Some Presidents had more than their fair share of luck in getting to the nations highest office, were as others could have gotten to the White House in any number of ways. This thread is to talk about different ways in which OTL Presidents could have gotten to the White House. Some of the obvious examples would be Nixon being elected in '60 or Reagan winning the GOP nomination in '76 and then beating Carter, but feel free to get at creative as possible. Do try to be realistic though.
Also, I know this is in post-1900, but feel free to talk about pre-1900 Presidents, just to save us the trouble of having to make two seprate threads talking about the same thing.