Keithwcaniano's Blog

Former President George W. Bush has failed to garner any headlines since leaving the White House in January.  Bush claims it is beneath the dignity of a former president to criticize the incumbent.

Bush is apparently hoping to follow the example of his father, George H.W. Bush, who, for understandable reasons, kept a low profile during his son’s tenure.  Bush would defend his son against what he felt were unfair criticisms from the press, but largely kept his opinions to himself.

The Cincinnatician ideal of the reluctant soldier dates back to the beginning of our republican heritage when George Washington consciously emulated it as he retired from power in 1797.  Each of his next four successors also limited their political activity to private correspondence.

Is it the norm for former presidents to do so?  Since James Monroe left office in 1825, thirty-nine different men have occupied the presidency.  Obama remains in office while eight others died during their terms, leaving us thirty-one examples.  James K. Polk dropped dead less than three months after leaving office, leaving us with thirty former presidents to evaluate, a managable number.

One out of Five Former Presidents sought the presidency again after leaving office:

Martin Van Buren: Defeated for election in 1840, Martin Van Buren found after one term, but soon found was a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1844.  After losing the nomination to James K. Polk, Van Buren ran as a “Free Soiler” in 1848 against Zachary Taylor and Lewis Cass.  While failing to capture a state, Van Buren probably drew enough support away from nominally Democratic voters to put Taylor over the top in several key Northern states.

Millard Fillmore: The Whig Party refused to endorse the unpopular Fillmore for a term in his own right in 1852, giving their nomination to war hero Winfield Scott.  Disgruntled with abolitionists in the Republican Party, Fillmore ran for the presidency on the “Know-Nothing” nativist ticket in 1856, capturing about twenty percent of the vote and Maryland.

Ulysses S. Grant: Although Grant’s two terms in office were generally considered a disappointment even at the time, the Civil War hero remained popular within the Republican ranks and a faction led by New York Senator Roscoe Conkling tirelessly worked to put him on the ticket in 1880.  Grant’s opponents, led by Maine senator James G. Blaine deadlocked the convention and the nomination fell to dark horse Ohio senator James A. Garfield.  Grant soon developed throat cancer and died in 1885.

Grover Cleveland: Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888 but lost the electoral college to Republican Benjamin Harrison.  His wife Frances Folsom allegedly told the White House staff to take care of everything because the Clevelands would return four years later.  Her words proved prophetic as the economy crashed in the early 1890s, which doomed Harrison and the Republican Party.  Cleveland was the only nominee within the Democratic ranks agreeable to both the southern conservatives, the so-called “Bourbon Democrats,” and northern reformers.

Theodore Roosevelt: Teddy Roosevelt rather foolishly promised only to serve one term as president in 1904.  When time came to name a successor, Roosevelt chose his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft and went on safari in Africa for a year. Although Taft was a brilliant jurist and capable administrator, he lacked the political skills, crusading ardor and passion for progressive reform Roosevelt so craved.   Roosevelt was also uneasy with Taft’s support for maintaining the independence of the Supreme Court from the popular will.  Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination to Taft, but outperformed him in the general election.  Unfortunately for Roosevelt, only Woodrow Wilson, a man he detested, benefitted from the rift in the Republican ranks.

Herbert Hoover: Hoover left office in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression.  Uneasy with the New Deal and possessing a personal dislike for his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hoover hoped to capture the Republican nomination in 1936 and 1940 and vindicate his reputation.  Not much came of his plans, however, as Hoover was still too closely aligned with his failure to prevent the Depression.  Later in life, he became active in public affairs and was a staunch anti-communist.

In addition to those six, four additional former presidents served in government:

John Q. Adams: Aside from being the only president to produce a book of poetry, John Quincy Adams was the only former chief executive to serve in the House of Representatives following his time in office.  He represented a Boston district in Congress from 1831 until he died in the Capitol in 1848.  Adams was the leading abolitionist voice in Washington during that time, protesting most famously against the “Gag Rule” and Mexican-American War.  His speeches earned him the nickname “Old Man Eloquent.”

John Tyler: The first vice-president to assume the presidency on the death of a president, Tyler alienated the Whig Party with his independence from the party leadership and especially his pro-annexaionist position over Texas.  He failed to garner support for Democrats for a term in his own right and returned to his Virginia plantation in 1845 to sire seven more children.  At the outbreak of the Civil War, he supported secession and the Confederacy and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, dying before he could take his seat in 1862.

Andrew Johnson: Like Tyler and Fillmore before him, Johnson was a president who assumed office on the death of another with little support from his own party.  A southerner who opposed the radical reconstructionists who dominated Republican leadership in the late 1860s, Johnson barely survived impeachment before the Senate in 1868.  Six years later, he was elected to represent Tennessee in that body, dying shortly thereafter in 1875.

William Howard Taft: Taft never desired to be president.  He much would have preferred to be a judge on the Supreme Court.  Destiny got in the way, but Warren Harding appointed Taft Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1921, a position he ablely held until his death nine years later in 1930.

