The Spoiler
VIEWPOINT
By RALPH HARDIN
Evening Times Editor
In 1912, President William Howard Taft was running for reelection as a Republican. He had been backed in 1908 by a popular outgoing president, Teddy Roosevelt, and with that kind of support Taft won easily.
Unfortunately for Taft, Reoosevelt felt that his friend wasn’t getting the job done and decided to run against him, first challenging him for the GOP nomination, and when that didn’t work out, as a third-party candidate. Meanwhile, the Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson, a more progressive-minded candidate that didn’t really get along with a lot of his own party.
So you ended up with a three-way race between a struggling incumbent, an angry former president and a liberal-progressive.
This might sound familiar, albeit in an updated setting, if you’ve been watching the news at all lately.
See VIEWPOINT, page A5 VIEWPOINT
From page A4
Almost a century later, in 1992, incumbent George H.W. Bush was trying to get re-elected. He had to contend not only with a poor popularity rating due to the economy and a popular opponent who had a somewhat scandalous past but also a challenger from an independent candidate. Yes, again, this is all sounding familiar.
Well, in case you’re wondering, in both cases, the incumbent lost. No, not to the third party candidate. In fact, no “third party” candidate has won the presidency unless you count 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican to win the White House, but really by the time the election rolled around the other major party besides the Democrats, the Whigs, were basically out of business.
So, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. really seems determined to make a run at the presidency.
He’s even got a running mate, one from California no less, which is a strategic choice to be sure.
What impact will this have on the 2024 election? Well, as I mentioned above, in 1912 and 1992, the incumbent was ousted. That’s not always the case. Third-party efforts in the 2000 election, though, did result in chaos (there was no incumbent that year). And third-party bids in 1968, 1996 and other years were little more than footnotes. But with neither Biden nor Trump looking good, you never know…
