Figured it was time to put these questions to bed:
1) Sticking with the presidential theme, 44 men have held the office prior to Donald Trump. Five of them died in office during their first terms. Of the remaining 39, seven did not run a presidential re-election campaign at some point in their lives. Can you name them?
A: John Tyler, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur.
As noted in other posts, Polk and Hayes were the only two that essentially one-termed themselves. Most of the others failed to secure the party's nomination for one reason or another back in the days before primaries.
2) Four U.S. presidents served their entire terms without having a vice president. Who were they?
A: Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Arthur.
This one is intriguing and sort of a relic of the 19th century. Before passage of the 25th Amendment in 1967, if the VP died in office there was no automatic trigger to move someone else into the job. They had to wait for the next election to get a new vice president. So those four guys all were elected VP, ascended to the job when the president died in office, and then not re-elected. There have been temporary vacancies at vice president since then (most recently for about four months in 1974 when Gerald Ford replaced Nixon), but no presidents since Arthur have spent their entire time in office without one.
A couple, however, did spend the remainder of a term -- almost a full four-year term in some cases -- without a VP and then got re-elected with a VP. The last to do it was Lyndon Johnson when he finished Kennedy's term, and then was re-elected with Hubert Humphrey as VP in 1964.
3) Two presidents held another elected federal office after leaving office. Who were they?
1) John Quincy Adams (U.S. representative from Massachusetts)
2) Andrew Johnson (Senator from Tennessee)
4) Seven vice presidents held another elected federal office -- other than president -- after leaving office. Who were they?
1) John C. Calhoun - VP for Andrew Jackson, later a senator from South Carolina
2) Richard Johnson - VP for Martin Van Buren, later a representative from Kentucky
3) John C. Breckinridge - VP for Buchanan, later a Kentucky senator
4) Hannibal Hamlin - Lincoln's first vice president, later a two-term senator from Maine
5) Andrew Johnson - Lincoln's second vice president, later a Tennessee senator
6) Alben Barkley - Truman's VP from 1949-53, then a senator from Kentucky from 1955-56
7) Hubert H. Humphrey - LBJ's vice president from 1964-68, then a Minnesota senator for most of the 1970s.
I had never even heard of Richard Johnson or Barkley, was only dimly aware of Breckinridge's name, and only knew Hamlin as Lincoln's lesser-known vice president because he has a cool name.
It's also weird that about half the guys who have done this were from Kentucky.
