Why do senators fare poorly in presidential elections?

In the 20th century, only two presidents, Harding and Kennedy, went directly from the senate to the presidency. Also, quite a few of the big losers, Goldwater and McGovern for example, were senators.

So why do senators fare so poorly in presidential elections? Is it simply because a decade-long voting record is easy to tear apart, or is there something more? And why do parties continue to nominate senators despite their unfavorable track record?

Then opponents can do what Bush did this time: say he voted 15 billion times to raise your taxes. When in reality 14,999,999,995 of those votes were procedural votes.

Many years ago, before the Web and before Google and before Yahoo---

I actually had to do an exercise of "compare and contrast" the voting records of three Democrat Senators seeking the nomination. This was to be based on their different ratings by the ADA, some early environmental groups, NY's Liberal Party, and the AFL-CIO.

On each major bill there might be several dozen roll call votes on procedural issues, amendments, referrals to committee, etc. -- and all sorts of Robert Byrd "Parliamentary Procedure" stuff.

What I found was that each advocacy group cherry picked specific votes on irrelevancies to spotlight "their" candidate in a favorable light.

But, that track record --- as in "Yes, I voted for the $87 Billion Before I Voted Against It" - makes a Senator vulnerable to attack.

A prime example - many years ago a GOP Candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania was attacked for voting to raise the fee for using the pay toilets in the women's rest rooms on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was buried down deep in the Penn DOT appropriations bill - which was really focused on Turnpike extensions and a new tunnel.

Did he get walloped. There was even a poem

"Here I sit broken hearted
Spent A Nickel and Only FXXXXd

"Well kiddo - now its a quarter"

and I doubt that the guy even read the full bill.

it's the voting record, and the fact that Senate votes can be twisted any which way to make a point.

If you vote No on a large appropriations bill that contains a new weapons system AND funding for orphans, your opponent will say you hate orphans.

Anybody's resume can be dragged through the mud.

Why is a long Senate voting record any worse than a long history of shady deals in the energy industry?

Successful presidential candidates run against Washington. That's difficult to do when you're a Senator, easy to do when you're a Governor: Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Asshole spring to mind in the modern era.

Why do we keep nominating Senators? Because we're assholes, too.

If you are in the Senate for 20 years, that is thousands of votes to tear apart. It's easy to look at these votes and say something like, "Senator Flathead voted in favor of killing babies 765 times" whereas you can generally only come up with a few examples of a governor signing a law.

Also, all Senators! Speak Exactly! The Same Way! with oration designed to look good in the Congressional Record but not to connect with any voters.

Kerry got 57MM votes, the most ever by a Democrat or a Republican, before this election, of course....and I'm not sure how many Dimson got.

and I don't want this to turn into a "did kerry really win" thread.

Well, how about Sen. Robert Kennedy? Oh yeah, he was assassinated. How about Senator Mike Dukkakis? Oh yeah, he was governor. How about Sen. Al Gore....no, he was VP who had his election stolen in Florida.

I guess I just don't buy your premise. Fix the voting system and we'll win or don't and we can ask questions that don't address the core problem.

I didn't vote for Kerry I voted AGAINST Bush.

Kerry, who may be entertaining a rerun in 2008, will quickly learn that he really doesn't have support from the grassroots.

FOR Kerry? Maybe that's the algorithm Diebold uses. IF voter is ABB, K = 1/2 vote. :eyes:

2004 will vote for him in 2008, should he be the nominee, is flawed.

I won't vote for him in 2008 and I know a lot of ABB voters who won't vote for Kerry or any other Bush-lite Dem.

of the media where most of the people get their information.

The media protected Bush for over 5 years and they weren't about to stop.

Kerry won all three debates because he was unfiltered at the time.

NO Democrat will ever win until the GOP control of most of the media and most of the voting machines are fully exposed.

No Democrat.

argument about what they believe in and what they value that even the media won't be able to help the Republicans to a victory. There are just too many logical inconsistencies in the Republican view of the world. It's a house of cards, and the right Democrat hasn't come along to take it down.

I thought Gore had an incredibly incoherent and unclear persona, and he won. I didn't think Kerry did a great job of fitting everything he believed in into a coherent and logical set of values, and a few more votes in OH would have been the difference for him.

Say what you will about Bush, he is the perfect cypher for the value system Republicans believe in. We have not yet found the Democratic version of that. Neither have the Democrats articulated a clear values paradigm nor have they run for president someone who lives, breathes and thinks according to that paradigm.

If the Democrats do find that person, not even the media will stop them. There are just too many things about the progressive values system that are true.

less attachment to their home state constituency and less passionate loyalty than governors

hardcore DC insiders

1.) They are ill-prepared to govern in an executive capacity. That is held against them during campaigns, and holds them back style-wise because they have no experience in delivery from the executive viewpoint unless they actively acquire help in that area.

2.) They are part of the legislative process, not the legislative executive. Instead of working to get the legal assembly line to produce a bill, then riding herd to either sign or veto it (as a governor does), they are the assembly line workers themselves. Does not translate well to the run for the executive presidency.

3.) They have a record, and plenty of executive legal types have been keeping track of their law assembly line performance.

4.) They are too used to compromise. It is essential to the legal assembly line process that compromise be always present to grease the wheels of progress, whereas an executive like a governor or president does not need it as much. A well-developed senatorial sense of compromise and networking that produced results in the Senate can be portrayed easily as flip-flopping in the run to the Oval Office.

5.) They are in-betweeners on the national stage. Governors have a great asset in that many are unknown when they run for prez. Senators are just known enough, minus the full national name recognition they wish they had, but not absent their past records on a variety of national issues, right down to how many times they voted.

