Do you think any of the Constitutionally limited POTUSs would’ve won a 3rd term?
The limited ones were:
Ike
Reagan
Clinton
W
Ike I can see, Reagan was early Altzheimers, Clinton was too wounded by “Zipper-gate” and W couldn’t get elected dog catcher by 2008.
Ike is hard to call. He was getting elderly and had had a long series of public health crises. And we forget today that three recessions occurred under him. Still if Nixon could come within an inch of winning he surely would have because he had the personal likeability and gravitas and the enormous advantage of being president.
Bush I won because he was the third term of Reagan and for no other reason (well, a terrible opponent helped), so Reagan undoubtedly would.
Clinton probably could for the same reason as Ike: if his VP lost by an eyelash the sitting president would have gotten those extra votes. Clinton was absolutely wounded and many hated him, but he was the better politician and people vastly underestimate the inertia that a sitting president has.
Bush II would have done better than McCain, but 2008 wasn’t anywhere near a close election. I think he’s the only one who would seriously have been beatable.
I think Ike would have won easily. JFK would have known better than to run against him and would have waited until 1964. Maybe Adlai would have run in 1960 vs Ike.
Reagan in 1988 was already starting to decline. Still, he could have beaten Dukakis easily.
Clinton vs W in 2000, hell yeah he would have won. All he would have had to do is carry the Gore states plus Tennessee, which he would have won and made Florida irrelevant.
W in 2008? I don’t think so, seeing how the 2008 election was in some ways a referendum on Bush.
Clinton is the only one who had a chance, mainly based on the idea of facing a political weakling like Bush Jr.
I don’t think Zippergate would have done much to impede Clinton. His approval ratings went up considerably in the wake of the failed impeachment, and never really dropped below 60% thereafter. In fact, he had his highest approval rating ever on December 19, 1998, the day the House voted to impeach. No POTUS has ever lost a second term with an election day approval rating above 49%.
Although lacking charisma, he had a phenomenally impressive resume. It’s absurd to say he won “for no other reason” than Reagan.
Yea, thinking about it some more, Iran-Contra hurt Reagan a lot more then Zipper-gate hurt Clinton. Between that and his age, I think I’ll change my guess on Reagan. I don’t think he’d have won re-election if he had run for a third term.
The shine was off Reagan by 1988. Bush was seen as a more competent bearer of the Neo-Con flag. However, the terrible opponent Bush had would have given Reagan a very good chance. I’d still say Clinton was the only one who could have done it based on his continuing popularity. Being younger was a big advantage for Clinton, age had raised questions for Reagan and Eisenhower. W doesn’t even belong in the list, the weakest of Democratic opponents could have defeated him for a third term, they almost did for his first and second.
People don’t care about resumes and don’t vote for resumes. They make a dividing line: qualified/not qualified based on the person. You couldn’t get 2% of the population to recite Bush’s resume. The chances that he would have been the nominee in 1988 if he wasn’t Reagan 3 were slim to none.
Although he technically doesn’t qualify for this thread, the really interesting case would be Johnson in 1968 if he hadn’t dropped out. It was yet again a razor-thin vote. The question comes down to how many votes he would have lost by another six months of the country being torn apart vs. how many he would have gained for being president. Humphrey had all of his disadvantages and none of the advantages of the Presidency. Even though all what if’s are subject to the qualification that all sorts of unknowns and improbables occur in real life, how 1968 would have played out is like predicting the next stage of a dream. It made no sense living through it.
There were indications even before he left office that age was taking its toll on Regan’s brain. Given the rigors and public nature of a national campaign, I think it would clear to that nation that something was seriously wrong. Even if he was eligible I think it’s likely that Nancy would convince him not to run again in order preserve his health and legacy.
I agree that Clinton could have won a third term fairly easily if he hadn’t been term-limited out. The economy was booming, the electorate wasn’t holding Lewinsky against him, and he would have rolled to victory.
With Reagan, it would have depended on (a) whether he chose to run, given the onset of Alzheimer’s, and (b) to what extent it became impossible to ignore in a national campaign.
GWB wouldn’t have stood a chance, of course.
I’m not going to speculate on Ike; I don’t remember his Presidency well enough to say.
The list in the OP left out Nixon. However, I don’t think he could have staged a come-back and wouldn’t have won a third term. 
The OP didn’t leave him out. He wasn’t constitutionally limited, but ethically limited.
He was elected twice. If Obama resigns today, he cannot stand again in 2016. Can he?
No - the Constitution says you cannot be elected more than twice.
As for whether he could be President by some other means, we’ve had this discussion before.
Didn’t Alan Moore have a contrary opinion in Watchmen?
That was mainly predicated on The Comedian assassinating Woodward & Bernstein (and, presumably, Deep Throat) in a Washington, D.C. parking garage. If Watergate had never come to light? Hard to say, really. Nixon, even at his best, was a polarizing figure, and it’s come to light that his re-election was due at least in part to some dirty tricks. How many times could he pull that off?
Had Bush run in 2008 he would have lost by an even wider margin than McCain did. The only thing that might’ve changed that is if he had appeared more engaged in the 2008 financial crisis, but regardless, assuming he ran again, he would’ve lost in a landslide.
I figure Clinton had a better-than-even chance at a third term because he was still very popular, but the scandals - not just the Lewinsky affair but Lincoln bedroom stuff and the China fundraising flap - could’ve had some effect, and the economy was not humming along at that point. In 2000 the tech bubble had burst and the economy was slowing down, which is bad for incumbents.
There are two different things going on here. People who vote in primaries absolutely do look at resumes, and they would have been the ones voting for Bush as the nominee. Once in the general, his resume matters in his ability to speak intelligently about the issues, even if not many people know what he’s done.
At any rate, I don’t accept that Bush I would not have won had it not been for Reagan, but if you’d like to defend that statement, open another thread and we can go at it. No point in hijacking this thread, though.
And on Doctor Manhattan winning the war in Vietnam.