Can a 2 Term President Ever Hold Office Again

Leaving Washington, D.C., behind, the Trumps board Air Forcefulness I at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Jan. xx, hours before President Biden's inauguration. Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images hide caption

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Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images

Leaving Washington, D.C., backside, the Trumps lath Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on January. 20, hours before President Biden's inauguration.

Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images

The Senate had a test vote this calendar week that cast deep doubt on the prospects for convicting former President Donald Trump on the impeachment charge now pending against him. Without a ii-thirds bulk for conviction, there will not exist a 2nd vote in the Senate to bar him from hereafter federal function.

Likewise this calendar week, Politico released a Morning Consult poll that institute 56% of Republicans proverb that Trump should run once again in 2024. As he left Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, he said he expected to be "back in some form."

So volition he seek a comeback? And if he does, what are his chances of returning to the White Firm?

History provides little guidance on these questions. In that location is little precedent for a quondam president running again, let lone winning. Simply since when has the lack of precedent bothered Donald Trump?

Only one president who was defeated for reelection has come back to win again. That was Grover Cleveland, offset elected in 1884, narrowly defeated in 1888 and elected once more in 1892.

Another, far meliorate-known president, Theodore Roosevelt, left office voluntarily in 1908, believing his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, would keep his policies. When Taft did non, Roosevelt came back to run against him four years later.

The Republican Political party establishment of that time stood by Taft, the incumbent, then Roosevelt ran as a tertiary-political party candidate. That split the Republican vote and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

And that's it. Aside from those two men, no defeated White House occupant has come back to claim votes in the Electoral College. Democratic President Martin Van Buren, defeated for reelection in 1840, sought his party's nomination in 1844 and 1848 only was denied information technology both times. The latter time he helped found the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and ran equally its nominee, getting 10% of the pop vote simply winning no states.

More than a few one-time presidents may take been ready to get out public life by the cease of their fourth dimension at the elevation. Others surely would accept liked to stay longer, but they were sent packing, either by voters in Nov or by the nominating apparatus of their parties.

There accept besides been eight presidents who take died in office. Iv in the 1800s (William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield) were succeeded past lackluster vice presidents who were not nominated for a term on their own. Iv in the 1900s (William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) were succeeded by vice presidents whose parties did nominate them for a term in their ain right (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson).

Each of these four went on to win a term on his ain, and each then left office voluntarily. As noted above, Theodore Roosevelt later changed his listen, and Johnson began the 1968 master season every bit an incumbent and a candidate but ended his run at the stop of March.

The Jackson model

A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square about the White House in June. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square well-nigh the White House in June.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

One model that might be meaningful for Trump at this stage is that of President Andrew Jackson, who ran for president three times and arguably won each time. His first campaign, in 1824, was a four-fashion competition in which he clearly led in both the popular vote and the Electoral College simply lacked the needed bulk in the latter.

That sent the issue to the House of Representatives, where each state had one vote. A protracted and dubious negotiation involving candidates and congressional ability brokers subsequently denied Jackson the prize. He immediately denounced that outcome equally a "corrupt deal," laying the groundwork for some other bid. In 1828, Jackson was swept into office, ousting the incumbent on a moving ridge of populist fervor.

It is not an accident that Trump, post-obit the advice of onetime adviser Steve Bannon, spoke approvingly of Jackson in 2016. When he entered the White Business firm, Trump hung Jackson'southward presidential portrait in the Oval Office overlooking the Resolute Desk.

It is not hard to imagine Trump invoking the spirit of Jackson's 1828 entrada against the "corrupt deal," if he runs in 2024 against "the steal" (his shorthand for the issue of the 2020 election, which he falsely claims was illegitimate).

Jackson, the ultimate outsider in his own fourth dimension, makes a far amend template for Trump than either Cleveland or Teddy Roosevelt — even though the latter two were New Yorkers like Trump.

2 New York governors, ii decades apart

For now, Cleveland remains the only two-term president who had a time out between terms. When he get-go won in 1884, he was the showtime Democratic president elected in 28 years, and he won past the micro-margin of merely 25,000 votes nationwide. He won considering he carried New York, where he was governor at the time, calculation its electoral votes to those of Autonomous-leaning states in the South – which preferred a Autonomous Yankee to a Republican Yankee.

The latter, James Blaine of Maine, was widely known as "Slippery Jim," and his reputation fabricated him repugnant to the more than reform-minded members of his ain party. Blaine was as well faulted in that entrada for failing to renounce a zealous supporter who had chosen Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion." That phrase, which has lived on in infamy, was a derogatory reference to Democrats' "moisture" sentiments on the consequence of booze every bit well every bit to the Roman Catholics and one-time secessionists to exist found in the party tent.

Potent as information technology was, that linguistic communication backfired by alienating enough Catholics in New York to elect Cleveland, himself a Protestant. His margin in his habitation land was a mere thousand votes, just it was enough to deliver a majority in the Electoral College.

