dyna mo

oh, look who got my point, Bill Clinton. While I may have incorrectly recollected the specifics, my point is more than valid.





"It's hard for any party to hang on to the White House for 12 years, and it's a long road," Bill Clinton said in an interview with Town & Country magazine. "A thousand things could happen."

Since 1948 — the year Harry Truman won a fifth straight election for the Democrats, following Franklin D. Roosevelt's four wins — a political party has won three straight elections only once.

It happened in 1988, the year the Republican nominee, Vice President George H.W. Bush, won the right to replace Ronald Reagan.

Otherwise, a string of candidates have found it impossible to do what Clinton may try to do — succeed a president from the political party that has held the White House for eight years.

Republican nominee Richard Nixon couldn't do it in 1960, after President Dwight Eisenhower's two terms. Democratic nominee (and Vice President) Hubert Humphrey couldn't do it in 1968, after eight years of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

In 2000, Democratic Vice President Al Gore lost his bid to succeed Bill Clinton after two terms. In 2008, Republican John McCain lost a presidential election after eight years of George W. Bush.

The main reason: Eight years is a long time to build up a presidential record, one that to be defended by fellow party members.

The longer the presidency, "the more there is for opponents to criticize," said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University. "The more there is for voters to be unhappy about."

Voters seemed more willing to stick with incumbent parties back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Starting in 1896, three Republicans — William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft — won four straight presidential elections. Democrat Woodrow Wilson ended that string of GOP dominance by winning the election of 1912, a race that included both Taft and the by-then independent Roosevelt.

Americans went back with the Republicans after eight years of Wilson. The Roaring Twenties saw three more consecutive GOP wins: Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924 and Herbert Hoover in 1928.


Hillary Clinton's test: A third straight Democratic term