Gore unlikely to run; Clinton unlikely to win

Posted on: Thu, 10/13/2005 - 10:44 By: Tom Swiss

Al Gore says he has no intention of running for President again. Kind of a shame, he's saying all the right things on the issues now. (Al, where was your voice in the 2000 election?)

Much is being made of Senator Hillary Clinton as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2008. That would be a suicidal path for the Democratic party - not (or not just) because Clinton is a controversial figure and woman to boot, but simply because the American people do not elect Senators to the Presidency.

Of the ten men elected president since WWII, four were former Vice-Presidents. Of the remainder, four were former governors, and the other two were war heroes.

Since Amendment XVII redefined the Senate in 1913, only two Presidents have been elected whose highest political qualification was service in the Senate: Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy.

Harding won the election of 1920 largely on the the votes of women, who could vote for the first time because of the 19th Amendment that Harding played a role in ratifying; that's a political advantage that's hard to beat!

As for Kennedy, despite PT-109 and his near-superhuman charisma, he still barely managed to beat the monstrous Richard Nixon - and may have made into the White House only on the basis of vote fraud. (Interestingly, neither Harding nor Kennedy lived to finish out their terms.)

If Democrats are serious about re-taking the White House, they'd better stop fussing over a second Clinton and start looking at their governors as potential candidates.