And don't just take my word for it. At a Hauenstein Center event last October, historian Robert Dallek, who is sympathetic to Kennedy, made the point that JFK's domestic achievements were thin. They were especially thin compared to, say, the achievements of his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Even though weighed down by Vietnam, LBJ got much more done domestically, not least of which were major tax cuts and the 1,000-bill Great Society. Also Johnson acted decisively on civil rights, whereas Kennedy was at first hesitant because he was afraid of alienating Southern Democrats.

Kennedy's record in foreign affairs was not the best, either. Most Americans are familiar with JFK's egregious error in judgment concerning the Bay of Pigs. Columnist George Will rightly calls the Bay of Pigs the most irresponsible use of White House power in the last 50 years. Nor did Kennedy's 1961 Vienna summit with Krushchev go swimmingly for the U.S. State Department notes indicate that Kennedy could not adequately assert the moral, political, and economic superiority of the Western way over the Communist way.¹ Indeed, Kremlin leaders came away from Vienna believing that Kennedy was weak -- or at least not strong enough to oppose East Germans erecting the Berlin Wall or Soviets putting nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in the end, was Kennedy getting himself out of the mess he himself helped create.

This is not to say that Kennedy's presidency was an utter failure, not at all. His personal elan made the office sparkle. Over the course of 1,036 days in office, his idealism, his sense of America's mission gave rise to the Peace Corps and steeled our resolve to stand by West Berlin. His Food for Peace program streamlined the delivery of American aid to developing nations. He set an ambitious but realizable goal for the fledgling space program (which had originated with Eisenhower). JFK advanced the notion of the rhetorical presidency, showing media savvy in the process. He projected his presidential persona extremely well, especially on the expanding medium of television. He gave the first live televised news conference, and went on to hold 64 in all -- on average, 1 every 16 days he was in office -- and charmed American viewers with his performance and wit.

Stylistic points aside, there were relatively few substantive achievements to which Kennedy apologists can point. Even the JFK Library and Museum in Boston subtly acknowledges the fact. One of the first panels that visitors read upon entering the museum downplays the expectations we should have of Camelot, asserting merely that the 35th president "laid the groundwork for advances in civil rights, education, and health care" [emphasis added].

FORD 1974

Barely a decade separated the end of JFK's presidency from the beginning of Gerald R. Ford's presidency -- but how our nation had changed during those brief years.

Ford didn't have the luxury of a swaggering, self-confident nation when he was sworn into office on August 9, 1974. He inherited an America that was under a black cloud. Because of Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation, the nation was backing its way into a constitutional crisis. Dishonor had befallen the very office of the presidency. Energy shocks were making our economy reel. Vietnam had severely wounded the nation's honor. Anti-Americanism was running high around the globe. And at home there was anger at Washington, at government, at anyone associated with Nixon and the presidency. Indeed, within his first weeks in office, Ford survived two assassination attempts.

In the face of these crises, Ford immediately set out to put the shame of Nixon and Watergate behind him -- and the country. Like Lincoln, he endeavored to bind up the nation's wounds. By sheer force of his character, he was the credible person to lead the effort. Because of his integrity, he was able to restore dignity to the office of the presidency. Because of his honesty, he was able to rebuild trust in America's word both at home and abroad. He possessed unshakable calm and kept the nation together at our darkest time since Pearl Harbor and Fort Sumter. He led the economy out of a stubborn recession. He held the Soviets' feet to the fire at Helsinki in view of their appalling human rights record. And he consistently displayed executive leadership and the courage of his convictions, not just in his "full, free, and absolute" pardon of Nixon and his limited offer of amnesty to Vietnam War draft dodgers, but in vetoing more bills than any other president in a comparable period of time (66 vetoes in 18 months, 54 of which prevailed after going back to Capitol Hill). He knew that many of his actions would not improve his chances of re-election in 1976.

Nor would the mistakes he made help re-election chances. During his 895 days in office, Ford alienated the conservative wing of the Republican party by selecting Nelson Rockefeller to be his VP and by proposing a temporary tax hike. His campaign to Whip Inflation Now was ridiculed as a PR stunt. The evacuation of Saigon in April of 1975 was ugly, as was the attempt to rescue the SS Mayaguez in international waters.

