WINNERS AND LOSERS

In sports events, there are definite winners and losers. Last week the Tampa Bay

Buccaneers decisively beat the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV. However, in

the game of politics and indeed in life, sometimes, it is not so easy to determine who

really wins and who loses.

Looking at American presidential elections we can see this point quite clearly. In 1932,

Franklin D. Roosevelt won the election over incumbent President Herbert Hoover. True,

FDR won, but we can just as correctly say that Hoover lost. Anyone could have beaten

Hoover as he presided over the stock market crash and the subsequent depression

with an ineffective government. FDR was subsequently re-elected three more times

before dying in the first year of his fourth term (1945). His successor, Harry Truman won

election in 1948, and he was succeeded by Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II hero

who won two terms.

John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon won elections. Nixon was the

only President in American history to resign and Gerald Ford became the only

unelected president. Ford, colorless and totally lacking charisma lost the election of

1976 to Jimmy Carter. Carter didn’t truly win the election. He was similar to FDR in

1932 in the sense that Ford lost. After Nixon’s Watergate scandal, any candidate could

have beaten Ford. Four years later, the inept Carter, burdened by severe uncontrolled

inflation and the Iran hostage crisis lost to Ronald Reagan. Immensely popular, Reagan

didn’t win as much as Carter lost. Reagan easily won re-election as did his successors,

George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The new century saw George W. Bush win over Al Gore. Bush presided over disastrous

wars in Afghanistan and Iraq yet his opponent John Kerry lost the election of 2004 to

Bush as he and his running mate, John Edwards never were able to arouse any

enthusiasm for their campaign. Eight years of George W. Bush were enough for the

American voter. Continuing wars, and a near financial collapse in 2008 doomed any

Republican chance for the White House in 2008 and a freshman senator from Illinois,

Barack Obama, easily beat John McCain whose time to run for president had already

passed. Obama easily won re-election in 2012.

Most recently, in 2016 and 2020, candidates lost the election, the winners being more

accidental and thus benefitting from the unpopularity of their opponents. The Democrat

nominee in 2016, Hillary Clinton, even though having served as First Lady, Senator

from NY and Secretary of State was vastly unpopular. She ran a poor campaign, failing

to visit key industrial states that tend Democratic in elections, unknowingly ceding

victory to her opponent, Donald J. Trump, who in a sense won by default. Trump

similarly lost the election of 2020 to Joseph R. Biden Jr., a career Washington politician

who served as Obama’s Vice President. Widely unpopular, Trump dealt poorly with the

Covid pandemic inducing a field of over twenty Democrats to seek their party’s

nomination. The election was Trump’s to lose. Though supported by a broad base of

voters, his poor record over his term and equally unpresidential behavior was enough

to sink him. Trump lost the election of 2020.

The purpose of this essay is to caution against triumphalism. “Winners” should be

modest in their victory as in many instances they didn’t win as much as their opponent

lost. Yet even winners who won only because their opponents lost have the possibility

of performing well and winning when they run for re-election. Hopefully, incumbents

will remember these points and serve the nation well. Indeed, they will be winners

when the nation is the winner.

Garry S. Sklar

Las Vegas, Nevada

February 14, 2021