AFAICT, Hoover arguably comes closest by aforementionedly neither holding elected office nor serving in the military before getting the big job.
Thanks for the clarification. If you were only asking about those not elected to public office, than I’m with Derleth: since senators were appointed by state legislatures until 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, presidents whose only political office had been as Senators, they wouldn’t count. If you limit it to private sector and no prior public office, then I think the answer is no, there hasn’t been one US president who fits the bill. Even Secretary of Commerce is a public office.
Of course, the 2012 election could change all that, but right now, it’s not looking too likely.
Eisenhower had to deal with the English. That’s all the experience he needed to deal with the fractious children in Congress.
With the English and with a bunch of other nationalities, and with newborn services, and with Churchill (who seems to have held family relationships with steamrollers), and Patton (who I understand did “subordination” about as well as a succesful celebutante does “modesty”), and… ; those who think his dealings were “internal” and involving only “subordinates” before he got into politics may wish to read up on WWII.
My previous posts were about recent presidents, and now I’ve done some research (entirely on Wikipedia) about the older ones. My conclusion is that if you want someone who was not in politics at all, the only two presidents you’ll have are the military men Dwight Eisenhower and Zachary Taylor. Even Washington was a delegate to the Continental Congress (both First and Second).
The following list includes ambassadorships and cabinet posts, but I did not bother mentioning vice-presidential service.[ul]
[li]George Washington - Senior Officer of the Army 1775-83, Delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Virginia 1775, First Continental Congress from Virginia 1774[/li][li]John Adams - Ambassador to Great Britain 1785-88, Ambassador to the Netherlands 1782-88, Delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Massachusetts 1775-78, Delegate to the First Continental Congress from Massachusetts Bay 1774[/li][li]Thomas Jefferson - Secretary of State 1790-93, Ambassador to France 1785-89, Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from Virginia 1783-84, Governor of Virginia 1779-81, Delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Virginia 1775-1776[/li][li]James Madison - Secretary of State 1801-09, Congressman from Virginia 1789-97, Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from Virginia 1781-83[/li][li]James Monroe - Secretary of War 1814-15, Secretary of State 1811-17, Governor of Virginia 1799-1802, Ambassador to UK 1803-08, Ambassador to France 1794-96, Senator from Virginia 1790-94, Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from Virginia 1783-86[/li][li]John Quincy Adams - Congressman from Mass 1831-48, Sec’y of State 1817-25, Senator from Mass 1803-08, Ambassdor to UK, Russia, Prussia, and Netherlands[/li][li]Andrew Jackson - Military Governor of Florida 1821, Senator from Tennessee 1823-25, Congressman from Tennessee 1796-97[/li][li]Martin Van Buren - Ambassador to UK 1831-32, US Secretary of State 1829-31, Governor of New York 1829, Senator from New York 1821-28[/li][li]William Henry Harrison - Senator from Ohio 1825-28, Congressman from Ohio 1816-19, Governor of the District of Louisiana 1804-05, Governor of Indiana 1801-1812, Secretary of Northwest Territory 1798-99, Congressman from Northwest Territory 1799-1800[/li][li]John Tyler - Senator from Virginia 1827–1836, Governor of Virginia 1825–27, Congressman from Viginia 1816-21[/li][li]James Polk - Governor of Tennessee - 1839-41, Congressman from Tennessee 1825-1839[/li][li]Zachary Taylor - Commander of the southern division of the United States Army 1841-1848[/li][li]Millard Fillmore - Comptroller of New York January 1, 1848 – February 20, 1849, Congressman from NY March 4, 1837 – March 3, 1843 [/li][li]Franklin Pierce - Senator from New Hampshire March 4, 1837 – February 28, 1842, Congressman from NH 1833–1837 [/li][li]James Buchanan - Ambassador to the U.K., Secretary of State, Senator from PA, Amb. to Russia, Cong’man from PA[/li][li]Abraham Lincoln - Congressman from Illinois - March 4, 1847 – March 3, 1849 [/li][li]Andrew Johnson - Senator from Tennessee - 1857-62 and 1875, Governor of Tennessee 1853–1857 [/li][li]Ulysses Grant - Commanding General of the Army - March 9, 1864 – March 4, 1869 [/li][li]Rutherford Hayes - 29th and 32nd Governor of Ohio - January 10, 1876 – March 2, 1877 [/li][li]James Garfield - Congressman from Ohio - March 4, 1863 – March 3, 1881[/li][/ul]
Please. Read some politics and what’s involved with dealing with the public. The history of generals who were elected president is dismal at best. Twelve generals were presidents at some point: Washington, Jackson, W. Harrison, Taylor, Pierce, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, B. Harrison, and Eisenhower. After Washington that’s a list filled with mediocrities, although that’s somewhat unfair to the three who died in office.
