Ears of Experience or Sour Milk? The Law of 14 in 2008

Ears of Experience or Sour Milk? The Law of 14 in 2008

As Bill Richardson is fond of saying, governors get elected president. At least that's borne out in my adult lifetime: four governors and an incumbent vice president (two incumbent VPs if you count Al Gore.) Richardson likes to tout this over the Senate-heavy Democratic field. In the last century, only two sitting Senators - John Kennedy and Warren Harding - have moved into the White House.

But the true sign of doom seems to be looooooong Senate service. No candidate has ever - and I mean back to George Washington ever -- turned a long career in the Senate into the Presidency. The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who tried. John Kerry and Bob Dole got nominations. But other men who are widely respected elder statesmen in DC have failed miserably in the chat and chews of Iowa: Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch, Ernest Hollings, Alan Cranston, even back to Ed Muskie and Henry Jackson. Ted Kennedy's 18 years of Senate experience at the time he ran for President in 1980 dwarfed his older brother's eight.

Of course, Dan Quayle learned the hard lesson about comparing one's experience to JFK, and Ted gave himself the added challenge of trying to oust an incumbent of his own party. But none of this bodes well for Joe Biden's ears of experience or Chris Dodd's white hair.

Four years ago, writing in Reason, Jonathan Rausch proposed the "Law of 14":

With only one exception since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, no one has been elected president who took more than 14 years to climb from his first major elective office to election as either president or vice president.

Rauch defines "major office" as a Congressional seat, governor, or big city mayor. "The rule is a maximum, not a minimum. Generals and other famous personages can go straight to the top. But if a politician first runs for some other major office, the 14-year clock starts ticking."  Those aren't ears of experience -- they're stale milk cartons.

Looking to the Hall of Presidents, soon to appear on dollar coins near you, we see:

President	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Bush 43	Governor	1994	6
Clinton 42	Governor	1978	14
Bush 41	House	1966	14 (to VP)
Reagan	Governor	1966	14
Carter	Governor	1970	6
Nixon	House	1946	6 (to VP)
Kennedy	House	1946	14
Johnson	House	1937	23 (to VP)
Eisenhower	President	1952	0
Truman	Senator	1934	10 (to VP)
Roosevelt	Governor	1928	4
Hoover	Cabinet	1921	8
Coolidge	Governor	1918	2 (to VP)
Harding	Senator	1914	6
Wilson	Governor	1910	2
Taft	Cabinet	1904	4
T. Roosevelt	Governor	1898	2 (to VP)

(Note: I included cabinet posts for Taft and Hoover, whose first elected office was the Presidency, but either way they're under 14.)

Even the one exception helps prove the rule. LBJ lost the 1960 nomination to fresher face JFK, then got the vice presidency as a consolation prize because they needed to win Texas really, really bad.

Where's Gerald Ford on our roll call? Down below. With the losers. His decades in Congress were no match for that Jimmy Carter grin.

 
 
 

Loser	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Kerry	Senate	1984	20
Gore	House	1976	16
Dole	House	1960	26
Dukakis	Governor	1974	14
Mondale	Senate	1964	12 (to VP)
Ford	House	1948	27 (to VP)
McGovern	House	1956	16
Humphrey	Senate	1948	16 (to VP)
	Mayor	1945	19

Fast forwarding to the present, this significantly narrows our field of potential winners. Oh, not nominees - the gallery of the defeated will show you that, and for recommended reading on those men, find yourself a used copy of the long out of print "They Also Ran" by Irving Stone, a wonderful collection of biographies of the defeated candidates.

Note that on the Democratic side, the freshest faces are the leaders, and while Richardson cites his gubernatorial credentials, his House tenure could cause some problems.

 
 
 
 

Candidate	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Obama	Senate	2004	4
Clinton 44	Senate	2000	8
Edwards	Senate	1998	10
Richardson	House	1982	26
Kucinich	Mayor	1977	31
Dodd	House	1974	34
Biden	Senate	1972	36
Gravel	Senate	1968	40

It's yet to be determined: if First Lady constitutes a "major office." (These sorts of rules can always be tweaked retroactively.)

On the GOP side, again note the rough correlation between freshness and success, though Tancredo messes with that a bit. And Rudy Giuliani is getting to the edge of his sell-by date.

 
 
 
 

Candidate	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Romney	Governor	2002	6
Tancredo	House	1998	10
Huckabee	Governor	1996	12
F Thompson	Senate	1994	14
Brownback	House	1994	14
Giuliani	Mayor	1993	15
T. Thompson	Governor	1986	22
McCain	House	1982	26
Hunter	House	1982	26
Paul	House	1976	32

The really funny thing, though, is that Ron Paul, supposedly the "fresh" face on the GOP side, was actually the first of the Republican contenders to win an election, back in the disco era.

Of course, a year from now the Law of 14 could be as useful as the Washington Redskins Rule. Used to be if the Redskins won their last home game before the election, the GOP would win, but if they lost it was a Democratic year. This made me feel even more glee than usual when my Green Bay Packers beat the Redskins in October 2004, but it didn't help John Kerry a bit. (Perhaps because Kerry famously called the Packers' stadium, Lambeau Field, "Lambert" field while campaigning in Green Bay.)

But perhaps the Law of 14 reflects a certain reality.  Foreign service officers and the higher ranks of the military have "up or out" rules: you either get promoted in a certain time frame or you're gone.  Maybe that's an unwritten political rule as well.

And maybe more substantial reasons will cause the American people to kill off the Law of 14. After all, George Bush took office twice over the more experienced candidate, and look what happened.