6.) The Senate is old-school conducive to long-windedness, the antithesis of a good and focused campaign.

with average Americans. They're members of the millionaires club.

The only senator who I thought resonated with average Americans was Paul Wellstone.

Governors, regardless of their personal income, are most often seen as "outside the Washington" establishment. That is what Dubya used to get elected.

were the best political ads I've ever seen. He was an extraordinary politician.

probably because other people, such as governors, have actual experience as executives. Governors also have long records that could be torn apart by maliciously minded opponents. Military men, it may be harder.

about it. It's what you did with your time as governor. And governors who spend that time building up a policy agenda that conforms with an paradigm they establish about how they think the world works are able to make a much clearer argument to voters about who they are.

There's nothing stopping a Senator from doing the same thing, but it's much harder.

I don't think anyone ever really knows what the voters are going to consider important in any particular election.

One reason is that for more than half the life of America, Senators weren't even elected by the people. They were chosen by state legislatures.

1914 was the first year that all senate races were held by direct election.

I think that there is a qualitative difference between the sort of politician you get when you directly elect that politician and when the state legislature picks the senator. I think only the former would be the sort of politician a national electorate would be interested in voting for. So, only for the last 90 years have senators been the sort of politicians who have had experience winning statewide campaigns. (Could you imagine a person running for president who never had the experience of running for an office ever?)

The second reason is because senators generally aren't associated with a set of policies. Senators react to legislation before them. They don't have policy agendas associated with them. And if they are lucky enough to have a policy agenda that is evoked when thinking of them, it's hard for them to convert that agenda into actual policies. A senator is lucky if he or she gets their name associated with one memorable piece of legislation over an entire career, much less an entire policy agenda.

Just look at Hillary. When she was first lady she had a much clearer policy agenda than she has as a senator.

I think if you had a senator who had a very clear persona -- a senator who stood for something in the minds of voters -- then that person would be at an equal footing as a governor or anyone else running for president.

Clinton won not because he was a governor, but because voters felt he stood for something.

I'd rather have as a candidate a senator who stood for something than a governor who didn't. So the key really isn't what your previous job title was so much as it is that you are perceived as standing for a set of policies and values.

That's about it.

It's that you can tell people what you think is a good set of policies, and then you can enact them and show people that you were right.

I think a Senator's problem isn't so much that not having done this forecloses the possibility of winning entirely. The problem is that you have to work so much harder explaining to people what you believe.

Look at JFK. No exectuive experience, but people felt they had a great idea of what he believed in and how he'd implement his beliefs. Why? Because he was a great cypher for the times and because he told people and people believed what he said.

...is that it is akin to being a top manager in a corporation. They have their own style of delivery and communication, that is distinct from, and different from, those they manage.

Likewise, the style of communication of a governor or president is different from the law assemblers of their legislatures.

And managers have a different view, one that is more self-actualized than that of workers. Managers, in firms or in government, administer and tend to set priorities. Workers, or legislators, either carry them out or else work against them.

It is quite a different viewpoint.

or in a governor's mansion unless you can actually tie that experience into some set of policies or beliefs about how you think things should run.

I also don't give much weight to this "style of speaking" argument. JFK and JRE gave great speeches. Wellstone could clearly articulate what he believed in.

If you're argument explained the difference, more CEOs would be president, but that's not the case.

People keep forgetting this, senators RARELY win the nomination.

1968 - Nixon (Former VP) vs. Humphery (VP)

1972 - Nixon (Incumbent) vs. McGovern (Senator)

1976 - Ford (Incumbent) vs. Carter (Governor)

1980 - Carter (Incumbent) vs. Reagan (Governor)

1984 - Reagan (Incumbent) vs. Mondale (Former VP)

1988 - Bush (VP) vs. Dukakis (Governor)

1992 - Bush (Incumbent) vs. Clinton (Governor)

1996 - Clinton (Incumbent) vs. Dole (Former Senate Majority Leader and Former VP candidate)

2000 - Gore (VP) vs. * (Governor)

2004 - * (Incumbent even though he wasn't elected) vs. Kerry (Senator)

That means that only three times in the last 36 years has a senator recieved a major party's nomination and one of them had experience as majority leader and running as a VP candidate. Which would explain why their record is not that good, they rarely win the nomination.

You forgot to mention that Ford was not elected.

Ford was installed through a legitimate constitutional process. Chimp stole an election.

Democrats are supposed to be the Leftwing. Try getting a LEFTwing candidate--ya might do better!

:eyes:

Removed from the common folk.

in double-speak and pretension.

that they have trouble just speaking to the people....they become so used to giving long winded orations for the and it is very diffucult to break this habit and fair poorly on the campaign trail. i feel that this is the reason senators rarely succeed in presidential runs....but, hey what the hell do i know :shrug:

where they survive by playing the game. It does not bode well for them to be a member of the good old boy club.

There's an old saying that "Everybody in the Senate wants to be President." Kerry was an obvious example of this. The guy spent a lifetime fighting for something and then very obviously spent a few years moderating his record to run for president. I don't think that being a senator is inherantly the problem, it's just that senators too often use their positions to make themselves into professional politicians before they run for president.

This isn't always the case. Wellstone certainly wouldn't have had this problem if he'd run.

Because their behavior is unethical and weak. They TALK the TALK but don't walk the walk....which makes them indistinguishable from the immoral Republicans.

Kerry DID NOT say the war was wrong. It's why he lost.

Who's going to vote for them for President?