Trump and Biden Make History

Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid guarantees that America will have two straight one-term presidents for the first time since the 1880s.

The last time it happened was in the stretch of history from 1885 to 1897, when Democrat Grover Cleveland and Republican Benjamin Harrison kept trading places in the Oval Office. Cleveland was first elected to the presidency in 1884 but lost to Harrison four years later. Then Cleveland won a rematch in 1892, becoming the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

Until yesterday, Biden and Donald Trump were on a path to repeat that history, albeit with the Republican and Democratic parties in opposite places. Former President Trump seemed well-positioned to replicate Cleveland’s feat after Biden’s disastrous debate on June 27 and the near-assassination of Trump on July 13. But Biden’s departure may change those political dynamics.

Even if Trump doesn’t ultimately win a second nonconsecutive term, he and Biden will be the first two presidents in a row to serve only one full term in office in a row. It will be only the third time that has happened in American history.

One-term presidents overall are rare in this country. In addition to Biden, Trump, Cleveland and Harrison, the list that served one full term includes:

• John Adams (elected in 1796)

• John Quincy Adams (1824)

• James Polk (1844)

• Franklin Pierce (1852)

• James Buchanan (1856)

• Rutherford B. Hayes (1876)

• William Howard Taft (1912)

• Herbert Hoover (1928)

• Jimmy Carter (1976)

• George H.W. Bush (1988)

But as the list illustrates, consecutive one-term presidencies have been rarer still. Pierce and Buchanan, both Democrats, were the only two to fit the bill besides Biden/Trump and the Cleveland/Harrison/Cleveland trifecta of single terms.

If Trump beats Biden’s replacement, that unique scenario would be repeated. If Biden’s replacement wins, Trump and Biden would be the first back-to-back, one-term presidents from different parties. Either way, they will make history.

While we’re revisiting presidential history, here are some other points of trivia:

• Three presidents who died in office or were assassinated during their first terms (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, James Garfield) were succeeded by vice presidents (John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Chester Arthur) who only finished those terms of office.

• Some vice presidents who ascended to office later won full terms in their own rights. They were Theodore Roosevelt (succeeded William McKinley), Calvin Coolidge (succeeded Warren G. Harding), Harry S Truman (succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Lyndon B. Johnson (succeeded John F. Kennedy).

• Republican Abraham Lincoln served one full term but was assassinated soon after starting his second term. Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat, completed Lincoln’s term but was the first president impeached in 1868 and didn’t run for president that year.

• Republican Gerald Ford was Richard Nixon’s vice president when Nixon resigned the presidency amid the Watergate scandal. He completed Nixon’s second term but lost the 1976 presidential race to Jimmy Carter.