Let the "gravitas-off" begin...

Senators struggling up the corporate ladder

Updated March 24

President number 44 will be unprecedented. Not because he might be African American. Not because she might be woman. Not because he might be the oldest president ever. Forty-four will be only the 16th senator to become president, and only the third senator to go straight from Congress to the White House.

Richard Nixon was our last senator-turned-president. He represented California in the Senate from 1950-53 before becoming Eisenhower's vice president. He didn't become president until 1969. Kennedy, who became president in 1961, was the last to hop directly from Independence and Constitution Avenues over to Pennsylvania.

Arguably, being a senator can instill a person with a wealth of knowledge on many of the biggest issues facing our nation. So why don't senators get elected president?

Three AU professors, Candice Nelson, academic director of the Campaign Management Institute, Brian Schaffner, professor of political science and Walter Oleszek of the Congressional Research Service offered their thoughts on why there haven’t been many high legislators in the White House.

Senators play Twister on a daily basis, having to spread themselves out to deal with several problems at once. All three professors began by pointing out that senators have taken firm stands on a wide variety of issues that could later be criticized. These votes were not always cast with the good of the entire country in mind, because each senator has a specific constituency.

Of course, multitasking and vote casting are their jobs, Nelson pointed out, but she said that fact doesn't make it any easier to defend themselves come election time. Every vote is potential fodder for the opposition.

"Just think of John Kerry being criticized for flip-flopping: 'I voted for it before I voted against it,'" said Oleszek.

Schaffner thinks this actually makes it a good time for Obama to be running for president. “He doesn't have a long list of Senate votes yet that he has to defend,” said Schaffner. “Clinton, on the other hand, has spent a lot of time defending the Iraq War vote.”

There is another small, nagging problem that senators can’t avoid: Americans don’t like Congress. “Approval of Congress tends to be lower than of any other branch,” said Schaffner. “When a senator touts his or her experience in that institution, the public may not necessarily view that as a good thing.”

What experience senators do have doesn’t seem to translate well to the executive branch in the eyes of many voters.

"A senator does not have executive experience, as governors do, because a senator is just one out of 100. That makes it hard to show what they have done," said Nelson.

"Voters seem to like this quality in candidates," Oleszek said of executive experience. "Senators only manage their offices, maybe a committee if they are chair, or their campaign organization."

“Mitt Romney actually made this point several times in the Republican primary, arguing that while he had been in charge of large businesses and an entire state government, John McCain had never been in charge of anything larger than his Senate staff,” said Schaffner.

There are also problems with the bipartisan atmosphere of Congress and the black-and-white, individual race a candidate must run to get elected president.

"Senators are in a legislative environment where compromises are essential if measures are to advance. They deal in grays in order to put together winning coalitions," said Oleszek.

In Congress, several lawmakers will be "winners" on an issue that goes through. On the campaign trail, there is only one winner.

Oleszek said the candidates need to paint in bright colors, because presidential campaigns deal in contrast politics. "Senators may have a hard time adjusting to this campaign requirement," he said.

The 2008 presidential elections will be unprecedented because the electorate will have to choose between two senators. But also interesting will be the nature of the national campaign. Will two senators going head to head cancel out these unique sets of baggage, or significantly highlight them?

Fortunately for the future leader of the free world, the news is not entirely bad.

“Senators tend to represent large diverse constituencies, which helps prepare them for running a national campaign,” said Schaffner. “Senators also have typically developed a large network of donors and their national experience may provide them with more gravitas relative to a governor.”

So in the words of comedian Stephen Colbert, the presidential election is promising to be a “gravitas-off.”