The University Press of Kansas publishes a series of books entitled American Presidential Elections that chronicle and analyze past contests for the Presidency. This year will bring at least three additions, two of which were released in February and discuss contests for the White House from recent memory. In the first of these, political science ( Read more... )

John Anderson was a ten-term Republican Congressman from Illinois who ran as an independent candidate for President in 1980. He acquired a populist following both from Democrats who were frustrated with President Jimmy Carter's handling of the economy, and from Republicans who distrusted their party in the era after Watergate and who did not want ( Read more... )

As the 1980 presidential election approached, the Republican Party sensed that the time was right for taking back the Presidency. Incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter had low popularity ratings, as the nation faced high gas prices, high mortgage rates, inflation without growth, a renewed Cold War with the Soviet Union following the invasion ( Read more... )

Bill Clinton's campaign team had engineered an amazing victory over a once-popular incumbent in 1992, labeling the controversial former Arkansas Governor "the Comeback Kid". For the second election in a row it would be a contest between a Democrat, a Republican and a third party candidate in the form of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, although ( Read more... )

Gerald Ford was an "incumbent" for just over two years when he ran for re-election in 1976. But in 1976 the odds were stacked against Gerald Ford in his bid to win election as President of the United States in his own right. Ford had become President following the resignation of Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974. At first there was considerable ( Read more... )

We complete this first portion of our series on the Making of the President 2020 (profiles of the candidates) with a look at President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, one that begin virtually as soon as the President took office on January 20, 2017.


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For many people, the thing they most remember about the Presidency of Bill Clinton involved an unfortunate stain on a little blue dress and a young White House Intern about whom the President indignantly insisted in an offended tone that he "did not have sexual relations" with. As it turned out however, their president's sexual infidelity didn't ( Read more... )

The recent world-wide populist trend reached its pinnacle in November of 2016 with the election of Donald John Trump as President of the United States. Born on June 14, 1946, Trump hailed from the Queens borough of New York City. He had an economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, but had never held any elected ( Read more... )

In 1976 the odds were stacked against Gerald Ford in his bid to be elected as President of the United States in his own right. Ford had become President following the resignation of Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974. At first there was considerable public support for Ford, who was perceived as an honest breath of fresh air after the many ( Read more... )

This community is about history, not politics, and so it is with some reluctance that I will continue this series about the election of 2016 as a chronicle for future reference. In the last entry in this series, Donald Trump had just won sufficient delegates in the Republican Party primaries and caucus to secure the party's nomination for president ( Read more... )