Put this in the "how comes?" department about the Presidency

[ThomWV]

How comes the vast majority of incumbents get re-elected except Presidents? A Congress person or Senator gets themselves elected and unless they are braindead they have a job for life. Not so for Presidents, just ask Jimmy Carter or Bush 1.

[Tx4obama]

1. How about Franklin D. Roosevelt who was elected THREE times as president.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

[ThomWV]

3. Your reply amused me

I'm not saying this to be mean spirited, your response really did put a smile on my face. You are younger than I am. You know how I can tell? I do not need a Wikipedia article to know that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a 3-term President. He was President when I was born.

Yep, he was a three termer, but one-term Presidents have certainly been commonplace. Kennedy, Johnson (sort of) Nixon (Sort of), Ford, Carter, Bush 1, and if he keeps at it as he has, Obama.

[Big Blue Marble]

5. FDR was elected President four times.

He was re-elected three times. But those were different times than now.

[Tx4obama]

6. Ah, yes. You are correct. n/t

[MrScorpio]

2. It's the "Bigger they are, the harder they fall" principle at work

Along with the caveat that "All politics is local".

Congreecritters have to convince the local electorate to get elected, thus their appeals can be regionally tailored to their audiences. The idea is that they're sending "One of us" to Congress.

Presidents, OTOH, have to be generically appealing, thus their success or failure to get elected is based on their ability to appeal to a broader standard. That is much harder to do.

Factor in the sheer amount of money that a president campaign needs versus a congressional one for someone in a seat with rock solid support and you have an additional winnowing process at work.

[Obamanaut]

4. I think some of it is voting for "the name you know." Eddie Murphy

showed this nicely in "The Distinguished Gentleman", as well as some of the dealing/corruption/money availability that goes on.