Adam Smith: Historian

A version of this article was published in The Sunday Times on 29 April, 2023

Even bearing in mind the tendency of people on the left to political doom-mongering, it is striking how many Democrats are uneasy about the wisdom of Biden’s decision to seek a second term. Polls show that more than half do not think he should run. Their unease is not grounded in political opposition. It boils down, of course, to the President’s age. In the 1984 election, Ronald Reagan twinkled away questions about his age by saying that he wouldn’t hold his opponent’s youth and inexperience against him. But in 1984 Reagan was only 73. Biden would be 82 at the start of his second term, and it is surely legitimate to ask if an octogenarian can cope with the demands of a presidential campaign, never mind the pressure of governing. Democrats’ anxiety is made worse by their apparent lack of confidence in Vice President Kamala Harris, who, for unavoidable actuarial reasons, would be statistically more likely to assume the presidency than most of her predecessors, yet who has a net disapproval rating of 12 percent, even worse than her boss.

In 2020, Biden faced the same set of questions, but his party’s doubts were put aside because Scranton Joe—the old-style blue-collar patriotic Democrat with an infectious smile—was regarded as electoral kryptonite for Donald Trump, who, in any case, was no spring chicken himself. Sometimes Biden’s 2020 run was presented—including by his supporters—as akin to breaking the emergency glass: the point of the campaign was simply to defeat Trump, who was presented as a uniquely toxic threat to what Biden frequently calls the “soul of America.” With that task complete, surely, some commentators thought, Biden would step back, his historic task complete. His would be a transitional presidency.  

Such commentary was always naïve. The kinds of people who win the presidency do not willingly lay aside their power. It is true that Lyndon B. Johnson shocked the nation in April 1968 by announcing that he would not seek, nor would he accept, the Democratic nomination for president. By Biden’s standards, Johnson was a babe in arms — he would have been only 60 when he started his third term in 1969 – but Johnson was worried about his health (he was to die of a heart attack aged 64), and, unlike Biden, would have struggled to win the nomination as the country was roiled by the war in Vietnam. And in any case, having come into office after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson was already technically in his second term. Harry Truman also chose not to contest the election in 1952, but had already served almost two full terms after Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Calvin Coolidge, the dapper Vermonter who succeeded Warren G. Harding after the latter’s death in 1923, also chose not to seek what would technically have been a third term. But “Silent Cal” was so uncharismatic that his decision barely caused a political ripple.

A measure of how astonishing it would have been had Biden chosen not to run, you have to go back to 1880 to find a president who served a single full term and then voluntarily chose not to seek re-election. But perhaps that president—Rutherford B. Hayes, a bearded Republican from Ohio—could have been a useful model. To his Republican supporters, Hayes’ contested victory in the 1876 election had been necessary to save the soul of the nation from white Southerners who only fifteen years earlier had launched a violent insurrection to break up the country. Having won (albeit in controversial circumstances), Hayes had done his job. He pledged to serve only one term and he was as good as his word.

The narcissism that impels politicians of all stripes to think it is in their country’s interest for them to stay in office for as long as possible no doubt explains why Hayes’ example is so rare. Winning a second term is also, more often than not, a good way for a president to burnish their reputation. It is surprisingly common for presidents to be unpopular in the second half of their first term (the stage Biden’s at now) yet to rebound strongly after re-election. Richard Nixon Ronald Reagan, with an approval ratings of only 41 percent at this stage in his presidency in 1983, was even less popular than Biden, yet he went on to win a landslide, feel-good victory in 1984 with (in my view) the most brilliant campaign slogan in American history: It’s Morning Again in America. Despite the Iran-Contra scandal, which might have felled a weaker President, Reagan left office in 1989 with a now-unimaginable approval rating of 63 percent. Much the same was true of Bill Clinton, who weathered the storm of impeachment to leave office also with a 63 percent approval. There can be little doubt that had Reagan or Clinton been permitted by the Constitution to run for a third term they would both have won.

