By William Lewis
It looks like Vice President Joseph Biden may be entering the Democratic presidential primary in 2016. Since the closing days of World War II, there have been 14 vice presidents, all of them elected vice president except for Gerald Ford who was appointed vice president and became president when Richard Nixon resigned.
All of these vice presidents at one time or another had ambitions to become president. Five of them did, namely Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr. It is interesting to note that none of these presidents completed two full four-year terms. Truman completed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth term and then was elected in 1948 to a full term in office. Nixon was elected president in 1968 and re-elected in 1972 but resigned in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal. Ford was defeated for election to the presidency by Jimmy Carter. Johnson finished John Kennedy’s first term and his own four-year term. He chose not to run for re-election in 1968. Nixon resigned during his second term. Ford was defeated when he ran for a full term. Bush was elected to one term and was defeated for re-election.
In the case of Joe Biden, he tried twice before to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, but did not succeed.
If he enters the presidential primary, his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, will have several advantages including having raised large sums of money. She has been campaigning for almost a year and she has built a campaign organization, especially in the early primary states. She also has a well-organized staff.
Biden has the experience of having run for president before and having spent almost his entire career in elective office. He has also campaigned for other offices and will be able to build support quickly.
It seems that President Barack Obama will be supporting Biden, considering that Biden has been a very active vice president and has worked well with the president. The vice president of the United States has very few official duties other than what assignments the president may give him.
If Obama is active in supporting Biden for the Democratic presidential primary, it could have an effect on the results of the primary.
Over the years since our national election process began, as I indicated, not many vice presidents have risen to become president. However the importance of the office is considerable since the vice president is next in line to assume the presidency.
It will be a very interesting race if it turns out that Biden and Clinton are the two major candidates in the Democratic primary.
The 2016 election for president will be one of the most important presidential elections in modern times. It is hoped that the American people will vote in large numbers.
On the Republican side, we have what might be called an open primary with the large group of candidates competing, although some of those will be dropping out if they don’t do well in the early primaries.
Politics in 2016 is something to look forward to.