So, one third of our former presidents either sought the presidency or officialy returned to politics.

Active in Electioneering:

Harry S Truman: Truman left office with the lowest approval ratings on record in 1953, but still remained a force within the Democratic Party through the 1950s.  Although not officially invovled in politics, he came out against Senator John F. Kennedy’s nomination for president in 1960, saying the Massachusetts senator was too inexperienced to be president and accused the Kennedy campaign of improper conduct during the primary season.  Truman would be reconciled to Kennedy later, but his criticisms were widely aired.

Gerald Ford: Despite the Watergate scandal, an energy crisis, the American defeat in Vietnam, and rising unemployment and inflation, Gerald Ford nearly defeated Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Four years later, conservative Ronald Reagan sought him out to serve as his vice president, with the hopes that the liberal Ford and conservative Reagan would unite the party against Carter.  Ford was agreeable, but requested official responsibilities over domestic policy and the appointment of Henry Kissenger as Secretary of State, a position the conservative branch of the Republican Party would not stand.  The nomination went to George H.W. Bush.  Ford kept a relatively low profile, with comments critical of George W. Bush’s foreign policy only emerging posthumously.

George H.W. Bush: Bush has kept a relatively low profile since leaving office in 1993, but the elevation of his sons to high office has provided him a forum to air his policy positions and granted him at least some influence over the course of Republican politics since 1993.

Bill Clinton: Clinton’s criticisms of George W. Bush were fairly muted compared to Jimmy Carter’s, but the political career of his wife Hillary Clinton ensured that the 42nd president would be actively engaged in the 2008 Democratic Primary.

Criticising Contemporary Policy:

While each of the aforementioned executives had issues with movements in their own party, the following presidents:

Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland both vocally opposed William McKinley’s annexing of the Philippines in 1898.

Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft were two of Woodrow Wilson’s staunchest critics on foreign policy prior to the American entry into World War I.  Roosevelt advocated joining the war on the part of the allies in 1914 and advocated militarizing the country in preparaing for war.  Taft headed the “League to Enforce the Peace,” an isolationist group unsympathetic to Wilson’s drift toward internationalism.

Richard Nixon served as a diplomat-at-large for former presidents following his resignation in 1974, but he also published numerous books and magazine articles criticising the humanitarian drift in American foreign policy under Presidents Carter and Reagan.

Jimmy Carter vocally opposed the Iraq War in 2003 and has been very critical of U.S. foreign policy under George W. Bush.

So who stayed out of the Limelight?

Andrew Jackson retired to his Tennessee plantation and died eight years after leaving office.

Franklin Pierce failed to capture his party’s nomination in 1856 and returned home to New Hampishire, dying in 1869.

James Buchanan allegedly told his successor, Abraham Lincoln, that “If you are as happy going into this office as I am leaving it, you are the happiest man on the earth.”  He retired to his Pennsylvania farm and died in 1868.

Rutherford B. Hayes famously promised to serve one term in office, which he relinquished in 1881.  He returned to his Ohio home and died in 1893.

Chester Alan Arthur was dying of Bright’s disease when he left office in 1885 and did not live to see the next election in 1886.

Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919 while campaigning for the League of Nations and never fully recovered.  After leaving office as a recluse in 1921, he died three years later.

Calvin Cooldige refused to participate in politics after he left the Oval Office in 1929 and died at home in Massachusetts four years later.

Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961.  Although his successor John F. Kennedy sought his advice on foreign affairs and he gave token endorsements to the Republican Party’s nominees in 1964 and 1968, Eisenhower remained on his farm in Gettysburg Pennslyvania until he died in 1969.

Lyndon Johnson: Johnson left office under a sea of criticism in 1969 and returned to his ranch to pen a memoirs defending his conduct of the Vietnam War.  His health took a turn for the worse during this period and he died just four years after leaving office in 1973.

Ronald Reagan left office in 1989 and retired to his ranch in California.  While Reagan supported George H.W. Bush in his 1992 election campaign and remains, even twenty years after leaving office and five years after his death, the most important figure in American conservatism, Alzeimers disease hindered his participation in public life.  Reagan announced his retreat into private life in a letter in 1994, dying ten years later.

Arthur, Wilson, Coolidge, and Johnson died within four years of their leaving office.  Jackson, Buchanan, Eisenhower, and Reagan were advanced in years, each was at least seventy years old by the time they left office, meaning they had little opportunity for a post-presidential political career.

Only Hayes and Pierce were relatively young and healthy enough to participate meaningfully in political life and each declined the opportunity.  Only two out of thirty former presidents appear to have inhabited circumstances similar to Bush’s and behaved in a manner Bush finds becoming.

I should say I support Bush’s position on the activities of former presidents, but history demonstrates  that men who have held the nation’s highest office tend to find retirement a dull business, choosing instead to enter the political arena in one form or another.