Inspired by watching the West Wing marathon on Bravo tonight…
When was the last time a sitting Vice President sought his party’s nomination for President but failed to win it? Has it ever happened?
You have to go back a ways, but it has ahppened.
In 1908, Teddy Roosevelt’s Vice President was Charles Fairbanks, who sought the Republican nomination. However, William Howard Taft won the nomination, with the support of Roosevelt himself.
Vice President John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner challenged his President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the Democratic nomination in 1940. Roosevelt dumped him from the ticket and went on to win a third term.
It has happened several times. The modern vice presidency, in which the VP is hand-picked by the President and serves an eight-year apprenticeship as de facto heir presumptive (Cheney may be an exception, since it appears that he won’t run) is an artifact of post-World War II politics. Earlier vice presidents were on their own in hustling for convention delegates in smoke-filled rooms.
The last pol to try this route and fail was the immortal Alben Barkley in 1952. He was Harry Truman’s vice president, and was 75 when Harry left office, so his candidacy wasn’t taken all that seriously. He withdrew his candidacy before the convention, then changed his mind and allowed himself to be nominated, and received 48.5 votes on the first ballot and 78.5 on the second. Adlai Stevenson won the nomination on the third ballot.
How did Barkley get half of a vote?
Fractional votes at conventions aren’t unusual. By assigning each delegate a half-vote, a state party can allow twice as many people to participate in the convention as would otherwise be the case. On some occasions, credentials disputes led to even more unusual fractional allotments.