DETROIT – Once again, the two great brawling states of the industrial Midwest haven’t come close to being represented in the presidential sweepstakes. Barring an act of God, as the insurance companies put it, the next President of the United States will either be a guy from Delaware who was born in Pennsylvania, or a guy who now lives in Florida who used to live in New York.
The current vice-president is from California, and it’s unlikely that anyone from either Ohio or Michigan will fill the second spot on the Republican ticket. When it comes to the executive branch of our government, these two great states once again are being shut out.
Why is that?
True, Ohio has been home to eight presidents, seven of whom were actually born in the state, though the last of those, Warren Harding, died in office just over a century ago. Matter of fact, Ohio’s presidents have been a particularly unlucky lot. Half of them — four out of eight — died in office, two after they were shot.
William Henry Harrison served barely a month before dying of pneumonia, and Harding died under somewhat mysterious circumstances barely halfway through his term.
To add insult to early death, historians generally agree that all the chief executives from Ohio were mediocrities, or worse.
But Ohio has a far better record at producing presidents than Michigan. Here’s a trivia question that should stump your friends: Who are the only two people born in Michigan to win a major party nomination for President of the United States?
Most people would likely say Gerald Ford was one– and most people would be dead wrong. Ford, who was a longtime congressman from Grand Rapids before being appointed vice-president in 1973, was born in Nebraska, and wasn’t even born a Ford. His original birth name was Leslie King; he changed it, after his mother fled his abusive father and later married a paint salesman from Grand Rapids.
The right answer is Thomas E. Dewey, also a Republican, who was born and grew up in Owosso and was graduated from the University of Michigan. Alas, according to one biographer, he found Michigan boring; took off for law school at Columbia University in New York, and then became a crusading prosecutor, governor for a dozen years and then was nominated for president in 1944 and 1948.
If Gerald Ford has the distinction of being the only president who was neither elected either president or vice president, Dewey is famous for losing in the biggest upset in American political history. Every poll and every expert indicated he was going to beat President Harry Truman in 1948, but he lost.
That defeat was far more stunning than even Donald Trump’s surprise election in 2016, but in an indication of how much times have changed, Dewey gracefully conceded, later saying he felt like the bridegroom who got drunk at his bachelor party, passed out, and later awoke to find that as a prank his friends had placed him in a coffin.
“I woke up and asked myself, “If I am alive, why am I in this casket? But if I am dead, why do I have to go to the bathroom?’
Mitt Romney, the GOP nominee in 2012, was also born in Michigan, but moved to Massachusetts (he’s now a senator from Utah) and not only lost his presidential election, he badly lost his home state.
However, there was also a Democratic presidential nominee from Michigan, the man who was in a sense its political godfather, Lewis Cass. Like Gerald Ford, he wasn’t born in the state, but then, he couldn’t have been, because he was born in 1782, before the end of the American revolution, when Michigan was largely wilderness.
However, Cass was appointed Michigan’s territorial governor in 1813, traveled widely in the state and hired scientists to dispute claims that the entire state was a mosquito-infested, uninhabitable swamp. He later served in distinguished positions, including Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and as a U.S. Senator.
However, his dream of becoming president was shattered when he lost a close race (he did carry Michigan and Ohio) to Zachary Taylor in 1848. His reputation has suffered in recent years, with revelations that he once owned at least one slave and was guilty of having enthusiasticly supported racist removal policies against Native Americans.
Two years ago, the Michigan Legislature voted to expel his statue from the Capitol in Washington and replace it with one of Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young.
That sums up the past … but is there any hope that there could actually be a president from Michigan in the future? Well, maybe.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s final term in office expires at the end of 2026, and there’s lots of speculation she then may travel the country, raise money and seek support for a presidential bid in 2028.
That wouldn’t be that far-fetched. That’s exactly what both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan did, once upon a time. The governor, by the way, was born and has lived her entire life in and around Lansing, the state capital. We’ll just have to see.