Afterwards Cleveland's first term, the election was excruciatingly close again. The salient issue of 1888 was the tariff on appurtenances from foreign countries. Republicans were for information technology, making an argument not unlike Trump's ain America First rhetoric of 2016. Cleveland, on the other paw, said the tariff enriched big business organisation but hurt consumers. He won the national popular vote but non the Electoral College, having fallen 15,000 votes short in his home state of New York.

But Cleveland scarcely broke stride. He connected to campaign over the ensuing years and easily won the Democratic nomination for the tertiary consecutive fourth dimension in 1892. He so dismissed the one-term incumbent to whom he had lost in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, who received less than a tertiary of the Balloter College vote.

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York Urban center. Afterward leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to return to the White House. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images hibernate explanation

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A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. After leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to return to the White House.

David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Cleveland stepped down after his second term, as other reelected presidents had seen fit to do in emulation of George Washington. The Republicans reclaimed the presidency with William McKinley in 1896 and four years later renominated him with a new running mate who brought youth and vigor to the ticket. Just 41 at the time, Theodore Roosevelt had nonetheless been a constabulary commissioner, a "Rough Passenger" cavalry officer in the Spanish-American State of war and governor of New York.

Less than a twelvemonth into that term, McKinley was fatally shot, making Roosevelt president at age 42 (notwithstanding the record for youngest chief executive). He won a term of his own in 1904 and promptly pledged non to run again. True to his discussion, in 1908 he handed off to his hand-picked successor, Taft.

Roosevelt did then believing Taft would continue his policies. But if Roosevelt had managed to find entreatment as both a populist figure and a progressive, Taft more often stood with the party's concern-oriented regulars. So "T.R." decided to challenge Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912.

He did well in the nascent "primary elections" held that year, just Taft had the party machinery and controlled the convention. Roosevelt led his delegates out of the convention and organized a third party, the Progressive Party (known colloquially every bit the "Bull Moose" party).

That fall, Roosevelt had his revenge on Taft and the GOP. The incumbent Taft finished a poor 3rd with merely eight votes in the Balloter College. But Roosevelt was not the master casher, finishing a distant second to Wilson, the Democrat, who had 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt'south 88. Although the 2 Republican rivals' combined popular vote would take easily bested Wilson, dividing the party left them both in his wake.

A alarm to the GOP?

That is the model some Republicans may fear seeing played out in 2024. If nominated, Trump would demand to replicate Cleveland'south unique feat from the 1890s, and he would need to overcome the demographics and voter trends that take enabled Democrats to win the popular vote in 7 of the terminal viii presidential cycles.

And if he is non nominated, Trump running equally an independent or as the nominee of a 3rd party would surely split the Republican vote and make a repeat of 1912 highly likely.

Nevertheless, the grip Trump has on half or more of the GOP voter base of operations makes him not only formidable but unavoidable as the political party plans for the midterm elections in 2022 and the ultimate question of a nominee in 2024.

To exist articulate, Trump has not said he will run once more in 2024. On the twenty-four hours he left Washington he spoke of a render "in some grade" but was vague about how that might happen. He has sent aides to discourage talk of his forming a third political party.

For the fourth dimension being, at least, Trump seems intent on wielding influence in the Republican Party he has dominated for the past 5 years — making information technology clear he will be involved in primaries in 2022 against Republicans who did not support his campaign to overturn the ballot results.

That is no idle threat. Most Trump supporters have shown remarkable loyalty throughout the mail service-election traumas, even afterward the riot in the U.S. Capitol. The fierceness of that attachment has sobered those in the GOP who had idea Trump'south era would wane later he was defeated. But Trump has been able to concur the popular imagination within his party, largely by convincing many that he was not defeated.

The results of the election have been certified in all 50 states by governors and state officials of both parties, and there is no evidence for whatsoever of the conspiracy theories questioning their validity. Notwithstanding, multiple polls take shown Trump supporters continue to believe he was unjustly removed from part.

Assuming Trump is not convicted on his impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection before the January. 6 invasion of the Capitol, he will non face a ban on futurity campaigns.

Some believe Trump might even so exist kept out of federal role by an invocation of the 14th Amendment. That part of the Constitution, added after the Civil War with former Confederate officers in mind, banned whatever who had "engaged in insurrection" against the government.

But that diction could well be read to require activeness against the authorities, not merely incitement of others to action by incendiary spoken communication. Information technology could also require lengthy litigation in federal courts and a balancing of the 14th Amendment with the free voice communication protections of the Offset Amendment.

All that can be said at this point is that the old president will settle into a post-presidential routine far from his previous homes in Washington and New York City. And the greatest obstacle to his return to power would seem to be the pattern of history regarding the mail service-presidential careers of his predecessors.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/30/961919674/could-trump-make-a-comeback-in-2024

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