How Would these 2 Term Presidents be Remembered if they Lost their Re Election Bids?

How would the following Presidents:

Woodrow Wilson
Franklin D. Roosevelt (Pick either Re election)
Dwight Eisenhower
Richard Nixon
Ronald Reagan
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama

Be Remembered if they lost the respective Re election Bids? This thread is inspired by both my "George W. Bush loses the 2004 election. Is he remembered better or worse than OTL?" thread and the thread President Truman's historical reputation if he lost in 1948? by @Glass Onion, which is why Harry Truman and George W. Bush aren't included in this thread. Now I know you're all going to say that all the Presidents on this list (except Wilson and President Obama) were going to get re elected no matter what and their losing would be ASB, but just imagine for a moment that luck wasn't on their side and they lost. How would they be remembered? For example, Would Reagan still be (falsely) given full credit for the end of the Cold War if a Democrat (probably not Mondale) won in 1984? If Mitt Romney won in 2012 and actually repealed Obamacare, how would this affect Obama's legacy? How would Bill Clinton be remembered without the Balanced Budgets and historically low unemployment rates that came in his Second Term?
 
Last edited:
Eisenhower really makes you think. He put the Republicans back in the driver's seat as a strong moderate, "consensus" leader. If he loses to another New Deal Democrat, it certainly gives the conservatives a bit of extra weight in their attempt to overrun the GOP.

One thing for certain it would do is cement the Democratic Coalition of the time as incredibly robust in the eyes of history. His ability to overcome its built-in advantages even once would be deemed a testament to his personal popularity. If the moderates continued to rule the Republican roost, he'd be seen as a torch-bearer for that tradition. If the conservatives took over after his fall (seems somewhat likely to me) he's probably seen a bit like Bill Clinton is seen by the modern left-pushing Democrats; the best we could do at the time. Though if the conservatives try to take over and fail (as is likely considering the national temperament at the time and the seeming care Stevenson took to not totally alienate southern whites) the GOP will fall to factional in-fighting for a time. Eisenhower will look like he was the last chance to avoid the chaos. Sort of a tragic figure, in that case, the last reasonable man in the room.
 
Wilson's stock (falling anyhow, IIRC) would drop in my view. Germany might hesitate in engaging in unrestricted submarine warfare with an unknown Hughes administration, but not for long. The betting line is that the US gets involved in the general war in Europe sooner or later anyhow. With Hughes, assuming the military events play out approximately as in OTL and an armistice in late 1918 / early 1919, the peace negotiations wouldn't have the Fourteen Points but would more likely yield treaties that the Senate could live with from the outset (I doubt Hughes would be sufficiently partisan to exclude Dems from the peace delegation). In turn that would probably lead to less disaffection and a less isolationist America in the 1920s, including Hughes' re-election based on achieving an acceptable peace.

Wilson would probably be remembered as a so-so, modestly more progressive version of Grover Cleveland at best.
 
Wilson's stock (falling anyhow, IIRC) would drop in my view. Germany might hesitate in engaging in unrestricted submarine warfare with an unknown Hughes administration, but not for long. The betting line is that the US gets involved in the general war in Europe sooner or later anyhow. With Hughes, assuming the military events play out approximately as in OTL and an armistice in late 1918 / early 1919, the peace negotiations wouldn't have the Fourteen Points but would more likely yield treaties that the Senate could live with from the outset (I doubt Hughes would be sufficiently partisan to exclude Dems from the peace delegation). In turn that would probably lead to less disaffection and a less isolationist America in the 1920s, including Hughes' re-election based on achieving an acceptable peace.

Wilson would probably be remembered as a so-so, modestly more progressive version of Grover Cleveland at best.


And AHers would speculate endlessly about what would have happened had he won and "kept us out of war".
 
"In fact, winning a second term is something of a prerequisite for presidential greatness, at least as historians have evaluated the question. It is also no guarantee of it, as the case of Richard M. Nixon might attest. But the eight presidents who are currently regarded most favorably by historians were all two-termers (or four-termers, in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s case)." http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/contemplating-obamas-place-in-history-statistically/

True. Although I think George W. Bush is in the same boat as Nixon in a sense that he'd be better remembered without having a second term.
 
FDR was elected to four terms, but basically served three terms, especially since his first Inauguration was on March 4, 1933.
 
FDR was elected to four terms, but basically served three terms, especially since his first Inauguration was on March 4, 1933.
Yes, very true but he'd be remembered much differently if he were to lose one of his three re election bids (well, maybe not 1944).
 
Top