"Frank, I Pity You," He Said

By HughSidey

The urge that sends Ted Kennedy to challenge an incumbent President is as old as the Republic. It has possessed dozens of men who saw clearly the failures" of those in power and held their own "different view" of leadership. But only once has an elected President been unsuccessful in bidding for renomination by his own party.

The fellow who was shabbily treated was Franklin Pierce. He provides a thin precedent; yet it is instructive. In most personal ways he was not at all like Carter Back in 1852, when a messenger galloped up to the Pierce carriage to tell him that he had been nominated for President, his wife fainted from the horror of the thought. That is hardly Rosalynn's problem.

A large body of the Democrats who nominated Pierce in a steamy Baltimore convention didn't want him to be President any more than did Jane Appleton Pierce. It took three days and 49 ballots, and they ended with a Northerner who by some bizarre logic found that the Constitution allowed Southern states to practice "involuntary servitude." Pierce's presidency went downhill from that trough.

There were bad omens early. Pierce spent only $322 on his Inaugural ceremony, which his wife did not attend. They canceled the Inaugural Ball. It snowed. Pierce loved conviviality and booze. (No sign of Jimmy Carter so far.)

Pierce was neither strong nor vigorous, but he decided to sound that way for the sake of his image. He sent a warship to Nicaragua when a U.S. citizen was assaulted, then was shocked when the ship's captain leveled a village under British protection. Turning to Cuba next, Pierce inspired the Ostend Manifesto, which suggested that if Spain refused to sell the island, the U.S. would be justified in wresting it from Spain "if we possess the power." Spain refused to sell, and Pierce was left with only words. He did nothing.

In the riptides generated by slavery, Pierce desperately sought the mushy middle ground. He sat there while Kansas was torn apart in bloody raids Pierce was judged almost irrelevant to his times, a national feeling that has a faint but disturbing echo in Jimmy Carter's first three years. Nathaniel Hawthorne unwittingly (or maybe not) devastated his old friend in a letter "Frank, I pity you," Hawthorne wrote, the worst thought one can have about an active politician.

The Democrats meeting in Cincinnati in 1856 gave a polite bow to Pierce and put his name on the first ballot, but even then James Buchanan got more votes By the 17th ballot Franklin Pierce had drifted into oblivion and the nomination went to Buchanan, a Pennsylvania bachelor who turned out to be not much of an improvement. But he did start his presidency with a proper celebration at which were consumed 400 gallons of oysters, 60 saddles of mutton, 125 tongues, a cake four feet high and $3,000 worth of wine.

The other four men denied renomination by their party in our 203 years were John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Chester Arthur all raised to power by the death of a President, thus lacking the party loyalty that elected incumbents usually acquire. So if Kennedy does take the nomination away from Carter, it will be quite an extraordinary chapter in the thin annals of presidential denial.

The chance that Carter might be defeated after achieving nomination is statistically somewhat greater. Seven elected Presidents who sought a second term and were nominated by their party were then defeated at the polls beginning with John Adams in 1800 and running through Herbert Hoover in 1932.

But then if you look at it the other way, 16 incumbents have been renominated and marched on to ultimate victory, which in the murky and unreliable world of presidential precedents is always the most likely event.

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