The GOP thinks all they have to do to win is call Kerry a “Massachusetts Liberal.” The Democrats could counter this by saying, “Bush doesn’t stand for any kind of serious conservatism. His stance is to pander to liberals in a me-too fashion. He’s a phony. We Democrats are authentic in our beliefs. We serve the people who vote for us.” Is Kerry adroit enough to do this?

I’m confused. “[N]o twentieth-century president who was unopposed for renomination was denied the term he was seeking”? But the list clearly shows that Hoover was unopposed for renomination, yet was denied the second term he was seeking.

Also, the list shows Nixon as unopposed, when in fact he was opposed by both John Ashcroft and Pete McCloskey. (McCloskey actually got one delegate to vote for him at the convention.)

So it’s simply not true that “all they [dissidents] have to do [to beat an incumbent of their own party] is challenge him for the nomination, and he will be defeated in the general election.” In fact, that’s not even what Novak was claiming. He was saying that unopposed incumbents always won re-election, not that opposed incumbents always lost.

Seamus is correct. I misstated the point both in the first sentence of the article and in the last paragraph, and have now corrected it to say that if the incumbent is challenged, he loses, not that if he is not challenged, he wins. In fact, it was Novak, on whom I was basing myself, who misstated the point, when he wrote: “No 20th-century president unopposed for renomination was denied another term.”

A more serious objection is the fact that Nixon was challenged in 1972, which I (and I guess Novak) had forgotten, yet won the election. I suppose one could argue that the challenges to Nixon were so weak that they don’t really count. Similarly, President Bush had about 13 opponents in the New Hampshire primary this year, but they are not considered serious opponents.

>>I suppose one could argue that the challenges to Nixon were so weak that they don’t really count.<<

Obviously, it’s a matter of debate how strong a challenge has to be for it not to be “too weak” to count. Stronger than Ashbrook’s and McCloskey’s, I suppose. (And please let me correct my mis-identification of Rep. Ashbrook as “Ashcroft” in my previous post.) But before we write off the Ashbrook challenge, I would point out that so august a journal as National Review (then a conservative magazine) was, if not an out-and-out supporter of Ashbrook’s candidacy, at least very sympathetic. (NR, Buckley, and other prominent conservative individuals and organizations had “suspended” their support for Richard Nixon the previous September, after Nixon’s imposition of wage and price controls proved the last straw to long-suffering right wingers.) So while others obviously might disagree, I wouldn’t consider Ashbrook so marginal a candidate that he can be disregarded. (And his example certainly shows that, even if conservatives had put forth a serious opposition to GWB in New Hampshire, that would be far from sufficient to deny him re-election.)

I have nothing against accepting Seamus’s point and acknowledging that the proposed pattern does not exist. But I still have a worm of doubt as to whether a challenger who won no or virtually no delegates counts as a serious enough challenger to count.

Minor point: LBJ had decided not to run in 1967, before he had an opponent, because of his heart condition. This is worth noting, perhaps, because the left still imagines it chased him out of office and cannot cease boasting about this — though even if that had been correct, they got Nixon in LBJ’s place, which they complained about ever after!

I’ve never heard before that LBJ had decided in 1967 not to run for re-election. Are we to imagine that he was waiting for the right moment to announce that he was not running, and that this right moment just happened to be right after McCarthy ran very well in New Hampshire and Bobby Kennedy announced his own candidacy? That seems very unlikely.

As I remember (though I may be mistaken), Johnson was thinking of not running, he was dispirited and concerned about his health, but he had not definitely made up his mind. It was the McCarthy showing in N.H. and the Kennedy announcement that made up his mind for him.

Here’s a further point that didn’t occur to me before. If Johnson had decided in ‘67 not to run in ‘68, why was he still on the ballot in New Hampshire? Wouldn’t he have declared in ‘67 his intention not to run, so that Humphrey or other candidates would have the time to start up their candidacies? Instead, his surprise resignation announcement hit the country like a shock, and Humphrey had to assemble a presidential campaign very quickly because it was so late. So I think it’s apparent that Johnson did not make up his mind on this until after the N.H. primary.

It’s almost enough to make one long for the [not so] good old days of 1971: NR suspends its support of Nixon over wage and price controls. The wage and price controls were bad indeed, but hardly comparable to the treason of the Bush amnesty proposal. What would it take for the NR of today to suspend its support of Bush? I suspect the only thing would be his re-registration as a Democrat. HRS

>>If Johnson had decided in ‘67 not to run in ‘68, why was he still on the ballot in New Hampshire? Wouldn’t he have declared in ‘67 his intention not to run, so that Humphrey or other candidates would have the time to start up their candidacies? Instead, his surprise resignation announcement hit the country like a shock, and Humphrey had to assemble a presidential campaign very quickly because it was so late. So I think it’s apparent that Johnson did not make up his mind on this until after the N.H. primary.<<

This reminds me that in several press conferences in late 1967 and early 1968, when reporters asked LBJ when he was going to announce his candidacy for reelection, he always answered that “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” At the time, it just sounded like he was being coy about when he was going to launch his campaign. Now, it looks like he might genuinely have been in doubt as to whether to run again, and his poor showing in New Hampshire helped him make up his mind. That’s a far cry from saying he had positively decided in 1967 not to run again. I don’t recall that even LBJ claimed that. (Although he claimed in his memoirs that he never wanted to run for president at all, that his family pushed him into it in 1960, etc. I think we can give that just as much credence as we do to the suggestion that those TV stations in Texas belonged to Lady Bird and not to him.)

Ok, then, Seamus and I are in agreement that Johnson withdrew from the race in response to McCarthy’s strong showing in New Hampshire (and maybe also in response to Kennedy’s subsequent announcement of his candidacy). Therefore Johnson fits the pattern I enunciated at the beginning, that no twentieth-century incumbent president who was opposed for the nomination of his party was elected to a new term. Either he stepped aside, like Truman and Johnson, or else he was defeated in the general election.

I am sorry about taking so long to respond to the replies about my assertions about Johnson. The latter were based on LBJ’s own statements in his memoirs, supported by the testimony of General Westmoreland and Walt Rostow, both of whom had been informed by LBJ in advance of the public. I would venture to guess that he delayed the announcement because he knew it would make him a known lame duck and reduce his power. I regret raising this point, because I thoroughly agree with Mr. Auster’s point about the general pattern — Presidents challenged in their own party usually do fail. I could not resist pointing out that the left’s claim of “victory” over LBJ was false; and even if it had been correct, it was an empty victory.

“my assertions about Johnson … were based on LBJ’s own statements in his memoirs, supported by the testimony of General Westmoreland and Walt Rostow, both of whom had been informed by LBJ in advance of the public.”

How far in advance? Several months, or a week?

While the truth about the timing of Johnson’s decision is interesting in itself, either way, it doesn’t bear on the thesis. If Johnson did decide to step down in 1967, before the primaries began, then that simply puts him in the category of the presidents who did not seek re-election. If he decided to step down after New Hampshire, it fits the pattern that presidents who are opposed in the primaries don’t get elected to another term.

Unfortunately, I do not have the references on hand, but I believe both Rostow and Westmoreland knew of Johnson’s decision in 1967. In any case, the issue does not offer much of an exception to the general pattern. Even had Johnson had been in better health, and obtained renomination, that would have little bearing on the case of Bush! LBJ, for all his tragic blunders, was one of the wiliest, smartest politicos in the United States. The present occupant of the White House is not even in the same league.