Govs 4, Senators 0. Tough Odds By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Four of our last five presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush — came to the presidency as active or former governors. The clichés about why are well-rehearsed: Governors have executive experience, they exude leadership (or at least they’re supposed to) and they are outsiders (or at least try hard to look that way). Both Clinton and Bush took potshots at their party in Washington when doing so was useful. They were picking up from Carter, the outsider pioneer. Dean is carrying on the tradition.
Most presidents since 1900 have come from governorships (the recent four plus William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt) or the vice presidency. Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson all ascended to the Oval Office when the president died. Richard Nixon’s last public office before president was vice president. When he resigned in 1974, his vice president, Gerald Ford, took over. The first George Bush won in 1988 after two terms as veep. William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover were Cabinet secretaries, and Dwight Eisenhower was a war hero and college president. As Gephardt supporters prefer not to note, the last president to rise from the House was James Garfield in 1880.