Can a Former President Run for Office Again After Leaving 2 Terms

Leaving Washington, D.C., backside, the Trumps board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on January. 20, hours before President Biden'south inauguration. Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images hibernate caption

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

Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images

The Senate had a exam vote this week that cast deep doubt on the prospects for convicting erstwhile President Donald Trump on the impeachment charge at present pending confronting him. Without a two-thirds majority for conviction, there volition not be a second vote in the Senate to bar him from time to come federal part.

Also this week, Politico released a Forenoon Consult poll that found 56% of Republicans proverb that Trump should run again in 2024. Equally he left Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, he said he expected to exist "dorsum in some form."

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

History provides niggling guidance on these questions. There is little precedent for a former president running again, let alone winning. But since when has the lack of precedent bothered Donald Trump?

Only 1 president who was defeated for reelection has come dorsum to win again. That was Grover Cleveland, start elected in 1884, narrowly defeated in 1888 and elected once again in 1892.

Another, far amend-known president, Theodore Roosevelt, left office voluntarily in 1908, believing his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, would continue his policies. When Taft did not, Roosevelt came back to run against him four years afterwards.

The Republican Party institution of that fourth dimension stood by Taft, the incumbent, and so Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate. That divide 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 Higher. Democratic President Martin Van Buren, defeated for reelection in 1840, sought his party's nomination in 1844 and 1848 simply was denied it both times. The latter time he helped establish the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and ran as its nominee, getting x% of the pop vote but winning no states.

More than a few quondam presidents may accept been set to leave public life by the stop of their fourth dimension at the peak. Others surely would have liked to stay longer, only they were sent packing, either by voters in November or by the nominating apparatus of their parties.

At that place have also been 8 presidents who have died in office. 4 in the 1800s (William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield) were succeeded by lackluster vice presidents who were not nominated for a term on their ain. Four in the 1900s (William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) were succeeded past vice presidents whose parties did nominate them for a term in their own right (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson).

Each of these 4 went on to win a term on his own, and each then left office voluntarily. As noted above, Theodore Roosevelt subsequently changed his mind, and Johnson began the 1968 primary flavour as an incumbent and a candidate but concluded his run at the finish of March.

The Jackson model

A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square nigh the White Business firm 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 nigh the White Business firm in June.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

One model that might exist meaningful for Trump at this stage is that of President Andrew Jackson, who ran for president three times and arguably won each fourth dimension. His first campaign, in 1824, was a four-way contest in which he clearly led in both the popular vote and the Balloter College only lacked the needed majority in the latter.

That sent the outcome to the House of Representatives, where each state had 1 vote. A protracted and dubious negotiation involving candidates and congressional power brokers subsequently denied Jackson the prize. He immediately denounced that effect as a "corrupt bargain," laying the background for another bid. In 1828, Jackson was swept into office, ousting the incumbent on a wave of populist fervor.

It is not an accident that Trump, following the advice of onetime adviser Steve Bannon, spoke approvingly of Jackson in 2016. When he entered the White House, Trump hung Jackson's presidential portrait in the Oval Office overlooking the Resolute Desk.

Information technology is not hard to imagine Trump invoking the spirit of Jackson'south 1828 campaign against the "decadent bargain," if he runs in 2024 confronting "the steal" (his shorthand for the outcome of the 2020 election, which he falsely claims was illegitimate).

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

Two New York governors, two decades apart

For at present, Cleveland remains the only two-term president who had a fourth dimension out betwixt terms. When he kickoff won in 1884, he was the showtime Democratic president elected in 28 years, and he won by the micro-margin of just 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 Democratic Yankee to a Republican Yankee.

The latter, James Blaine of Maine, was widely known as "Glace Jim," and his reputation made him repugnant to the more reform-minded members of his own party. Blaine was as well faulted in that campaign for failing to renounce a zealous supporter who had called Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion." That phrase, which has lived on in infamy, was a derogatory reference to Democrats' "wet" sentiments on the issue of alcohol as well as to the Roman Catholics and former secessionists to be found in the party tent.

