Introduction

Whether it is Dave Letterman, the History Channel, professional historians, pollsters or sports writers, we seem to have a fascination with itemizing the ten best of this, the five worst of that.

While list making is by no means an historical enterprise in and of itself, some list making can provide an educational opportunity for further research or productive counterfactual reasoning.

The ever popular listing of the best and worst American Presidents, however, has from a student's viewpoint, a significant disadvantage: the favorite, popular and obvious choices have already been made. How can a student argue with Washington, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eisenhower?

On the other hand, an exercise that evaluates losing presidential election candidates confronts the historical question of why did they lose and the counterfactual question of what would it have meant if they had won.

The game or exercise I suggest below can be used as a classroom exercise, a research paper topic or a stand-alone take-home exercise.

Let's Play "Rate the Losers"

What if America's presidential elections had not come out the way they did? Would those who ran and lost have made "good" presidents? Have the voters and this system always been the best of judges? How would a losing candidate made a better, worse or different president? Or would it have mattered at all?

Let's see.

Below, by election year, I have listed all of the major presidential election losers. Some, obviously, lost only to be elected president in a subsequent election or were a sitting president who lost. They are marked with an asterisk. However, they may be evaluated for the year in which they lost.

Numerous minor candidates have not been included, but see my notes at the end of the table for a more advanced version of this game.

After you study the list, rank the best five and the worst five. What, had they won, would have been different about their term and how, if at all, would that have changed the course of American history?

Acknowledgements: I am indebted to the editorial advice of Mr. Michael Calvin, who played a draft version of this exercise with verve and enthusiasm.

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