Many people believe that presidential election debates and running mate selections make very little difference in the outcome of a election. The 1988 contest tends to support that theory, given that in early October one of the most memorable debate moments took place in that contest, not in the debates between the presidential candidates, but in ( Read more... )

Aaron Burr served one term as Vice-President of the United States (under President Thomas Jefferson) from 1801 to 1805. When he left the office at the end of his term in 1805, he headed west of the Allegheny Mountains and down the Ohio River Valley into the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Burr had leased 40,000 acres of land, known as the ( Read more... )

In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson made a decision to personally attend the Paris Peace Conference. Although the airplane had been invented and used in the Great War that had just ended, air travel was not yet a common means of travel, and Wilson made the trek by ship. He spent six months in Paris for the Peace Conference, becoming the first ( Read more... )

Richard Mentor Johnson was the ninth Vice President of the United States. He served in the administration of Martin Van Buren and has the distinction of being the only vice president ever elected by the US Senate under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution. In the election of 1840, when Martin Van Buren ran for re-election against William Henry ( Read more... )

In 1872, Ulysses S. Grant sought re-election to a second term as President of the United States. His opponent was the famous newspaper editor Horace Greeley who ran both as a Democrat and also as the candidate of the Liberal Republican Party. As we all know, Grant was successfully re-elected. Even if he the outcome had been otherwise, Greeley would ( Read more... )

After Burr served one term as Vice-President of the United States (under President Thomas Jefferson) from 1801 to 1805. When he left the office at the end of his term in 1805, he headed west of the Allegheny Mountains and down the Ohio River Valley into the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Burr had leased 40,000 acres of land, known as the ( Read more... )

On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke precedent by being nominated by his party to run for a third term as President. No one else has ever done this before or since. Others have been nominated for president by a major party three times but none after holding the office twice. Ulysses Grant sought a third term after serving two and being ( Read more... )

In August of 2012 I spent a week at Galveston Beach, Texas, a beautiful spot east of Houston on the Gulf Coast. One day I gave in to my potus_geeks side and drove to College Station, Texas to see the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum. This is a terrific Presidential Library dedicated to one of my favorite presidents.


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In the current century, the person who came closest to being President without crossing the finish line was former Tennessee Senator and former Vice-President Albert Arnold Gore Jr. In the 2000 presidential election, Gore won the popular vote by a margin of more than 500,000 votes but ultimately lost the Electoral College to Republican George W. ( Read more... )

At the end of the first world war, Woodrow Wilson left the United States to go to France to preside over the Versailles Peace Conference. At the beginning of the conference, his stature as a world statesman was at its peak. But his absence from home and his inability to convince his own nation of the need for the League of Nations took a toll both ( Read more... )