Kamala Harris’ election would defy history. Just 1 sitting VP has been elected president since 1836

NEW YORK — As Vice-Chairman Kamala Harris starts her autumn campaign for the White House, she can look to history and hope for better luck than others in her position who have tried the same thing.

Since 1836, there has only been one sitting vice president, George HW Bush in 1988was elected to the White House. Among those who tried and failed were Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Al Gore in 2000. All three lost in close elections marked by issues ranging from war and scandal to crime and the subtleties of televised debates. But two other factors proved crucial for any vice president: whether the incumbent was well-liked and whether the president and vice president had a productive relationship.

“You really want those elements to come together,” says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “If the person the vice president works for is popular, that means people like what he does and you can benefit from that. And you have to have the two directors working together.”

In 1988, Bush easily defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor whom Republicans had criticized as ineffective and out of touch. Bush was helped by a solid economy, an easing of Cold War tensions, and a rare stroke of luck for a vice president. President Ronald Reagan’s approval ratings rose for much of the year after plummeting in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986-87, and Reagan and Bush worked well together during the campaign. Reagan openly supported his vice president, who had run against him in the 1980 primaries. He praised Bush at the Republican convention as a committed and invaluable partner, appeared with him at a rally in California, and spoke at rallies in Michigan, New Jersey, and Missouri.

“Reagan was not a man who held grudges,” said historian-journalist Jonathan Darman. “And Bush did a good job of navigating the complexities of their relationship when he was vice president.”

When Gore ran in 2000, his advantages were comparable to those of George H. W. Bush. The economy was strong, the country was at peace, and the president, Bill Clinton, had high approval ratings despite his recent impeachment over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Gore had worked closely with Clinton for the past eight years, but the scandal led to ongoing tensions between them. He minimized the president’s presence during the campaign and called himself “my own man” during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Commentators would cite his distancing from Clinton as a setback in a historically close racedecided by a margin of less than 1,000 votes in Florida.

“Rather than find a way to embrace the Clinton administration’s accomplishments, Gore ran from Clinton as fast as his legs could carry him,” Slate’s Jacob Weisberg wrote shortly after the election.

Like Gore, Nixon was unable—or unwilling—to capitalize on the popularity of incumbent President Dwight Eisenhower. In 1960, Eisenhower was still so admired as he neared the end of his second term that Nixon’s opponent, Democrat John F. Kennedy, feared that the president’s active support would prove crucial. But Eisenhower and Nixon had a complicated relationship that stretched back to Eisenhower’s run eight years earlier. He had chosen Nixon as his running mate but had nearly dropped him over the Checkers scandal, in which Nixon was accused of misusing funds donated by political donors.

Nixon was more than 20 years younger than Eisenhower, the victorious World War II commander who often regarded his vice president as a junior officer, according to Nixon biographer John A. Farrell. At the end of a press conference in the summer of 1960, Eisenhower was asked if he could name Nixon’s influence on a major decision. He replied, “If you give me a week, I might be able to think of one.” Meanwhile, Nixon hesitated to let Eisenhower campaign, out of a desire to forge his own path and, reportedly, out of concern for the 70-year-old president.

“Nixon was very keen to be his own man,” said Farrell, whose award-winning “Richard Nixon” was published in 2017. “He always said he was concerned about Eisenhower’s health, but there are also anecdotes that Eisenhower was a little bit anxious about it. Both of those could be true.”

Nixon’s fortunes changed eight years later when he ran against Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president. No vice president was more trapped by his predecessor than Hubert Humphrey, whose candidacy was possible only because Johnson decided not to seek re-election.

Humphrey faced opposition within the party from anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy (who was assassinated in June 1968 after winning the California primary) and was associated with Johnson’s divisive, aggressive stance.

Humphrey privately advocated a less harsh approach to the war, but Johnson intimidated him into silence and he trailed Nixon in many polls. It was not until the fall that Humphrey backed down and called for a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. The vice president recovered, but ultimately lost the popular vote by less than a percentage point and fell even more significantly short in the Electoral College.

“Johnson, in my view, did catastrophic damage to Humphrey,” says Boston Globe columnist Michael Cohen, author of a book about the 1968 election, “American Carnage.”

Like Johnson, President Joe Biden he declared would not seek another term less than a year before Election Day, though he waited much longer in the cycle than Johnson. Unlike Humphrey, Harris quickly consolidated Democratic support and accepted her party’s nomination on a uplifting convention that concluded without significant damage from protestsunlike the violent event in 1968 in the same city, Chicago.

In an AP-NORC poll conducted in July, after Biden withdrew from the race, about 4 in 10 Americans approved of his performance as president, roughly on par with his approval ratings since the summer of 2021 and on par with those of the Republican nominee, Donald TrumpEisenhower, Reagan and Clinton often had higher approval ratings than Biden, even though they all ran in less polarized eras.

Harris wants to succeed a president who was himself vice president and ran for president four years later. President Barack Obama discouraged Biden from running for office in 2016 and waited to support Biden in 2020, until the crowded Democratic primary field was empty.

“Obama became an enthusiastic supporter, which helped unite the party at a time when Biden’s record on race in the 1990s, including his support for the crime bill, was fueling doubts among young progressive voters,” said Biden biographer Evan Osnos. “Obama’s support for Biden was about more than his candidacy; it was about his character, and that turned out to be important.”

As president, Biden has worked to include Harris in his major policy calls and conversations with foreign leaders. He has pledged to be Harris’ top campaign volunteer and to do whatever she asks of him to help her get elected, though aides are still determining where best to deploy the still-unpopular president. On Labor Day, Biden and Harris are scheduled to appear together in Pittsburgh for a campaign event in a key swing state, Pennsylvania.

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Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Associated Press polling editor in Washington, contributed to this report.