Eisenhower is actually a good example of the problem. Who was Chief of Staff during WWII and should get all the credit for running the services? George C. Marshall. Eisenhower was Marshall’s Chief of Staff. He ran operations but Marshall oversaw all policy and grand decisions. Eisenhower finally got out of Washington in 1942 and headed various campaigns but he was equal in rank, stature, and responsibilities to a number of other military men during the war. Yes, he had to deal with opposite numbers at a high level. But he never ran anything. Marshall did.
Same for after the war. Eisenhower finally became Army Chief of Staff in November 1945. Marshall, however, moved up to become one of the greatest Secretaries of State in history. From the end of the war to 1952, Eisenhower did little of any lasting value, except maneuver himself to be drafted for the presidency.
After leaving office he held a fairly low spot in historians’ rankings of presidents, although he climbed higher with time. However, there is now a backlash to the backlash building, so to speak, and his reputation is dipping again. (For a fun if probably biased trashing read Stanley Weintraub’s 15 Stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall: Three Generals Who Saved the American Century.) He presided over three recessions during the greatest boom the country ever saw, allowed meddling in Iran, Vietnam, and a number of Latin American countries that haunted the U.S. for 50 years, and allowed Richard Nixon - Richard Nixon! - to become Vice President. His mishandling of civil rights was an immediate tragedy for the nation and can be directly attributed to his lack of understanding of the political issues and players.
Winfield Scott, George McClellan, and Winfield S. Hannock were also generals were headed major party tickets while never having served in politics. Wendell Wilkie was a utility company head when he ran in 1940. Ross Perot is a special but interesting case.
The notion that generals or CEOs could make good presidents has always been with us, but it’s bad politics. The fields are utterly unlike one another. It’s been our good fortune that most people understand this and have given the office to the best politician running for most of the last century. You can argue that the sheer awfulness of some good politicians who did make it to the presidency - Richard Nixon! - shoots down this theory, but I maintain that overall any non-politician would be a disaster as soon as any crisis hit. See Hoover, Herbert for example A.
There has not been. However, one such person was nominated by a major party–Wendell Willkie, Republican, in 1940. He had never held political office, and other than brief military service during World War I, had a career (before 1940) entirely in private industry.
Oddly enough, Willkie was nominated at a time of extreme international danger, and was nominated precisely because of the danger. The Republican Party was desperate for an internationalist in the aftermath of the fall of France, and Willkie was the best available.
If Eisenhower counts, why doesn’t Grant?
I figured the only men who hadn’t held office of any kind before president were military men. I would count military men (even though I am almost completely anti-military) as at least ostensibly having a career with the public interest in mind.
Thanks guys.
How did Eisenhower mishandle civil rights? This was a man who used federal power to enforce school integration and who pushed through the first civil rights legislation in nearly a century.
True. Regardless of the rest of his record on the issue, sending the 101st Airborne to escort kids into school is pretty fucking awesome.
Eisenhower had at best a mixed record on civil rights. He certainly never pushed the issue and it was clear he was more sympathetic to the opposition side.
But Eisenhower was also a strong advocate of the supremacy of the federal government. While he may not have liked the law that Congress had passed, he was not going to allow any state to defy Congress. (In this respect, Andrew Jackson would be a good comparison.)
:smack: How did I miss that?
My bad! Thanks!
Eisenhower pushed the 1957 civil rights legislation, which would have been much stronger had that great future civil rights president, Lyndon Johnson, determine that the bill would split his party and deliberately work with segregationist committee heads to gut the thing.
The civil rights movement was going to take some time. Without Eisenhower it would have taken longer.
You’ve got a point. The two Continental Congresses were indirectly elected, as was the Senate for most of the existence of the United States.
And either I never learned about Washington’s service in the House of Burgesses or I have managed to completely wipe it from my mind. Maybe that’ll teach me to double-check things before I go posting them here :smack: