The St Louis Cardinals stunned the world, winning the 2011 World Series as a wild card team; so maybe there’s room for another wild card in 2012.
Before Bill Clinton broke the string in 1992, losing to Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, beginning in 1952, every candidate who won the New Hampshire primary went on to the win the presidency. In 2000, George W. Bush won the presidential election despite losing to John McCain in New Hampshire; as did Barack Obama who was upended by Hillary Clinton in the 2008 New Hampshire presidential primary. But though the importance of winning this pivotal New England state has been diminished slightly over the years, winning New Hampshire would be a boon to any candidate so early in the political season. Which is why Newt Gingrich, not long ago considered by many to be nothing more than a broken down relic of the 1990’s, has suddenly sprung to life and is downright giddy in winning the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader, which made its preference known in its Sunday edition.
New Hampshire’s primary has been set for January 10th.
Despite all the buzz and excitement among die-hard conservatives over Mr. Gingrich’s recent surge in the polls, most of whom are still lukewarm about throwing their weight behind Mitt Romney, how influential, you might ask, is the New Hampshire Union Leader in ensuring a victory for their endorsed candidate; or for that matter, in picking the next president of the United States?
Well, their track record is not great; in fact, it’s below the Mendoza Line.
In the past 13 presidential elections from 1948 through 2008, the Union Leader has only endorsed the winning candidate (prior to the New Hampshire primary) twice: Richard Nixon in 1968 and Ronald Reagan in 1980. For those scoring at home, 15.4 percent of the time, the Union Leader endorsed the winning candidate in the presidential election.
Despite polls just three weeks before the 1948 presidential election, showed that Thomas Dewey would crush Harry Truman on Election Day, the 33rd president of the United States, ignored such doom and gloom by continuing his whistle stop tour, brandishing his signature mantra: ``Give ‘em Hell Harry’’, while hammering away at the ``Do Nothing 80th Congress’’ and the ``One-Party Press.’’ A majority of U.S. newspapers, including the Union Leader, endorsed Dewey; and Life Magazine almost two weeks before the election, published a picture of the New York governor, identifying him ``as the next president of the United States.’’
Even before Watergate tore him to smithereens, polls in mid 1971-showed Richard Nixon’s popularity had dipped below 50 percent, opening the door to challenges in the 1972 primaries from the left and right within his own party. One of them was a conservative congressman from Ohio, John Ashbrook, who earned the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader. The other primary challenger was a liberal, Pete McCloskey.
Despite the Union Leader’s endorsement, Ashbrook received only 6 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary; McCloskey’s anti-war campaign, garnered him 11 percent of the vote, while Nixon received a commanding 83 percent of the vote, leaving his opponents in the dust as he easily captured 1323 of the 1324 delegates to the Republican Convention. Ashbrook faded into the thin night air shortly after the Iowa caucuses (April 4) where he received just a few votes in the straw polls.
The Union Leader also placed their stamp of approval on the candidacy of Delaware Governor Pierre du Pont IV in 1988; only to see him earn 10.1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, behind Vice President George H.W. Bush who had 37.6 percent of the vote, Senator Robert Dole received 28.4 percent, and Jack Kemp with 12.8 percent. Alexander Haig only managed 0.3 percent of the vote, while evangelist Pat Robertson was practically at the bottom of the pack with 0.4 percent. After such a poor showing in New Hampshire, du Pont withdrew from the race.
The one Republican candidate who benefited mightily from the Union Leader’s endorsement was Pat Buchanan, who in the 1992 Republican primary in New Hampshire earned nearly 40 percent of the Republican vote, collecting more than 3 million votes, not enough to beat the Vice President, but strong enough to weaken his candidacy, showing Bush as a weak vulnerable candidate once the general election rolled around. As it turns out, Buchanan’s strong showing in New Hampshire would end there. He never won a primary. Buchannan, some would argue, would only further divide the party when he delivered his disruptive cultural wars speech at the Republican Convention in Houston of 1992, when he declared: that ``American was in the midst of a ``cultural war’’, a ``religious war’’, and in a struggle for the`` soul of America.’’
Yet another poster child of the conservative movement endorsed by the Union Leader only to fizzle before he really began, was publisher and businessman Steve Forbes who managed a mere 13 percent of the vote in New Hampshire in 2000. John McCain took 49 percent of the vote; while George W. Bush took 31 percent. Polling conservative voters before the primary showed they agreed with Forbes’ core conservative issues on taxes and abortion over the other candidates, but they still preferred Bush or McCain when push came to shove. After his third primary loss in Delaware in February, 2000 (a state he won in 1996) and after pumping $35 million of his own money into the campaign, Forbes withdrew from the race, leaving Bush, McCain and Alan Keyes to fend for themselves in their pursuit of the 2000 Republican nomination.
So if nothing else, the Republican field of Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and others can take heart, knowing that losing the endorsement of the Union Leader isn't exactly the end of the world.
While all these candidates, to be sure, would have welcomed the endorsement from the New Hampshire Union Leader with open arms, history shows, future presidents are not exactly at the mercy of an editorial endorsement from this conservative newspaper either, even if it has the largest circulation in the state of New Hampshire.
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
November 28, 2011
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Candidates Endorsed by the New Hampshire Union Leader Before the New Hampshire Primary.
1948: Tom Dewey
1952: Robert A. Taft
1960: Richard Nixon
1964: Barry Goldwater
1968: Richard Nixon
1972: John Ashbrook
1976: Ronald Reagan
1980: Ronald Reagan
1988: Pierre du Pont
1992: Pat Buchanan
1996: Pat Buchanan
2000: Steve Forbes
2008: John McCain
Source: Office of the Editorial Page Editor: New Hampshire Union Leader
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