————— current events through a historical lens————————
Executive v. Executive: A Parallel in American Presidential Elections
As a political historian, I was disappointed when Joe Biden backed out of the presidential race. I say that for no other reason than it’s been a rare occurrence in history where we have had two presidents battle it out.
However, while it would have given me plenty to write about, a president-on-president fight would not have been unprecedented. It has actually happened twice before, but it’s been 112 years since the last time. It does not mean having Kamala Harris, a sitting vice president, taking on former President Donald Trump does not have its own historic significance.
It may sound surprising, but a president versus vice president election has only happened three times in America. And, historically speaking, those circumstances are even more intriguing. Whether it’s president versus president or president versus vice president, these are interesting elections in that in most elections one candidate runs on their record while the other runs on promises. However, as with the six previous elections, this year both candidates must defend their record.
The first time two presidents squared off against one another was between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison in 1892. Cleveland first won in 1884 only to lose to Harrison in 1888.
Jump ahead another four years, however, and voters regretted their decision. 1892 saw the same two candidates, and this time voters corrected their mistake by reelecting Cleveland for his second term, making him the first president to serve two nonsequential terms.
The other president v. president battle, not discussed as much, possibly because neither ex-president won, was in 1912 but the story began in 1900. That year, Republicans ran incumbent President William McKinley, but with slipping approval ratings the party decided to change up the ticket and run newly celebrated war hero Theodore Roosevelt as VP. Long story short, McKinley was assassinated, and Roosevelt became the new chief executive. TR, an extremely popular president, easily won reelection in 1904 but decided not to run in 1908.
One reason he stepped down was that he basically handpicked the next president, William Howard Taft, who basically ran on Roosevelt’s coattails and platform. Roosevelt felt his new progressive reforms were in safe hands and went to Africa to hunt lions. Taft, however, did not turn out to be the reformer TR hoped for, and in 1912 he came back ready to resume his old job.
The problem was Taft was not ready to relinquish it. When Taft got the Republican nomination, TR bolted the party, created the Progressive Party, and ran on its ticket, which created the perfect situation for Democrat Woodrow Wilson. With a split Republican Party, Wilson became only the second Democrat to win during the 72-year period from 1860 to 1932.
As I said in the beginning, there are three elections that are like today with a president versus a vice president. One of which was in 1984 where Republican President Ronald Reagan took on ex-Vice President Walter Mondale in one of the biggest blowout elections of all time. The other two are more interesting in that they have an almost soap opera feel to them. The first is my favorite and quite possibly the most important election in history: 1800.
The 1800 election is important because it’s the first election where the nation changed parties and did so peacefully. It’s something even rare today and almost unheard of in 1800. The intriguing part were the candidates. In 1796, the first election without George Washington, the Federalists ran sitting VP John Adams, while the Jeffersonian Republicans ran their namesake and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.
Choosing the president was done differently then. Whoever got the most votes in the Electoral College won the presidency and second place became the VP. So, in 1796, Adams was elected president
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and Jefferson became VP. The problem was, while Adams and Jefferson were once best friends and had worked on toward America’s independence together, when it came to forming a government, the two had a falling out and now were the kind of enemies you could only be had you once were good friends. To say they did not get along is an understatement.
So come 1800, you had the sitting president up against the sitting VP. Instead of attacking the past administration — in which they were both part of — they personally attacked one another in a way that might even make Trump blush.
The other election is not quite president v. vice president, but is still fun to talk about. It came in 1828 with of course the most controversial president, Andrew Jackson. Jackson had run for president in 1824, but because there was only one party at the time four other men also ran on the Republican ticket: John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay and William Crawford. With none of the five receiving a majority in the Electoral College the top three vote-getters — Adams, Jackson, and Crawford — were sent to the House of Representatives to choose the winner. Of the two not included, Calhoun joined Adams’ ticket as VP. Clay also threw his weight behind Adams. When Adams won, he picked Clay as Secretary of State. Jackson called this a “corrupt bargain” and began preparing his run four years later.
During the Adams administration, Adams signed into law the largest tariff of its day, one that was be labeled by its opponents as the “Tariff of Abominations.” Leading the charge against the tariff was of course Jackson, but also Adams’ VP, Calhoun. Adams and Calhoun had such a blowout over the tariff that Calhoun joined Jackson’s new Democratic Party and ran as his VP in 1828 against Adams. So, in 1828, it was Adams-Rush v. Jackson-Calhoun. Both tickets had a current sitting member of the incumbent executive branch.
Just for clarity, I should note that 1968 did see two vice presidents face off against each other in Herbert Humphrey v. Richard Nixon, but I have discussed that election many times recently and do not need to rehash it again. Anyway, even though there have been some past elections with presidents and vice presidents battling it out, the current one will still be interesting. Neither candidate should be able to claim what they will do — they must show what they have done. When it comes to things like the economy, immigration and foreign policy, it’s up to the voters to decide which of the past two administrations did a better job.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeak-ing1776@ gmail.com.
