Which US Presidents did not run for reelection?

The lead-up to this 12 months’s presidential election might have appeared at first look to be nothing greater than a rehash of the earlier one, however the 2024 marketing campaign for the White Home has confirmed itself to be something however. As a substitute, if the previous few weeks have proven us something, it is that nothing is assured in politics — even in essentially the most static-seeming circumstances. Irrespective of how a lot President Joe Biden’s resolution to finish his reelection marketing campaign might have appeared inevitable in hindsight, his announcement landed with seismic impression on Sunday, upending a race that felt to many like a stale continuation of 2020. 

Biden’s withdrawal, and his subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place atop the Democratic ticket might have thrown this explicit election into deep, and uncharted waters, however it’s not wholly with out historic precedent. By opting to not run for a second time period, Biden now joins a small however illustrious group of previous presidents who, for various causes, additionally selected to eschew a return to the White Home after their single phrases in workplace.

James Polk

Thought of by historians to have been the primary “darkish horse” president, James Polk was a relative unknown previous to his run for prime workplace (“Who’s James Ok. Polk?” was a standard chorus from his Whig opponents) however left workplace as some of the consequential commanders in chief in American historical past. Elected in 1844, Polk entered the presidency with a “particular set of targets,” together with the huge territorial enlargement by the annexation of the Republic of Texas and large swaths of the southwest, Voice Of America stated. In an period when it was “widespread for candidates to pledge to not run for reelection as a mark of non-public humility,” Polk “honored his pledge” and didn’t mount a marketing campaign in 1848.

James Buchanan

Buchanan’s pledge to serve a single time period in 1857 was “doubtless a very good factor, looking back, since specialists rank him because the worst president of all time,” Stacker stated. Buchanan was “wanting to vacate the White Home earlier than civil battle grew to become a actuality,” and his “antagonistic relationship with Stephen Douglas break up the Democratic Social gathering,” clearing a path for Republican Abraham Lincoln to win the election in 1860, American Expertise stated. 

Rutherford Hayes 

Hayes initially entered workplace after one of many “most hostile, controversial campaigns in American historical past,” stated his presidential library. That controversy, by which a number of states alleged situations of electoral fraud, meant “legitimacy was by no means totally accepted by many Democrats,” VOA stated, doubtless making it simpler for him to comply with by on his pledge to serve just one time period. 

Calvin Coolidge 

After assuming the presidency within the wake of Warren Harding’s sudden dying in 1923, Coolidge gained the place outright the next 12 months. Throughout his 1925 inaugural deal with he declared that the nation was having fun with a “state of contentment seldom earlier than seen.” Coolidge’s major presidential attribute was “his expertise for successfully doing nothing,” The White Home Historic Affiliation stated. Broadly in style, Coolidge’s now-infamous announcement that “I don’t select to run for president in 1928,” was “variously interpreted all through the nation” with some seeing it as a “honest want for retirement, however nonetheless a willingness to just accept the nomination ought to an insistent demand come up,” whereas others noticed a “ultimate resolution that he wouldn’t be a candidate for re-election,” The New York Instances stated. He later defined his resolution, saying the “presidential workplace is of such a nature that it’s tough to conceive how one man can efficiently serve the nation for a time period of greater than eight years.”

Harry Truman

Like Coolidge, Harry Truman first assumed the presidency upon the in-office dying of his predecessor — Franklin D. Roosevelt — earlier than profitable the place outright within the following election. Not like his predecessors, although, Truman initially did launch a reelection marketing campaign, coming into the 1952 New Hampshire major in March of that 12 months. He was finally “overwhelmed by Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver, 19,800 votes to fifteen,927,” The Kansas Metropolis Star stated. Two weeks later he “affirmed his dedication to the Democratic Social gathering and ended with the announcement that he ‘shall not be a candidate for reelection.'” Notably, only one month earlier, “Truman’s recognition score fell to an all-time low of twenty-two %,” Politico stated. 

Lyndon Johnson 

Till Biden’s announcement, the newest president to decide out of a reelection marketing campaign was Lyndon Johnson who shocked the nation on the finish of an Oval Workplace deal with on the battle in Vietnam by declaring he would “not search” and “not settle for” his occasion’s nomination on the 1968 Democratic Nationwide Conference in Chicago. That 12 months Johnson was “dealing with a number of challenges for the Democratic nomination” and had “solely narrowly gained the New Hampshire major towards the anti-war candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy,” CNN stated. Along with longstanding well being considerations, Johnson “understood he was not more likely to win,” and had turn out to be “very controversial and actually misplaced his maintain on public opinion due to the Vietnam Warfare,” stated historian Robert Dallek to The Washington Put up.