Nevertheless, constitutionally, politically, and morally, Ford led our nation out of a storm and into stability. As Henry Kissinger put it, "he saved the country. In fact, he saved it in such a matter-of-fact way that he isn't given any credit for it." Biographer James Cannon remarked, "He was the right man for this country at the right time in the most extraordinary crisis in the constitutional system since the Civil War."²

I told the reporter whose article you read that if you compare the two Cold War commanders in chief who served a thousand days, Ford in the end was the more heroic. The 38th president had a much tougher road to travel, and he did it with dignity and courage. He managed to accomplish much, despite the bad domestic and international hand he was dealt. It is no wonder that the JFK Library Foundation gave Gerald R. Ford its prestigious Profile in Courage award three years ago. As Senator Edward Kennedy remarked on the occasion, "I was one of those who spoke out against his actions then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us."³

---

1. Peggy Noonan, "John Fitzgerald Kennedy," Presidential Leadership, ed. by James Taranto and Leonard Leo (New York: Wall Street Journal Books, 2004), p. 171.

2. Henry Kissinger and James M. Cannon are quoted in the new PBS documenary about the 38th president, Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History, produced by Mike Grass (Grand Rapids: WGVU Productions, 2004).

3. Kennedy quoted in Time and Chance; the Profile in Courage award was given to President Ford on May 21, 2001.

Electing Incumbent VPs

Question: In contrast to Dick Cheney, whose age will likely prevent him from ever campaigning for the presidency, if Kerry and Edwards win in 2004 and again in 2008, Edwards will still be young enough -- in his late fifties -- to run in 2012. How often has the incumbent vice president been elected president?
From: Cory C. of Minnetonka, Minnesota
Submitted: July 13, 2004

Gleaves answers:

It has been said that the greatest measure of a president's success is his ability to get his successor elected. By that standard, there have not been many successful presidents. Only four times in American history has a sitting vice president won a presidential election. That means only 1 in 10 has come into office that way. The last to try, in 2000, was Al Gore, and he narrowly lost to George W. Bush in the Electoral College.

Generally, incumbent VPs have been elected after serving with strong, popular predecessors. George H. W. Bush fits the rule. He headed the Republican ticket in 1988 after two terms with Ronald Reagan, and he defeated Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. George H. W. Bush was the only incumbent vice president to move directly into the Oval Office in more than 150 years.

Before Bush the 41st, only three incumbent vice presidents won the presidency. In 1796 John Adams, the first vice president of the United States, was elected after serving two terms under George Washington. Four years later, Thomas Jefferson won after serving as Adams's vice president for a term. Then in 1836 Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson's vice president, was elected the 8th president of the United States.

Richard Nixon, by the way, was a vice president who was elected president -- but after an interval of eight years in private life. In 1960, when he was the incumbent VP under Dwight D. Eisenhower, he ran for president against Senator John F. Kennedy and narrowly lost. He ran again in 1968 against Hubert Humphrey and this time won.

The lesson, ironically, is that serving as vice president is usually not the best way to achieve the highest office in the land.

Presidential debates

Question: Are the presidential candidates scheduled to debate this fall? Have there always been presidential debates?
From: Dan P. of Boulder, Colorado
Submitted: July 05, 2004

Gleaves answers:

2004 DEBATE SCHEDULE

Debates provide one of the few opportunities for high drama in an election season, and this fall there will be three of them, as well as one vice presidential debate. Here is the schedule as set out by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD):

First presidential debate: Thursday, September 30, at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL.

Vice presidential debate: Tuesday, October 5, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH.

Second presidential debate: Friday, October 8, at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

Third presidential debate: Wednesday, October 13, at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ.

The CPD also announced two back-up sites, Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, and the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC. All debates will start at 9:00 p.m. ET.

The debate schedule was announced back on November 6, 2003, by Paul G. Kirk and Frank J. Fahrenkopf, co-chairmen of The Commission on Presidential Debates. To keep abreast of any changes, check out the CPD's Website: www.debates.org/

WHAT TO WATCH FOR (A DEBATE STRATEGY PRIMER)

Conventional wisdom says four things about debates.

1. To debate or not to debate. It is usually in the incumbent's interest to debate a challenger as few times as he can get away with. Contrarywise, it is in the challenger's interest to get the incumbent to debate as much as possible. The idea is to create the opportunity for a major misstep that will diminish the stature of the president. This is what happened in a 1976 debate between challenger Jimmy Carter and incumbent Gerald R. Ford. To the amazement of his audience, Ford said, "There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, and there never will be during a Ford administration." The president had to endure sustained criticism for that misstatement. John Kerry will try to create and take advantage of a similar situation when he debates George W. Bush in 2004.