Potent every bit it was, that linguistic communication backfired by alienating plenty Catholics in New York to elect Cleveland, himself a Protestant. His margin in his dwelling house country was a mere g votes, but it was enough to evangelize a majority in the Balloter Higher.

After Cleveland's first term, the election was excruciatingly close once again. The salient issue of 1888 was the tariff on appurtenances from foreign countries. Republicans were for it, making an argument not unlike Trump's own America Commencement rhetoric of 2016. Cleveland, on the other hand, said the tariff enriched big business but hurt consumers. He won the national pop vote but not the Balloter Higher, having fallen xv,000 votes brusk in his home state of New York.

But Cleveland scarcely broke step. He continued to campaign over the ensuing years and easily won the Democratic nomination for the third consecutive time in 1892. He then dismissed the one-term incumbent to whom he had lost in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, who received less than a third of the Electoral Higher vote.

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 hide caption

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A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. After leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to render 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 subsequently renominated him with a new running mate who brought youth and vigor to the ticket. Just 41 at the time, Theodore Roosevelt had yet been a constabulary commissioner, a "Crude Passenger" cavalry officeholder in the Spanish-American State of war and governor of New York.

Less than a year into that term, McKinley was fatally shot, making Roosevelt president at age 42 (still the record for youngest chief executive). He won a term of his own in 1904 and promptly pledged not to run once more. Truthful to his give-and-take, in 1908 he handed off to his hand-picked successor, Taft.

Roosevelt did and then assertive Taft would go on his policies. But if Roosevelt had managed to detect appeal every bit both a populist figure and a progressive, Taft more than often stood with the party'southward business-oriented regulars. And then "T.R." decided to claiming Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912.

He did well in the nascent "primary elections" held that twelvemonth, only Taft had the party mechanism and controlled the convention. Roosevelt led his delegates out of the convention and organized a tertiary party, the Progressive Political party (known colloquially as the "Balderdash Moose" political party).

That fall, Roosevelt had his revenge on Taft and the GOP. The incumbent Taft finished a poor third with just 8 votes in the Balloter College. But Roosevelt was not the main beneficiary, finishing a distant second to Wilson, the Democrat, who had 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt'south 88. Although the two Republican rivals' combined popular vote would have hands bested Wilson, dividing the party left them both in his wake.

A alert 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 accept enabled Democrats to win the pop vote in seven of the terminal viii presidential cycles.

And if he is not nominated, Trump running as an independent or equally the nominee of a tertiary party would surely split the Republican vote and make a repeat of 1912 highly likely.

Nevertheless, the grip Trump has on half or more than of the GOP voter base 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 be clear, Trump has not said he will run again in 2024. On the 24-hour interval he left Washington he spoke of a return "in some class" but was vague near how that might happen. He has sent aides to discourage talk of his forming a third political party.

For the time being, at to the lowest degree, Trump seems intent on wielding influence in the Republican Party he has dominated for the past five years — making it clear he will be involved in primaries in 2022 against Republicans who did not support his campaign to overturn the election results.

That is no idle threat. Most Trump supporters accept shown remarkable loyalty throughout the post-election traumas, fifty-fifty later the anarchism in the U.S. Capitol. The fierceness of that zipper has sobered those in the GOP who had thought Trump'south era would wane after he was defeated. But Trump has been able to hold the popular imagination within his party, largely by disarming many that he was not defeated.

The results of the election take been certified in all l states past governors and country officials of both parties, and there is no evidence for any of the conspiracy theories questioning their validity. Still, multiple polls accept shown Trump supporters go along to believe he was unjustly removed from office.

Assuming Trump is not convicted on his impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection before the Jan. half-dozen invasion of the Capitol, he will non face up a ban on future campaigns.

Some believe Trump might still exist kept out of federal office by an invocation of the 14th Amendment. That part of the Constitution, added later on the Civil War with former Confederate officers in mind, banned any who had "engaged in insurrection" against the authorities.

But that wording could well exist read to crave activeness against the government, not just incitement of others to action by incendiary voice communication. It could too require lengthy litigation in federal courts and a balancing of the 14th Amendment with the free speech protections of the First Amendment.

All that tin can exist said at this point is that the onetime 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 post-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