{"id":54,"date":"2008-11-20T11:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-20T17:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=54"},"modified":"2009-02-18T23:04:45","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T05:04:45","slug":"coming-to-terms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2008\/11\/coming-to-terms\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming to Terms"},"content":{"rendered":"
In October, I read an article (can\u2019t find the link) that said being a President is a dangerous job; after all, one in four Presidents die while in office. I even parroted this statistic to others a few times. Later, I did some research, and, well this isn\u2019t exactly true. And even if it was, it skews the intent of the message somewhat.<\/p>\n

Let me explain\u2026<\/p>\n

First of all, eight men have died while serving as President. As of this writing, there have been 43 Presidents (I\u2019m including Cleveland twice, because that\u2019s the law). If you do a little math, you\u2019ll see that\u2019s not 1 in 4. It\u2019s not even 1 in 5. It\u2019s 1 in 5.375. But wait! Maybe the writer of that article meant to say that 1 in 4 Presidents didn\u2019t finish the job. There\u2019s a subtle difference here, but by phrasing it this way, we can also include Nixon, who didn\u2019t finish the job he was elected to do\u2026but certainly lived to tell about it (he lived for 19 more years). And then there\u2019s Bush Jr. Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t count him at all, because he hasn\u2019t finished the job\u2026yet. So, if exclude W as a President, and include Nixon as someone who didn\u2019t finish the job, this means 9 out of 42 Presidents didn\u2019t succeed in seeing out the end of their term. This still isn\u2019t 1 in 4, but it\u2019s a hell of a lot closer: It\u2019s 1 in 4.666666666666666666666666666666.<\/p>\n

But I still have some problems with this. First of all, is it really fair to say 9 out of 42 presidents failed to finish their term when some of those people only became president because their predecessor died or resigned? I mean, Ford only became president because Nixon resigned. If Nixon hadn\u2019t quit, there wouldn\u2019t have been a President Ford. So maybe we should exclude from our list VPs who rose to the office of Presidency upon the death or resignation of their President. But then I think we should add back in Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and LBJ because, even though they initially rose to president due to death, they still did get elected in their own right later. So if we exclude the 5 people who only finished out a term that was not theirs, we find that 9 out of 37 Presidents did not make it to the end of their term. This, my friends, is very close to 1 in 4.<\/p>\n

But wait! The whole premise is flawed here.<\/p>\n

I mean, sure, it\u2019s fair to say JFK didn\u2019t finish the job the country asked him to do, but can we say the same about FDR? The man was elected to the Presidency four times, and he did manage to live through three of them. For my money, a guy who lives out three terms is more successful than someone like, say, Carter, who was only elected once.<\/p>\n

So, instead of looking at how many men survived their presidency, I propose we look at terms. That is, when the populous\/electoral college\/congress\/Supreme Court asks a person to become president (whether for the first, second, third or fourth time), do they manage to stay in office for those four years*?<\/p>\n

Since 1789, there have been 55 presidential terms**. During that time, 37 different men have been elected to the position. The question is: how many of those terms were completed successfully? Or, put differently, how many of those terms were completed by the same man who started them?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s find out by utilizing the greatest tool known to humankind: the list.<\/p>\n

[BIG SURPRISE: THIS SHITTY BLOG PROGRAM DOESN’T ALLOW FORMATTED LISTS. OH WELL.]<\/p>\n

As you can deduce, the answer is that 45 of the 54 completed terms have been successfully carried out by the person selected to do the job.<\/p>\n

Now for some trivia: There have never been back-to-back unsuccessful terms.
The closest the nation ever came to this was in the 1840s. The 14th term was not successful (William Harrison died in office). Neither was the 16th (Zachary Taylor died in office). Kudos to James Polk for staying alive during the entire 15th term.
When was the longest streak of successful terms? The answer, by a comfortable margin, is: right at the beginning. The first 13 terms were successfully completed by the first 8 men elected to them. The second-longest streak is currently happening: the last seven terms have been successful. And, unless the rapture occurs in the next 60 days, Bush Jr. will bring that total up to eight.<\/p>\n

*Any list of President\u2019s requires, by law, at least two footnotes. So here\u2019s the first one: Washington\u2019s and Roosevelt\u2019s first terms were both shortened slightly due to altering the date of subsequent inaugurations. Therefore, these two terms were not a full four years. I\u2019m still counting them as successful, though.<\/p>\n

**And here\u2019s the second one. <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In October, I read an article (can\u2019t find the link) that said being a President is a dangerous job; after all, one in four Presidents die while in office. I even parroted this statistic to others a few times. Later, I did some research, and, well this isn\u2019t exactly true. And even if it was, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}