I fell down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia research here based on my irritation at the “Harris isn’t qualified” babble from the right.
So, first and self-evidently, she’s qualified. She’s been VP, she’s been a Senator, and she held elected office at the state and local level before that. This is a solid resume, and turns out to be a pretty common path. But! Let’s look at data.
First, let’s talk about VPs
I looked back 100 years, to Coolidge, which means 17 presidents. In that time, 7 former VPs have held the Oval Office:
- Calvin Coolidge assumed office after Harding, and was elected on his own;
- Harry Truman assumed office after FDR, and was elected on his own;
- Lyndon Johnson assumed office after JFK, and was elected on his own;
- Richard Nixon was Eisenhower’s VP (1953-1961) before being elected on his own in 1968;
- Gerald Ford assumed office after Nixon resigned, but did not run on his own;
- George H. W. Bush was Reagan’s VP and was elected after Reagan’s 2nd term; and
- Joe Biden was Obama’s VP (2009-2017) before being elected on his own in 2020.
This is an interesting set.
VPs who ascend to the Presidency are the majority here, even though it hasn’t happened since 1974: that’s 4 of the 7. Three of those sought their own terms, and won them.
Ford, famously, did not run — and in fact never ran at all, which is wild. He ended up President without a single electoral vote EVER since he was appointed to replace Agnew, and then Nixon resigned. It’s a turn of events worthy of fiction, and in fact I’m pretty sure that “appointed VP and unexpectedly promoted” is how Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan ends up in the White House.
Anyway, one take-away is that assuming office DOES give you a leg up, electorally speaking, since everyone who did so and sought the office on their own won a term.
The other interesting thing is that I would have assume that non-promoted VPs really only have a good shot at election if they run immediately after their president’s term ends, but that’s wrong (well, n=3, so …).
Of the 3 non-promoted VP presidents, only one was elected immediately after his VP term ended (G.H.W. Bush). The other two sat out: Nixon left office in 1961 and didn’t become president until 1969. Biden, of course, sat out the 2016 cycle before running and winning in 2020.
And so: Qualifications
Let’s take as read that the corpus of former presidents gives us a good metric for “what should be on a presidential hopeful’s CV?”
“Was a VP” is the most common former qualification of the last 100 years of presidents (7 of 17, so about 41%).
“Was a Senator” and “Was a Governor” are tied at 6 each (35%).
Former Senators (also a VP indicated by italics)
- Truman
- Kennedy
- Johnson
- Nixon
- Obama
- Biden
Former Governors:
- Coolidge
- Roosevelt
- Carter
- Reagan
- G. W. Bush
- Clinton
If we look at the overall picture of electoral / leadership history, there’s really not that many categories of prior jobs to look at, so it seems reasonable to assign point values and rank ’em.
- Being VP gets you 5 points.
- Being a Governor gets you 4
- Being a Senator gets you 3
- Being a House rep gets you 2
- Any other elected office (local or state level) is worth 1
- Any other significant appointed position (Cabinet posts, ambassadorships, etc) is worth 0.5
That’s an off the cuff ranking, but it’s worth throwing at the wall, right?
Top dog is Coolidge with 13 points. He was VP (5), Governor (4), held 3 state offices (LtGov, Mass. Senate, Mass. House) and 1 local one (Mayor). (Of course, he’s also not considered a very good president, but at least his resume was solid.)
Then we have a 3-way tie at 10:
- Johnson (VP, Senator, Rep);
- Nixon (VP, Senator, Rep); and
- HARRIS (VP, Senator, 2x additional offices)
So, uh, tl;dr?
MAGAts should STFU about her resume. Especially given that the bottom of this list, with zero points, is Orange Jesus. He’s also the only one to score ZERO. We’ve had other presidents with no prior electoral experience, but they typically held executive-level appointments (Hoover, 2, scoring 1 point) or several big-ticket military billets (Eisenhower, who had 3, scoring 1.5).
