Winning the Nomination Again Won’t Be Easy

Joshua Spivak: “What separates Romney from other comeback presidents is that he’s already received his party’s nomination and lost once before. The recent comeback kids did not receive the nomination in their first runs for office. For example, both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush came in second in their earlier attempts for the nomination. Reagan, probably the most noteworthy candidate who ran more than once, boosted his name-recognition and his credibility with the party’s conservative base in his first two runs, especially when he almost toppled sitting President Gerald R. Ford in 1976.”

“But once you look at the candidates who received the nomination, lost the general election and ran again, the road back to the White House appears much tougher. The last person to lose as a nominee and then go on to win the presidency — or even to get his party’s nomination more than once – was Richard Nixon, who lost the election on a razor-thin margin in 1960 and then won triumphantly in 1968. Before that, it was fairly common for a party to renominate a candidate. William Jennings Bryan was the Democratic nominee three times and never won; Adlai Stevenson got the Democratic nomination twice in the 1950s; Thomas Dewey was the unsuccessful Republican nominee in 1944 and 1948. But all of these candidates share something Romney lacks: Their campaigns occurred before the advent of the current primary and caucus system for choosing a nominee. These earlier nominees needed only to appeal to the narrow support of a political convention.”