"Open" Presidential Elections

Much has been made of the fact that the 2008 U.S. Presidential election will be the first one in recent memory to be completely "open"--meaning that a sitting President or Vice President will not be one of the candidates. So it naturally begs some questions ...

How rare are "open" elections?

Since 1900, there have been 27 Presidential elections, and only 4 have been "open." The 2008 election (the 5th of 28) will be the first one in 56 years, since Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 "open" election.

What causes an "open" election?

The 2008 election will be "open" because the sitting President (George W. Bush) is precluded from running for a third term by the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the sitting Vice President (Dick Cheney) is sticking to his vow from early in his first term that he would not seek the Presidency. The prior 4 "open" elections were caused by a variety of issues:

• In 1952, President Harry S. Truman withdrew his re-election bid after losing the New Hampshire primary (he was eligible for a third term because he was grandfathered into the 22nd Amendment), and the Democratic Party considered the Vice President (Alben Barkley) too old at the age of 74.


• In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge decided to retire and not seek re-election, and the Vice President (Charles Dawes) had a long-standing feud with Coolidge which caused the President to block his bid for the Republican nomination.


• In 1920, President Woodrow Wilson was unable to seek re-election due to being incapacitated by a stroke, but it is not entirely clear why his two-term Vice President (Thomas Marshall) did not seek the Presidency himself. Perhaps it was since the Wilson Presidency had become immensely unpopular over the United States' involvement in World War I.


• In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt decided to retire, and the Vice President (Charles Fairbanks) was surprisingly overlooked by Roosevelt, who instead supported his friend and Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, as his successor Republican nominee.
  

How critical are "open" elections anyway?

It has been suggested that incumbent Presidents and Vice Presidents have unfair advantages heading into election years, so that "open" elections tend to "level the playing field" a bit. I guess one way to gauge whether an "open" election is critical at all would be to look at all of the elections that have NOT been "open."

In the 23 Presidential elections since 1900 where a sitting President or Vice President has been a candidate, the incumbents have won 15 times, which seems to suggest an impressive 65% winning percentage and a definite advantage. However, this is a little misleading, since 13 of those victories were re-election bids by sitting Presidents (and 3 of those were by Franklin D. Roosevelt alone and led to the passage of the 22nd Amendment). While this does suggest that unseating an incumbent President is difficult, it does not necessarily follow that ALL incumbents have unfair advantages in an election that is not "open."

Since 1900, there have been 5 elections in which the incumbent candidate was the sitting Vice President, and only 2 have been able to gain the Presidency: in 1924, Vice President Calvin Coolidge succeeded President Warren Harding; and in 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush succeeded President Ronald Reagan. Otherwise, incumbent Vice Presidents actually have a not-so-great 40% winning percentage and therefore not really a distinct advantage.

So, what's the lesson learned here? I guess we can see that there's a BIG difference between a non-"open" election where the incumbent candidate is a sitting President and a non-"open" election where the incumbent candidate is a sitting Vice President. Therefore, the issue is not really whether an election is "open" or "not open" but rather whether an election includes a re-election bid or not, since it seems like the incumbent President (and not the incumbent Vice President) may have distinct advantages in election years.