But aside from the president’s yearning for immortality, there is a powerful political incentive for parties to renominate sitting presidents: they generally win.

Since the United States’ antique constitution came into operation in 1788, there have been 59 presidential elections. 33 of these featured incumbent candidates, and in 22 of those elections, the incumbent won. In contrast, in “open-seat” presidential elections where there is no incumbent, the party that holds the White House has won it exactly half the time. It is a striking empirical finding. Even when we control for other factors, such as the state of the economy or whether the country is at war, parties improve their chances of keeping hold of the White House if they run an incumbent from about one in two (no better than a coin toss) to about two thirds. Political scientists who have studied this issue have estimated that incumbency provides a boost of between 4 and 6 percent in the popular vote.

One reason for this may be that an incumbent, having won once already, has a winning playbook to follow. They can almost always raise money easily, always have an audience wherever they go, and can make actual decisions rather than just promise things. At least as important, though, may be the attitude of voters. In most scenarios, since the popular vote has historically usually matched the Electoral College vote, most voters have already cast their vote once for the President and are susceptible to the argument that they need to be given the chance to “finish the job”. Hence slogans like “I still like Ike” in 1956, or “Nixon Now, more than ever” in 1972. Risk-averseness feeds into this, especially in troubled times. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln’s re-election campaign warned voters not to “switch horses while crossing a stream”, a version of which was repeated by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 and (less convincingly) by George Bush in 1992. 

Presidential elections featuring incumbents are also disproportionately represented among the most lop-sided in American history. Of the elections where the popular vote margin was estimated to be greater than 15 percent, 12 have featured incumbents and only 3 have

been “open-seat” contests. Most of these have been crushing victories for a president seeking a second term including Eisenhower in 1956 and Reagan in 1984. But sometimes incumbents have suffered crushing defeats. In 1932 Herbert Hoover lost by 18 points. What seems to be the case is that incumbency provides an opportunity for a candidate to make the case that they need to be given the chance to finish the job and, more often than not, the electorate collectively gives them the benefit of any doubt. But they can also blow that chance, as did Herbert Hoover, whose decisions and demeanour made him the scapegoat for a catastrophic economic collapse.

So, although the historical data shows that incumbency is an advantage, anxious Democrats may well be studying the eleven examples of presidents who have defied the trend by seeking re-election and failing. The most recent case, of course, being that of Donald J. Trump. Perhaps, in a highly polarised environment, one term presidencies are the new normal? In fact there are good reasons to think that the example Trump’s defeat does not disprove the general advantage of incumbency. Having failed to win the popular vote in 2016, he failed to build his coalition as Reagan and even Clinton managed to do, in part because his angry persona was regarded by a clear majority of voters as unpresidential. So while most presidents have presented themselves for re-election as the safe choice versus the disruption of changing horses midstream, Trump offered only continued chaos – an exciting proposition to his supporters, but not the way that other presidents have secured re-election. None of these factors apply to Biden. Using all the trappings of presidential authority, he can make a conventional case for re-election: let’s finish the job. Inflation and crime would present challenges for any Democrat going into 2024, but unemployment is at record lows, and in any case, a party is better off facing economic headwinds with an incumbent than not.

Which brings us back to Biden’s age, and what that says about the party that looks likely to renominate him without significant opposition. The president’s physician published a full health check on 16 February, 2023, which concluded that he remained “fit for duty”. But the 97 percent of Americans who are younger than the President, including the slightly more than half of voters who would like to back a Democrat, are bound to watch him with bated breath, as they would one of their own elderly relations. It may be that Biden’s team is counting on a re-match against Trump. If so, the age factor will be somewhat neutralised, so long as Biden remains fit.

Democrats are in a bind. Had Biden followed Hayes’ example and announced that one term was enough for him, the party would have thrown away the advantage of incumbency and may have ended up with a bitter nomination battle. But as it is, they are throwing all their chips on a man who has already exceeded the average life expectancy for American men. It will be fascinating, if nerve-wracking, to watch.