2. The are-you-better-off question. Once in a debate, the incumbent must try to convince the audience that they are better off now than they were four years ago. By contrast, the challenger will be trying to persuade voters that they are worse off. This is what Jimmy Carter did in 1976, when he set out to beat incumbent Gerald R. Ford. Carter's campaign created the "misery index" -- the sum of the inflation rate and unemployment rate -- and asserted again and again that President Ford had not been a good manager of the nation's economy -- the numbers proved it. Ah, but the misery index came back to bite Carter in the 1980 campaign, because unemployment and inflation had risen dramatically during the Democrat's four years in office. Reagan asked Americans, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" and he beat Carter in a landslide that sent the incumbent packing to Plains, Georgia, a melancholy man.

3. Presidential presentation. Both the challenger and the incumbent must possess self control and act presidential during their entire 90 minutes onstage. They must also do something paradoxical: they must look like the ordinary guy next door (I'm just a good ol' Bubba), and yet convey an inner character that says, in effect, I am superior to my opponent and, indeed, to most Americans, for I am the one who can stare terrorists down, send young men and women into war, and do whatever it takes to increase the security and prosperity of Americans. In 1988, Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis sometimes had a tough time looking as if he could be commander in chief. (Admittedly Ronald Reagan was a hard act to follow.) He hardly helped his case when handlers got him to don a military helmet and ride around in a U.S. Army tank in Michigan. The nation laughed, and the image stuck to Dukakis during his debates with George H. W. Bush, who was able to paint the Massachusetts governor as just another Northeastern liberal who wasn't tough enough to lead America and the free world. Four years later, in 1992, Republican George H. W. Bush was portrayed as totally out of touch with ordinary Americans when it was shown that he did not recognize the scanner in a grocery store, and he lost to a skillful Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton.

4. Whose mission makes people want to march? Successful presidential contenders need an idealistic streak -- they need to appeal to something greater than self-interest. Throughout American history, politicians have looked to Americans' love of freedom -- not just for themselves but for others -- to inspire the nation. The more expansive the freedom, the better. The 1980 debates are instructive. Carter had premised his presidency on limits -- limits to economic growth, limits to American power, limits to energy, limits even on the American spirit (which he said suffered from malaise).* Reagan self-consciously took the opposite tack, emphasizing that Americans can do anything if they are free -- free from burdensome taxes and regulations at home, and free from Communist intimidation abroad. Voters responded positively to the more positive message. It was Reagan's mission that made them want to march, and he won the 1980 election in a landslide.

EARLY DEBATES**

It's hard to believe nowadays, but public presidential debates are a recent development in American politics. Only since 1976 have they been a regular feature in America's political landscape.

What about the most famous debates in American history, Lincoln-Douglas? Those seven sparring matches that took place throughout the Illinois countryside during the summer and fall of 1858 were not presidential debates; they were debates between U.S. Senate candidates. The Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was challenging the Democratic incumbent, Stephen Douglas. Each debate lasted three hours. Although Lincoln won the popular vote the following November, he lost the 1858 election in the Illinois legislature (consistent with the manner of electing senators prior to passage of the 17th Amendment). Lincoln clearly won in the longer run. The cogency of his arguments concerning Union and slavery made his reputation soar and positioned him to win the Republican nomination for president two years later.

The first modern public debate between presidential candidates took place in 1948, in the Oregon Republican primary where Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen were battling it out. The one-hour debate, over the question of whether to outlaw the Communist party, was broadcast nationally over radio to more than 40 million listeners. It was the only debate in which the contenders were restricted to one topic.

The next debate occurred in 1956, in the Florida primary, where Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver were duking it out for one hour on ABC radio. Topics ranged from foreign to domestic policy.

1960

The year 1960 saw truly momentous developments in presidential debates. They were the first nationally televised debates, and they were the first debates between contenders from different parties. Each of the four debates between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy was seen by more than 60 million television viewers, and heard by millions more radio listeners. The setting for combat was a new milieu -- the TV studio -- in Chicago, Washington DC, New York, and Los Angeles. Most of the debates lasted one hour.

