Okay, I'm endlessly fascinated by various trends in Presidential elections and of sitting Presidents. I wrote a diary of such things back in March and now I have another with some more curious (at least to me and hopefully to you) things I've noted about our Presidents and those who seek to be President.
Senators who ran for President
Barack Obama is the 16th Senator to become President but he is only the third sitting Senator to be elected President. The previous President to have been a Senator was Richard Nixon, though Nixon left the Senate 16 years before his election to the Presidency. Johnson was also a Senator, though - like Nixon - he served as Vice President between his Senate career and his unfortunate ascent to the Presidency upon President Kennedy's assassination. Kennedy himself was the last sitting Senator to be elected President. The only other President who was elected directly from the Senate was Warren Harding, elected in 1920.
More recently, John McCain, John Kerry, Bob Dole, George McGovern and Barry Goldwater were sitting Senators[1] who lost Presidential elections. However, some Senator had to lose the 2008 election since there were two Senators were running against each other. In the cases of the latter four candidates, all were running against incumbent Presidents, which is usually a particularly hard row to hoe. It is worth noting that both times in the 20th Century that Senators ran for President in open elections without an incumbent President, the Senator won (beating a Governor in 1920 and a Vice President in 1960), particularly in light the commom claim that "Senators make terrible Presidential candidates!".
[1] - Technically, Bob Dole wasn't a sitting Senator when he lost to Bill Clinton in 1996. However, he only stepped down from the Senate in June of that year, and did so specifically because he was running for President, so I count him as a sitting Senator.
Barack Obama is the first President since Ronald Reagan who has never lost a general election
He did lose a primary contest back in 2000, but he won state Senate elections in 1996, 1998 and 2002, while he won his bid for the U.S. Senate in 2004. And some election last November.
George W. Bush lost a Congressional election in 1978.
Bill Clinton lost a Congressional election in 1974 and lost a re-election bid as Governor in 1980.
George Bush lost Senate races in 1964 and 1970.
Ronald Reagan was undefeated when he became President, having previously won two gubernatorial elections in California.
Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford also entered the Presidency undefeated in general elections, but they finished their careers with losses in Presidential elections. Before Reagan, LBJ was the previous Presidential to 'retire undefeated'.
Barack Obama is the first President since Jimmy Carter to have served in a state legislature
As mentioned (and as most know) Barack Obama served in the Illinois Senate, for eight years. Jimmy Carter served four years in the George Senate.
Democratic nominees are usually younger than Republican nominees
Over the past 10 Presidential elections (going back thru 1972) the Democratic nominee has been younger than the Republican nominee nine times. The sole exception to this trend was in 2004, when John Kerry was two years older than George W. Bush. Sometimes the age difference[1] is fairly inconsequential (2004 & 2000 - 2 years, 1972 - 7 years). But the remaining seven elections offer an age difference that is more significant - in each case, at least 9 years, with the largest difference being featured in this last election, where John McCain was 25 years older than Barack Obama. The next two largest age differences were the two elections Bill Clinton won; he was 22 and 23 years younger than George Bush and Bob Dole, respectively. But the older candidate does not always lose. Ronald Reagan was more than a decade older than each of his opponents.
The last time a significantly older Democrat won the Presidency over a significantly younger Republican was in 1948, where Harry Truman was 18 years older than Thomas Dewey. No Republican has beaten an older Democrat in my lifetime; the last time it happened was when Richard Nixon knocked off Hubert Humphrey (20 months older) in 1968. And the last time a Republican beat a Democrat who was at least a decade senior? You've got to go back 34 elections all the way to 1876, when President Grant beat his challenger, Horace Greeley, who was 11 years older than the incumbent President.
And as for the future, this trend seems very likely to continue in 2012 (no, I don't think either Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal has more than the slightest of chances of being the 2012 GOP nominee).
Presidents, by birth decade
Barack Obama is the first President born in the 1960s.
George Washington was born in 1732. From the 1730s through the 1960s, we've seen at least one President born in every decade except for three: the 1810s, the 1930s and the 1950s. There will never be a President born in the 1810s, and John McCain very likely represented the last chance of the 1930s (he and Michael Dukakis were the decade's only nominees). As for the 1950s, there are still lots of potential candidates for future elections.