Excellent article on the difficulty of running for the office of President while in the Senate. Kerry should have resigned his Senate seat earlier this year.
hillnews.com
Senate proves to be a ‘lousy’ platform for presidential bid
By Geoff Earle
A general is on the move, a former governor is raking in campaign cash and a senator just abandoned his race for the presidency. The field of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination is still dominated, at least numerically, by legislators, but recent events are a reminder that Congress can be a poor platform from which to launch a run for president.
“It’s not very good,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who set aside his own presidential aspirations this year. “It’s hard,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). It’s “lousy,” said Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah).
For some senators — many of whom can envision themselves moving into the White House some day — Sen. Bob Graham’s (D-Fla.) decision to abandon his campaign for the presidency confirms how difficult it can be to run while serving in Congress.
Members cite several drawbacks. “You’re not in an administrative position,” explained Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), whose presidential bid in 2000 never caught fire. “You’re tied down by the Senate [votes]. … If you have any sense of responsibility, you can’t just ignore all those.”
Many thought Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), with his Southern background and youthful image, would emerge as a front-runner for the nomination. But it hasn’t happened. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) leads some national polls but is pulling his campaign operation out of Iowa, where he is down.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has drawn on his Washington contacts to hire many of the big guns of Democratic politics, and he is running second to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in New Hampshire.
But Kerry acknowledged the challenges he faces, while rushing back to his office after a Senate vote this month. “Look at us here today,” he said. “We’re in and out.”
Historically, governors and vice presidents have had a much better shot at the nation’s highest office. Presidents Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy are the exception that prove the rule of how difficult it is to reach the presidency from the Senate.
Governors “control their destiny, more or less,” said Hatch. “They’re basically administrators who are at the top of the heap and only have to report to themselves.” That helps explain Dean’s ability to take shots at President Bush and appeal to Democratic-base voters with his tough rhetoric.
In contrast, by spending time in the Senate, “you begin to develop the lingo and the style of the negotiator,” said Dodd, whose baritone often runs in the cadences of a floor speech. “Good candidates never sound as if they’re compromisers. They’re emphatic. If you carry that language with you, it sounds terribly anemic and weak.”
Part of the problem is that senators must cast thousands of votes on a range of touchy political issues that can be used against them in a campaign. Kerry, for example, has had to explain his vote in favor of a resolution authorizing military operations in Iraq while criticizing the administration’s policy there as a failure.
“It’s very hard for a senator to understand this, but experience in Washington and familiarity with the issues doesn’t automatically transfer into an acceptable image outside the Beltway,” said Bennett. “Voters, I believe, perhaps unconsciously, are looking for some executive experience, and senators don’t have any. That’s why I told Bob Graham when he ran: ‘Run as the former governor of Florida — not as the senator.’”
“Senators do have a forum here in the Senate, and they can address issues in the Senate,” noted McCain. “It’s not a completely disadvantageous situation.”
Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) used his time as minority leader in the House to build hundreds of contacts in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he has cultivated union leaders and party activists. But as a member of the House, Gephardt has only been elected to represent a small constituency — his St. Louis district.
And Gephardt faces even longer historical odds than his Senate counterparts: only one member of the House has been elected directly to the presidency — James Garfield. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) also is running, as is former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.).
The Senate has one thing going for it: It is a well-traveled path to the vice presidency, which sometimes leads to the presidency. Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas), Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.), Richard Nixon (R-Calif.) and Al Gore (D-Tenn.) went from the Senate to the vice presidency.
Others, such as Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), George McGovern (D-S.D.) and Bob Dole (R-Kan.), were able to parlay their Senate seats into their party’s nomination — but not the presidency itself.
“Nobody understood the process better than Bob Dole,” the former GOP Senate leader and 1996 GOP nominee for president, Bennett said. “But he would lapse into legislative-speak on the campaign trail, and people didn’t know what he was talking about.” Even Dole’s humor, a signature trait in Washington, often failed to translate in the campaign.
McCain’s maverick candidacy, which rocked Bush back on his heels in early 2000, continues to provide hope to those willing to consider risking their political career for a chance at the White House.
“I knew that I had very little chance of winning unless something bad happened to George Bush,” explained Hatch. “I ran kind of as a backup.”
Despite his brutal 1996 loss to Bill Clinton, Dole probably was wise to retire from the Senate to concentrate on the race, said Hatch. “Sooner or later, as a senatorial candidate, you’ve got to give up the Senate,” he said.
As he prepared to return to the campaign trail last week, Kerry wouldn’t say for sure whether the catalog of historical obstacles could be overcome.
“We’ll see,” he said. |