Interestingly, people who listened to the candidates on radio tended to think that Nixon won; people who watched them on television tended to think that Kennedy won. (Nixon's recent illness and his propensity to sweat under klieg lights did not help his presentation.) Media handlers still study the 1960 debates to understand audience response and to prepare their candidates to act like Everyman -- the plain ol' Bubba next door -- yet look authoritative and sound presidential.

There would be no more public, nationally broadcast debates among presidential candidates for another 16 years.

1976 to the present

The continuous tradition of having major candidates debate before a national TV audience is less than three decades old. The number of debates and their format are basically the same today as in 1976, the year America was celebrating its bicentennial. Democratic upstart Jimmy Carter challenged Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford in three debates, hosted in cities redolent with the nation's founding -- Philadelphia and Williamsburg -- as well as in San Francisco. Interestingly, there were not many more television viewers of the debates in 1976 than in 1960 (despite a larger population and more access to television), probably because of the cynicism generated by the Watergate scandal that unfolded after the 1972 election.

A new twist in 1976 was to see the vice presidential contenders debate on national TV: Democrat Walter Mondale and Republican Bob Dole had at each other in the Alley Theater in Houston, Texas. Some 43 million Americans tuned in.

In 1980, Republican nominee Ronald Reagan took part in two debates on the road to the White House. His first was in Baltimore against Independent candidate John Anderson and lasted one hour, and his second was in Cleveland against Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter and lasted an hour and a half. The Cleveland debate was seen by more than 80 million viewers, a record that has not since been matched.

In 1984, Democratic nominee Walter Mondale challenged Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan in two debates in Louisville, KY, and Kansas City, KS. Each was one and a half hours in length and viewed by some 60 million Americans. In addition, the two vice presidential nominees, Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush and Democratic challenger Geraldine Ferraro (the first woman vice presidential candidate in U.S. history), fought it out for an hour and a half in Philadelphia.

In 1988, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis challenged Republican nominee George H. W. Bush in two nationally televised debates, in Winston-Salem, NC, and Los Angeles, CA. The vice presidential nominees -- Lloyd Bentson and Dan Quayle -- made for some memorable moments in Omaha, NE.

In 1992, Independent candidate Ross Perot added color to the debates between Democratic challenger Bill Clinton and Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush in three nationally televised debates that were crammed into nine days. The settings for the dramas were St. Louis, MO (at Washington University, which hosted a 2000 debate and is hosting a 2004 debate as well), Richmond, VA (University of Richmond), and East Lansing, MI (Michigan State University). Vice presidential nominees James Stockdale (I), Al Gore (D), and Dan Quayle (R) went at each other in one debate in Atlanta, GA, before 51 million TV viewers.

Note this: During each of the three debates in 1992, viewership ranged between 60 and 70 million people, which was fairly consistent with the number of viewers of all previous presidential debates, reaching back to the Nixon-Kennedy debates more than three decades earlier. The exception was the Reagan-Carter debate in 1980, which saw a spike of more than 80 million viewers. That record has not been beaten, despite the presence of more Americans, more television sets, and more news channels than ever before. After 1992 there would be a dramatic fall off in the number of viewers of nationally televised presidential debates.

In 1996, Republican candidate Bob Dole challenged Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton in only two debates, the first in Hartford, CT, and second in San Diego, CA. Only 36 million Americans tuned in -- fewer than watched the VP debate in 1976. And in 1996, only 26 million Americans watched the lone vice presidential debate between Jack Kemp (R) and incumbent Al Gore (D) in St. Petersburg, FL -- half the number who watched the 1992 VP debate.

In the lead up to one of the most contested presidential elections in U.S. history, that of 2000, there were three debates in which George W. Bush (R) and incumbent Al Gore (D) fought it out. The venues were Boston (University of Massachusetts), Winston-Salem (Wake Forest University, its second), and St. Louis (Washington University, its third in all). The length of each debate was one and a half hours -- not long by Lincoln-Douglas standards. Nevertheless -- and despite the headline Al Gore earned because of his visible exasperation in the first debate -- the contests were viewed by fewer than 47 million people. Vice presidential aspirants Joe Lieberman (D) and Dick Cheney (R) battled it out in Danville, KY, before 28 million viewers.

---

*Steven M. Gillon, "Jimmy Carter," in The American Presidency, ed. Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), pp. 457, 465.
**For an overview, see "Debate History," in Commission on Presidential Debates Website: http://www.debates.org/pages/history.html