Experimental Blog #135

Notes and Quotations from "Almost President" - The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation by Scott Farris

As of today in American history 34 men have run for President of the United States as the nominee of a major political party, sometimes 2 or 3 times, and always lost.
Scott Farris describes how some of them, 9 in particlar, should be considered more important in their impact on the American political system than quite a few other candidates who actually became president. He also points out that, because of 3rd party campaigns, 40% of the time the presidential winners have received less than a majority, that is 50%, of the popular vote.

However, the 9 who are written about at length in this book are:

Henry Clay ran 3 times and, apparently, should be cosidered the principal founder of modern liberalism; that is, a "belief in the necessity of an assertive national government to act positively for the economic, social and moral well-being of the nation." Scott Farris's point of view seems very contrary to the very long standing "Jeffersonian-Jacksonian" presentation of American history.

Next are Stephen Douglas, in 1860, and William Jennings Bryan, who also ran 3 times.

In the chapter on Al Smith the author writes extensively on the Motion Picture Association of America{MPAA} and the Production Code Administration{PCA}. The code was "deeply Catholic in tone and outlook" and required that films "show deference to civil and religious authority", "that characters accept personal responsibility for their actions, demonstrate a belief that suffering has value as a step toward salvation, resist the glorification of sin, and never depict the ultimate triumph of evil over good." "Any studio that released a film without PCA approval faced a hefty twenty-five thousand dollar fine."
Further writing about anti-Catholic prejudice, one way or another, Scott Ferris notes that, "as of 2012, six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court were Catholic, including Chief Justice John Roberts, and with the other three justices being Jewish there was not a single Protestant on the nation's highest court."

Thomas E. Dewey ran twice, in 1944 and 1948. And so did Adlai Stevenson, in 1952 and 1956, who was born in 1900; so he would have been at, or about 52 and 56 years of age in those years. Next come Barry Goldwater, in 1964, and George McGovern, in 1972.

Ross Perot, in 1992 and '96, is the last of the "great losers". "No person has moved directly from the business world directly into the White House. Of those presidents{notice! presidents} who had a background in business before they entered politics, < > none could be labeled tycoons". However, "Perot still collected 19% of the popular vote{in 1992}. Only Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 had done better as a third party candidate."

"In a nation that has fretted for decades over whether it has properly honored its Vietnam War veterans, it is ironic that the three presidential nominees who served in Vietnam - Al Gore, John F. Kerry, and John McCain - were all defeated, while the two men of the Vietnam generation who were elected president did not serve in Vietnam."