Will Trump run again after losing? One president did — and won

Here we are, a full three weeks after the 2020 presidential election, with folks still arguing over who won. Trump supporters are crying “Foul!”, while Joe Biden’s backers are looking to Inauguration Day 2021. But a third group, dyed in the wool political junkies (of which I am a card-carrying member), are intrigued by a different scenario.

Say President Trump eventually concedes the election? Could there be a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024? The mere prospect has pundits spinning reams of “what if” scenarios.

Presidents defeated for reelection who run yet another time are rarer than angel sightings. Presidents Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush all declined to take a second bite of the apple. (Although Ford did come briefly, tantalizingly close to becoming Ronald Reagan’s running mate in 1980. One wonders how his resume would have looked: vice president, president, vice president again.)

Richard Nixon staged the ultimate political comeback more than 50 years ago. As vice president for the highly popular Dwight Eisenhower, he lost by a whisker to John F. Kennedy in 1960. A sound defeat for governor of California two years later led ABC to broadcast a documentary entitled The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon. However, Nixon had the last laugh in 1968 by finally winning the White House, then being reelected in a landslide in 1972 — though we all know how that story eventually turned out.

For the best case of a former president seeking (and getting) his old job back, you must revisit 1888. Grover Cleveland not only did it, but he also tormented generations of schoolchildren by forcing them to remember he was both the 22nd and the 24th president, the only chief executive to serve nonsequential terms.

Cleveland was a guy on the go in post-Civil War America. Elected sheriff of Erie County, New York, at age 34 (in which capacity he became the only future president to serve as an executioner at a hanging), his next stop was mayor of Buffalo, followed by a term as New York governor. Then “Big Steve,” as he was nicknamed, graduated to the big time. (Born Stephen Grover Cleveland, he went by Steve until middle age when he felt Grover had a better ring. He was also a healthy eater who was the fattest president until William Howard Taft came along. But I digress.)

The 1884 presidential campaign is considered one of the nastiest ever (which is really saying something when you consider how 2016 and 2020 went). It came out that Republican James Blaine was connected to shady business dealings while word leaked that Democrat Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock, a huge no-no in Victorian times. That episode led to one of the most amusing bits of doggerel in political history. Republicans taunted Cleveland by chanting, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” Democrats shot back with “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”

Though Cleveland won comfortably in the Electoral College, 219 to 182, the popular vote was a cliffhanger (sound familiar?) in which Cleveland barely beat Blaine 48.85% to 48.28%, a mere 57,579 votes.

Cleveland was a solid, though lackluster, president. The highlight of his first term came in 1886, when the 49-year-old bachelor married 21-year-old Frances Folsom, the only chief executive to tie the knot in the White House.

Politics is a fickle business, and Cleveland lost reelection in 1888 in a strange contest: Republican Benjamin Harrison thumped Cleveland in the Electoral College with 233 votes to Cleveland’s 168. But Cleveland actually won the popular vote by 0.8 percentage points. Nonetheless, Cleveland’s popular vote victory was for naught because that’s not how presidents are elected. As she was packing to move out, first lady Frances told one White House servant to take care of things because “we are coming back four years from today.”

And the Clevelands did just that in 1892 after Grover scored his best presidential election victory of all, scoring 277 electoral votes to Harrison’s 145 (the Populist Party’s James Weaver won 22 electoral votes). The highlight of his second term was personal, not presidential. The first couple welcomed their first child, a daughter, some 13 months before the family returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It had been many years since a president had a small child, and the country eagerly followed the growth and development of “Baby Ruth” in newspapers.

Cleveland decided he’d had enough of general elections and declined to seek a then-unprecedented third term in 1896, ending his career as a trustee of Princeton University and serving as an elder statesman.

Perhaps it was just as well that Cleveland didn’t push his luck. The United States has remarkably finicky voters who crave newness above all else. An old showbiz saying reminds entertainers to “save something for the third act.” Cleveland did, indeed, get a third act. Would Trump as a former president be so lucky in 2024? It’s hard to say. But if the past four years taught us anything, it’s this: Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility in the Age of Trump.

J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He’s the vice president of communications at Ivory Tusk Consulting, a South Carolina-based agency. A former broadcast journalist and government communicator, his “Holy Cow! History” column is available at jmarkpowell.com.

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