The Sting of Defeat

American history is strewn with the names of people who dearly wanted to be President of the United States but who never got the chance. Some of them may have had trouble conceding defeat as well.

The odds of being president are not good. More than 400,000,000 Americans have lived and only 42 of them have been president. (Of course, not all Americans have wanted to be president. Me, for instance. I’d be happy with a Supreme Court appointment. Or even a cabinet post. Say Secretary of State. Something commensurate with my talents.)

Here are just a few highly qualified people, randomly selected, who really wanted to be president but had to swallow the disappointment of not making it. Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Frederick Douglass, Samuel Tilden, James G. Blaine, Lewis Cass, William Jennings Bryan, John W. Davis, Al Smith, Thomas Dewey, Robert A. Taft, Estes Kefauver, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Gary Hart, Walter Mondale, Bob Dole, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy.

And that is just the men.

Imagine how many excellent presidents we’ve missed because we’ve excluded women from the political process. Here are just a few who rose to national prominence and who probably would have been good presidents: Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Victoria Woodhull, Julia Ward Howe, Jane Addams, Alice Paul, Maud Younger, Jeanette Rankin. Approaching our own time; Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, Margaret Chase Smith, Ella Grasso, Barbara Jordan, Patricia S. Schroeder, Shirley Chisholm, Nancy Kastenbaum, Ann Richards, are a few who come to mind.

At least three women would have made better presidents than their husbands who did get the job: Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison and Hillary Clinton. And Eleanor Roosevelt would have been as good as her husband, who was as good as they get.

Of all of those people, the sting of defeat could not have been worse than it was for Henry Clay who tried and failed five times and who stood head and shoulders over many of the men who defeated him. I imagine that the sting of defeat for Senator Clinton is as sharp. Like Clay, she is a person who believes herself the best person for the job alive today. And, unlike Clay, she is the first woman with a serious chance at getting the job.

One could do worse than be remembered in the same breath as Henry Clay. Whatever her political future holds, and it may still hold the presidency, we remind Senator Clinton of these fine Americans who made history without being president.

Not that it will help ease the sting today.

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Paul Begala, a Clinton supporter wrote eloquently yesterday, comparing her to baseball great and first black player in the major leagues, Jackie Robinson.

Women have been running for President since 1872, when Victoria Woodhull ran on the Equal Rights Party platform. And yet no woman — from the estimable Shirley Chisoholm [sic]to the remarkable Pat Schroeder to the impressive Elizabeth Dole — has ever won even a single primary. Until Hillary. She not only won 20 primaries, she earned 17 million votes in the primaries — more than any woman before her.

The Democratic Party has decided, wonderfully, bravely, remarkably, to double-down on history this election. And so Hillary’s struggle against sexism has played out parallel to Barack Obama’s graceful and courageous rise above racism. He, too, has endured taunts and threats and bigotry. He, too, has answered hatred with dignity. He, too, knows how Jackie must have felt.

So when Barack praises Hillary’s tenacity, her trailblazing spirit, it is not patronizing, as some Hillary supporters have suggested. It is, I think, an empathetic expression of a powerful truth. Nobody — not even her husband — can fully appreciate what Hillary has overcome. Except Barack.

Tags: Barack Obama, Henry Clay, Hillary Clinton, Politics