The Senate had a test vote this week that cast deep doubt on the prospects for convicting former President Donald Trump on the impeachment charge now pending against him. Without a two-thirds majority for conviction, there will not be a second vote in the Senate to bar him from future federal office.
Also this week, Politico released a Morning Consult poll that found 56% of Republicans saying that Trump should run again in 2024. As he left Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, he said he expected to be “back in some form.”
So will he seek a comeback? And if he does, what are his chances of returning to the White House?
History provides little guidance on these questions. There is little precedent for a former president running again, let alone winning. But since when has the lack of precedent bothered Donald Trump?
Only one president who was defeated for reelection has run again. That was Grover Cleveland, first elected in 1884, narrowly defeated in 1888 and elected again in 1892.
Another, far better-known president, Theodore Roosevelt, left office voluntarily in 1908, believing his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, would continue his policies. When Taft did not, Roosevelt came back to run against him four years later.
The Republican Party establishment of that time stood by Taft, the incumbent, so Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate. That split the Republican vote and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
And that’s it. Aside from those two men, no White House occupant has seriously tried to come back after leaving. Some were ready to be out of public life by the end of their time at the top. Others surely would have liked to stay longer, but they were sent packing, either by voters in November or by the nominating apparatus of their parties.
There have also been eight presidents who have died in office. Four in the 1800s (William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield) were succeeded by lackluster vice presidents who were not nominated for a term on their own. Four in the 1900s (William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) were succeeded by vice presidents whose parties did nominate them for a term in their own right (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson).
Each of these four went on to win a term on his own, and each then left office voluntarily. As noted above, Theodore Roosevelt later changed his mind, and Johnson began the 1968 primary season as an incumbent and a candidate but ended his run at the end of March.
The Jackson model
One model that might be meaningful for Trump at this stage is that of President Andrew Jackson, who ran for president three times and arguably won each time. His first campaign, in 1824, was a four-way contest in which he clearly led in both the popular vote and the Electoral College but lacked the needed majority in the latter.
That sent the issue to the House of Representatives, where each state had one vote. A protracted and dubious negotiation involving candidates and congressional power brokers subsequently denied Jackson the prize. He immediately denounced that outcome as a “corrupt bargain,” laying the groundwork for another bid. In 1828, Jackson was swept into office, ousting the incumbent on a wave of populist fervor.
It is not an accident that Trump, following the advice of onetime adviser Steve Bannon, spoke approvingly of Jackson in 2016. When he entered the White House, Trump hung Jackson’s presidential portrait in the Oval Office overlooking the Resolute Desk.
It is not hard to imagine Trump invoking the spirit of Jackson’s 1828 campaign against the “corrupt bargain,” if he runs in 2024 against “the steal” (his shorthand for the outcome of the 2020 election, which he falsely claims was illegitimate).
Jackson, the ultimate outsider in his own time, makes a far better template for Trump than either Cleveland or Teddy Roosevelt – even though the latter two were New Yorkers like Trump.
