Morning discussion: If all 44 presidents were to run for president who would win?

[wyldwolf]

Question on Quora: https://www.quora.com/If-all-44-presidents-were-to-run-for-president-who-would-win.

Interesting response. Thoughts?

I’m going to structure this a little bit like the actual U.S. Presidential Election system; we’re going to have two major parties, each with however many candidates, with a couple of independents bumbling about. Each major party will have primaries, and whoever wins the primaries will fight it out in the long campaign.

Immediately, I think we can disregard several presidents from the running, as I think they would stand no chance of being elected in this kind of stand-off

William H. Harrison
John Tyler
James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Andrew Johnson
Rutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield
Chester A. Arthur
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland
Gerald Ford
I think we can easily eliminate these guys; they haven’t made a major impact on history, and they all lost re-election/did not contest two elections

As the two major parties have shifted ideologies over the past 200 years, I’m going to simply divide the 44 presidents into two ideologies: Left and Right.

Left Party:

Barack Obama
Bill Clinton
Jimmy Carter
Lyndon B. Johnson
John F. Kennedy
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Harry S. Truman
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
Theodore Roosevelt
Ulysses S. Grant
Abraham Lincoln
Martin van Buren

Right Party:

George W. Bush
George H.W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Richard Nixon
Herbert Hoover
Calvin Coolidge
Warren G. Harding
William Howard Taft
William McKinley
Andrew Jackson

Independents

John Q. Adams
James Monroe
James Madison
Thomas Jefferson
John Adams
George Washington
(Note: Grover Cleveland was elected as the 22nd and 24th President, that’s why there are only 43 on this list)

Now, let the primary season commence!

In the Left Party, it’s likely that Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy would come out as front-runners, partially due to their legacies (in the cases of Lincoln, Kennedy, both Roosevelts and Eisenhower) and their belligerent campaign strategies (in the cases of Kennedy and Johnson). However, if left to a vote, I would say that it would be between FDR and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln would probably come out on top there, as he’s often ranked as the greatest President of all time. We’ll say he takes on the stern-willed and powerful legislator Franklin D. Roosevelt as his running mate, heading into the general election season.

The Right Party is far simpler, with three clear leaders; Andrew Jackson, the First Democrat, Richard Nixon, the iron-willed Californian and Ronald Reagan, the Hero of Conservatism. Nixon’s integrity would be called into question, likely by Jackson, who wouldn’t be able to stand being defeated, and it would go to a head-to-head between Jackson and Reagan (Note: this is a debate that I would love to see). Reagan attacks Jackson’s campaigns against Native Americans and expansion of government, Jackson focuses on the Iran-Contra Scandal and Reagan’s advancing age, as well as showing off his electoral and military success. As Jackson is rated higher as by historians, I’ll give this to him, but it would be very close. Jackson being Jackson refuses to take on his rival as a running mate, instead choosing the extremely experienced George H.W. Bush.

The independent campaigns do pretty well, especially those of Jefferson and Washington. Washington relies on his stature as Father of the Nation, and Jefferson shows off his experience and intelligence.

Into the general, people expect the election to be a closely fought battle between Lincoln, Jackson and Washington, and no-one can say who will win. Jefferson is criticised by Lincoln for slave-owning, and the modern American population distances itself from Jefferson pretty quickly. In the debates, Lincoln is eloquent, poised and clearly Presidential, whereas Jackson lags behind. Washington does very well on the campaign trail, and people begin to wonder whether the independent candidate can win. In the VP debates (which are a four-way affair between Roosevelt, Bush, Adams and Madison), Roosevelt and Adams clash over how best to lead the country, with the scholarly Bush being left out, and the softer Madison being utterly demolished by Roosevelt in a historic moment: “Mr. Madison, if you have nothing useful to say, don’t say a God-damn word.”

In the end, I would say that Lincoln’s legacy, coupled with his beautiful speaking skills and Roosevelt’s keen mind for policy and campaigning, would win out, even against the great George Washington. Jackson would do reasonably well, probably winning a fair few votes in the electoral college and coming third overall. Jefferson would most definitely come fourth out of this group.

[Turbineguy]

1. Trump

Obviously.

The American electorate has reached that self-destructive stage where none of the previous candidates would stand a chance.

[hlthe2b]

2. Modern elections are so different from those pre-24/7 television, pre-internet

So many past Presidents, lacking the kind of "charisma" (real or otherwise) that that entails, would not have a chance. On this, I absolutely disagree with the authors of the linked piece. It is very difficult to know how our early Presidents would have come across to the masses via television. Perhaps some of them might have done well, but it is hard to get past the "stodgy" if intellligent presence they more likely would have conveyed.

In today's terms, they either have to have transcendent charisma (Bill Clinton comes to mind) or a movement behind them (Obama and unfortunately, Trump/Reagan come to mind though I apologize for having to have them in anyway compared with Obama in the same sentence). I'm not even sure that one of our greatest (FDR) would have fared well, despite his strengths on radio.

Interesting to contemplate though.

[DetlefK]

3. What year is the electorate from?

Obama was basically an Eisenhower-Republican, but to the modern GOP he was still too far left.