Ryan and the bumpy road to the White House

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) had to navigate a bumpy road to the Speakership. In addition to the threatened opposition of members of the Freedom Caucus, Ryan was reported to not want to put in the time away from his family that the job, and especially the campaign fundraising duties, seemed to require. However before the narrative shifted and the major players backed him, Ryan’s supporters were suggesting that he turn down the job if he wants to run for president in the future.

There’s logic to this argument. The Speaker effectively has his name on every unpopular vote that Congress takes. And even in the best of times for Congress, the Speaker was never a particularly great springboard for a run for the presidency. Only one president served as Speaker – James K. Polk — and only two others received the nomination of a major political party – Henry Clay and James G. Blaine. Many of the occupants of the office have been so tied to the institution of Congress that there wasn’t much thought of running for president by the time they climbed the ladder to the Speakership.

{mosads}But there is good reason to think that Ryan’s future presidential aspirations could use a boost. While three presidents served as Ways & Means chairmen — Polk, Millard Fillmore and William McKinley — it has been a longtime since any committee chair was seen as immediate presidential material.  And the Ways & Means chair, which handles taxes, has many of the same weaknesses as the Speaker, but without the same power.

Ryan’s biggest spotlight and resume builder for the presidency was his run for the vice presidency with Mitt Romney. Unfortunately for Ryan, history has an even crueler lesson for failed VP picks. We’ve seen repeatedly that being a losing vice presidential candidate is usually the end of the line for a national office run. The Speakership could very well be a boost if he is looking to run in 2020 or after.

The negative of a failed VP run may seem counterintuitive. The Vice Presidency itself is frequently a gilded path to the nomination. Since 1952, seven of 11 vice presidents have gained their parties’ presidential nomination in the next election. There is an obvious reason for this — the vice president is running effectively as incumbent, cloaked under the mantle of the previous president. The vice president has also managed to stay in the public eye for the last four or eight years, gaining invaluable name recognition and respect from the party faithful.

But the losers have a sadder story to tell. Throughout the entirety of American history, only three losing vice presidential candidates have managed to ever come back and win their parties’ nomination.

Bob Dole ran as Gerald Ford’s second in 1976. It took Dole 20 years, two failed presidential runs and a long service as the Senate Republican leader before he managed to re-climb the ladder and capture the Republican nomination.

Walter Mondale was the second most recent man to do it, serving as the Democratic candidate in 1984 after losing as VP in 1980. Of course, Mondale should have an asterisk – he had already served as a Vice President.

The last of the three, and the only one who actually won the presidency, was former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served as James Cox’s running mate on the Democratic ticket that was crushed in 1920. It took FDR 12 years to get back onto the stage, a path that required serving four years as Governor of New York, by far the largest state in the nation.

None of the other losing VP candidates have ever gotten a presidential nomination – many of them, such as Joe Lieberman, Edmund Muskie and John Edwards, followed up their loss with failed bids for the presidency.

For Ryan, this track record of failure may have proven a good object lesson in seeking out another powerful position from which to launch a future presidential bid. The Speaker may not be a historically great jumping off point for the presidency, but its power and role in the spotlight may make it the best hope Ryan if he wants to eventually get into the White House.

Spivak is a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York. He blogs at http://recallelections.blogspot.com