11/5/08

POTUS Memory Lane
TRI-Os: Oddities, Observations and Opinions
By Herb Kandel

This is being written three days before Election Day, so by now we know who the next president will be (except if it‘s another chad/cliff-hanger as was Gore vs. Bush in 2000). Whether or not your choice was the one who will take the oath of office, we can all give a great sigh of relief by no longer having to sit through those political commercial ads telling us how bad and nasty their opponent is/was. Then the inevitable ritual: As soon as the votes are tallied, verified and accepted, the once former challengers are “friends” again asking for unity and to “come together” in conciliatory speeches. It happens every four years.

Let’s stroll down Memory Lane and revisit some of the outcomes of past elections and explore some trivia along the way:

George Washington and James Monroe were the only presidents to have won in every sate, but there were not as many states then.
Monroe had a total of 87,343 popular votes in the 24 states, and he ran unopposed in 1820.
Top winners with a win in 49 states are Richard Nixon (lost in Massachusetts) and Ronald Reagan (lost in Minnesota). Runner-up is Franklin Roosevelt in 1936; he won 46 states, which was every state, at that time, except Maine and Vermont.
The last third-party presidential candidate to win a state was George Wallace in 1968. As the American Independent Party choice, he won five states: Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Previously, in 1948, Strom Thurmond won Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi And South Carolina.
You may think of California as a blue state, but from 1960 to 2004, in all those 12 presidential bouts, they only voted Democratic five times (1964, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004).
Speaking of 1960-2004 presidential races, the Republicans won each time in Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Alaska.
Franklin Roosevelt could count on the “solid South” because they had voted Democratic since reconstruction. The first Republican to put a crack in that solidity was Warren Harding in 1920, winning Tennessee by a slim margin. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign put back the “solid” to the South, but on the red side. He prevailed in his home state of Arizona, and the only other states where he was victorious were in the South: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
Q: How are Al Gore, George McGovern, Al Smith and William Howard Taft similar?
A: They lost their home state in their presidential bids.
The only state that voted Democratic in the last seven presidential elections (1980 to 2004) is Minnesota.
The party who has won in more presidential elections is the Republicans: Score 23 terms to 20, and the last president who was not major party affiliated was Millard Fillmore in 1850, he ran as a Whig.
When Theodore Roosevelt split with the Republicans in 1912 and ran as the candidate of the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party, the Republicans came in third. Woodrow Wilson won.
As far as presidents elected to two terms, the Republicans beat the Democrats seven (Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush) to five (Jackson, Cleveland, Wilson, FDR and Clinton).
When none of the four candidates in 1824 received an electoral majority, although Andrew Jackson got the majority of the popular vote, the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams, by ONE vote.
Only four sitting vice presidents have won the high office: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren and George H.W. Bush.
It would take only the 11 most populated states to have a total of 271 electoral college votes and win the election. Any candidate could win all 39 other states (and D.C.) and still lose.

Presidential Firsts:
To grow the first tomatoes in America: Thomas Jefferson
Photograph of an American president,: John Quincy Adams (in 1843, it was taken 14 years after he left office)
Photograph of a sitting president while in office: James Polk
To ride on a train: Andrew Jackson
To ride in an automobile: Theodore Roosevelt
To fly in an airplane: Theodore Roosevelt
To use a helicopter on the White House lawn: Dwight Eisenhower
To travel outside the country while in office: Theodore Roosevelt
To have a bathtub with running water in the White House: Millard Fillmore
To install a radio in the White House: Warren Harding
To broadcast from the White House: Calvin Coolidge
To have a telephone in the White House: Rutherford B. Hayes
To appear on television : Franklin Roosevelt
To appoint a woman as a cabinet member: Franklin Roosevelt
To appoint an African-American as a cabinet member: Lyndon Johnson
To have a child born in the White House: Grover Cleveland

Then there was George Washington who owned and operated the largest distillery at that time with five stills and a boiler. Is it any wonder than that he was eulogized as being “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Herb Kandel is an entrepreneur and a former human resources executive who lives in Fairhope. He can be contacted at hekan@mail.com