Reply #29: It's more interesting if you look at more than one

[OmahaBlueDog]

For the most part, there's a common thread -- "It's the economy, stupid!"*

George H.W. Bush -- after Gulf War I, he had an approval around 90 and looked like a lock to coast to reelection. it was all downhill from there as the Reagan years caught up with us, and we ended up with a recession, government gridlock, and unemployment. He lost to Bill CLinton in '92. His cause was not helped by a third party candidacy by H. Ross Perot.

Jimmy Carter -- Elected for his youth and refreshing sense of candor, the Carter administration had a recession that featured double digit prime interest rates. As if that weren't bad enough, the American Embassy in Iran was taken hostage, and an attempt to free the hostages went disastrously wrong. Carter lost to Reagan in an epic landslide. His cause was not helped by an independent candidacy by John Anderson.

Gerald Ford -- Maybe he doesn't quite belong on the list. Ford took office when Nixon resigned. The economy was never great during the Ford years (those of us over 45 might remember the W.I.N. buttons), but Ford really never quite recovered from pardoning Tricky Dick. He lost a squeaker to Jimmy Carter.

Break time - At this time in 1947, it was an article of faith, like the sun rising in the east, that Harry Truman would be a one-termer, but he went on to defeat Tom Dewey. OK - break over.

Herbert Hoover - Hoover was in the first year of his Presidency when the sins of Harding and Coolidge and eight years of reckless exuberance on Wall Street came crashing down. He wasn't a bad guy in many ways, and would later serve FDR (and, by extension, America) overseeing war production in the 40s. He just didn't have any answers and was swept out of office in '32 by FDR. An indirect secondary cause may have been a general sense of dissatisfaction among Americans with the gangsterism that took hold during prohibition, and a desire to repeal the amendment outlawing booze.

W. H. Taft - I concede not knowing a lot about Taft. I do know it was a wild four-way election with W.H. Taft (who would go on to the SCOTUS) running as the Republican incumbent against former President Teddy Roosevelt (on the Bull Moose ticket with Hiram Johnson as VP), Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist Eugene Debs. Wilson won, and would be re-elected in '16 on the platform "He kept us out of war", and would then promptly take us into WW I. Personally (and I'll get in trouble with Skinner for this), I'd have voted for TR.

100 years of one termers.

Note that I don't count JFK, as he was assassinated and we'll never know for sure how he would have fared in '64.

* "it's the economy, stupid" was a theme of Bill Clinton's campaign against GHW Bush.