Hmm, that could work. Get Roger Corman on the phone.

I think you’ll find, Martin, there’s some dispute as to whether the VP as President of the Senate is a Senator.

Precisely why I said “if you consider”

As Geoff and Nabakov say, while we’ve had quite a few Senatorial candidates, only Warren Harding (who defeated Governor Cox) and JFK have been successful.

If you take the tenuous position that the sitting VP may be considered a Senator of sorts then we only add four more: GHW Bush, who defeated Governor Dukakis; Martin Van Buren, who defeated former Senator William Henry Harrison (although the election was a mess and included Whig candidates who were sitting Senators), Thomas Jefferson who defeated NY Congressman Burr (in another odd election) and John Adams who defeated former Secretary of State Jefferson.

There’s a few more whose most recent public office was Senator including Benjamin Harrison, Frankloin Pierce, Andrew Jackson.

Only one sitting federal Representative has been elected President…

Broadening out, Nixon is the only VP who later went on to win a Presidency, beating incumbent VP Humphrey (thus pitting a former President of the Senate against a n incumbent President of the Senate).

The only VPs who have suceeded to the office who have gone on to win an election are Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman and LBJ. Of these Roosevelt and Coolidge were Governors before assuming the VPship and Truman and LBJ were Senators.

As remarked above, Governorships have been the most successful entree recently including GWBush, Clinton, Carter, FDR, Wilson and Cleveland; Former governor Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt and Coolidge into the VPcy (as above.)

Yeah, true, and it’s part of the reason I think ideologues are so unhelpful in American politics.

(This in relation to nuts’n'bolts administration.)

But there does come a moment of crisis when previous policies and habits of mind must give way to structural constraints.

For example (and this applies to most of the developed world but probably most starkly to the US) western consumerist lifestyles have been predicated on the availability of cheap energy. Make energy significantly more expensive and ineluctably at a certain point quantitative change (how much you can afford to drive a car) adds up to qualitative change (are vast dormatory suburbs economically sustainable. Such a calculus is neither a positive sum game nor a zero sum game. Rather, it is a negative sum game. Many folks will have to adjust in quite profound ways their expectations and their aspirations.

In the long run, markets will allocate the pain and the rewards arising from new conditions. But my guess is that these new conditions will be threatening enough to wide sectors of the voting public to evoke a series of political responses not dissimilar in political and social function to FDR’s New Deal.

People laughed at Jimmy Carter when he made that extraordinary speech in July 1979 endorsing the notion that the US faced “a moral and spiritual crisis”.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jimmycartercrisisofconfidence.htm

I was resident in the US at the time and I certainly laughed at Carter. But now i’m more inclined to the notion that Carter was wrong (and not just about the US) but rather he was simply 40 years premature in his warning.

BTW, who still agrees with Carter’s prognostications on this issue?

You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on earth. We have the world’s highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.

Even Bush has pled with Americans to get over their addiction to oil.

It is interesting that sitting (and ex) Governors have been more successful than Senators in getting themselves elected President.

Think Roosevelt II, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II.

The argument that Governors make is that, unlike Senators, they know all about running a government. The argument that Senators make is that, unlike Governors, they know all about foreign policy. Until this year, the first argument has been dominant.

I think Mark meant in the Presidential election Nabs, not the primaries……

You’re right, except perhaps for:

Harding
Kennedy x 2
Kerry
Lieberman
Dodd
Biden
Specter
Brownback
Dole x 2
Alexander
Harkin
Garfield
Byrd
Lugar
Bayh
Hatch
Conkling
and many more that will come to hand once I can be arsed sorting out my goggle search terms.

“I think back in the real old days (powdered wig territory) the VP was just the runner-up in the election,”

Yup, Jefferson and Burr was the classic example of how that arrangement didn’t pan out and why they introduced the 12th Amendment shortly thereafter.

Never. And only two serving Senators have ever won the Presidency: Harding and Kennedy.

I’m unaware of any ‘dispute” about whether the VP is a part of the Executive or Legislative wing of the US government. The VP is part of the Executive Branch and while the VP is the largely ceremonial President of the Senate, s/he is definitely not a Senator.

As Mark says, the VP normally only presides over the Senate in the event of a voting deadlock when s/he may exercise a casting vote. The presiding officer in practice is generally the senior Senator from the majority party.

The convention that VP’s do not take part in the day to day affairs of the Senate was established well before the Civil War, just before LBJ became VP.

I think back in the real old days (powdered wig territory) the VP was just the runner-up in the election, which would mean he was actually serving under his enemy’s administration. (Am I right about that? Not sure, but think so.)

No, but it did happen that the losing candidate’s VP got elected as the winning president’s deputy. It was a quirk in the old electoral college - Thomas Jefferson served under John Adams that way.

It’s one of the reasons why a president can’t sack a vice-president. The electoral college votes for the VP - it’s not a presidential appointment.

LBJ was also arguably the first VP to be given substantive duties within the executive branch.

The brothers K loathed LBJ and had him banished from any meaningful duties - unless you count being delivery boy for nasty telegrams to Diem. He wasn’t given substantive duties in civil rights so much as he made them substantive.

Having trawled back through Wikipedia we’ve never had sitting senators as candidates before. Lotsa VPs of course. It’s an interesting browse. Could you ever imagine the USA having an uncontested election again?

It would certainly be entertaining to go back to that system: VP McCain serving under Prez Obama, or vice versa. Who knows, maybe it would actually work pretty well. (I would have loved to see Nixon as JFK’s vice president. Terrrific theater.)

Would it be possible for either of the two candidates for the presidency to propose, as their running mate, their partner, for instance?

It’s also interesting that up until Cheney tried to muddy the waters by claiming that he was a specific branch of government himself, opinion had generally shifted towards the VP being part of the executive rather than the legislative branch. LBJ was also arguably the first VP to be given substantive duties within the executive branch.

When was the last time the two candidates were both current Senators?

It’s never happened before that two ordinary Senators have run against each other, but if you consider that the VP is President of the Senate then in 1960 Senator JFK ran against VP Nixon.

When was the last time the two candidates were both current Senators?