Senator to President
Based on the developments of the past week or two with primary results, candidate endorsements by newspapers and party leaders and the ending of some campaigns of candidates in both major parties, one can easily conclude that the likelihood of a current U.S. Senator winning the White House next November is a foregone conclusion. On the Democrat side, the only remaining candidates are Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama while on the Republican side; Senator John McCain is the apparent frontrunner while his two remaining rivals, former Governors Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are splitting the anti McCain vote. Super Tuesday’s voting results should pretty well cement this assumption.
To the best of our research, this will be an absolute first for America! Never before in this country’s history have two current members of the Senate opposed each other in a race for the highest office in the land. In fact, since 1920, it has been only twice that an active Senator won the Presidency. In 1920, Republican Senator Warren G. Harding and in 1960 Democrat Senator John F. Kennedy won the Presidential elections. Both men died while in office, Harding of a heart attack in August 1923 while visiting San Francisco and Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 in Dallas, Texas. This, of course, is meaningless as far as precedents go yet of interest in that both Presidents did not complete their first terms in the White House. There were twelve other Presidents who had previously served as United States Senators but they did not get elected as active Senators, instead there were time periods from two to 23 years in between being Senator and becoming a President.
What does this mean, what is its significance? Some people might say: “So what, times are changing!” Others might argue strongly that the Presidency is called the Executive Branch of the Government while Senators come from the Legislative Branch and are therefore less likely to be effective and good ‘executives’. When they become President, there will be a period of ‘on the job training’ and in today’s world; we cannot afford that luxury. A Senator has at best been a member of the ‘Club of One Hundred’ as the U.S. Senate has been dubbed, even if he or she has been effective there to push legislation through that chamber and been a leader of sorts.
While we do not want to analyze the frontrunners and their records in detail here at this time, from our common sense perspective however, it is a paradox that after a year of minor or no progress in passing effective legislation during all of 2007 by Congress, three current Senators seemed to be the favorites of the American electorate. The candidates with executive experience as former Governors (Huckabee and Romney) or Mayor (Giuliani) are apparently not finding any traction with any significant group of voters. At every Presidential debate, their backgrounds and records are being scrutinized and critiqued and even held against them as failures. Even their religious backgrounds are being questioned. Yet, the Senator candidate’s backgrounds and records are being glossed over, in fact, there seems to be nothing but praise for these candidates, at least from the major media members and as a result of that from the voters so far.
It is mind boggling to say the least and quite honestly, we here at Consider Common Sense cannot see the logic. The fact that only two men out of a total of 43 became President while being a U.S. Senator should tell us something. American voters in over 230 years have felt it necessary to require some element of executive background and experience in all these past years but it seems to have changed now. This year, things are most certainly different. Our only explanation for this is what we stated in a previous article wherein we declared “Ignorance” America’s number One enemy. In our humble opinion, we are being proven correct by the results to date of this year’s Presidential primary election results.
This article and others on Common Sense Authors are designed to provoke further thought and investigation. It is not the intent for the articles to be politically biased. Sources are referenced in each article to encourage readers to delve into the supporting material. We welcome all readers to participate with their point of view either in support or contrary with additional information sources.
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