Pointless Presidential Pfacts #39 - "Single Democratic President"

Jimmy Carter was a lone Democrat for some time, in terms of having ever met a POTUS from his political party. President Carter served from January 20, 1977 until January 20, 1981. By the time he runs for national office, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey is the only living Democrat elected to national office, although that office is the vice presidency.

The 39th POTUS. Georgia. Democratic. 1977-1981.

Born in 1924 the year of Calvin Coolidge's reelection to the office he'd held since Warren Harding's death in 1923. but the first Democratic president in young Carter's life was Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. By the time he entered State politics in the early 1960s first with the Georgia Senate from 1963-1967, presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

Former President Jimmy Carter as seen on the AMERICAN DAD! episode "Black Mystery Month".

By the time he was elected the 76th Governor of Georgia and served from 1971-1975, a Republican had returned to the White House, Richard Nixon. Two of the three living former presidents to Nixon died in his first term, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry Truman. The third died two days into Nixon's second term and three weeks after Truman's death. So, Governor Carter never met former Democratic presidents Truman and Johnson 37. So when former governor Carter ran for the Democratic nomination there was no former president on the Democratic side in 1976, just presidential losers like Vice President Humphrey, serving with Johnson 37 from 1965-1969, in the 1968 election and George McGovern in 1972. Carter would win the '76 election against the incumbent and first appointed POTUS Gerald Ford, the 38th president, in a super-close election.

Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas and President Jimmy Carter at a 1980 campaign stop in Texarkana, Texas. What President Carter doesn't know is that he's just shook hands with the Democrat to be elected president of the United States.

President Carter served just one term. His vice president, Walter Mondale, would run four years later against President Ronald Reagan, the man who defeated Carter's reelection bid. Eight years after leaving the White House because the voters said so, Carter saw another Democratic candidate, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, defeated by the incumbent VPOTUS, George Bush. Once William Jefferson Clinton defeated Bush 41 in 1992 and he was sworn-in at noon on January 20, 1993, Carter, in attendance of the first Clinton Inauguration, finally met another Democratic president.

William Jefferson Clinton being sworn-in on January 20, 1993, the day President Carter met another Democratic POTUS.

Pointless Presidential Pfacts #38 - "California Love For a '75 Ford or Female Assassins vs. the POTUS"

Since the Secret Service officially began protecting presidents with the 26th, Theodore Roosevelt, after the assassination of William McKinley, the 25th, in September of 1901, the organization has only lost one president in 1963 with John F. Kennedy, the 35th. In 1975 Gerald Ford, the 38th and first appointed POTUS, was targeted twice by two different assassins. The first time a POTUS was targeted by a females. And both attempts took place in California.

President Gerald Ford in Sacramento's Capitol Park.

First at a park in Sacramento, his assassin wannabe, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme pointed a hand-gun at President Ford. She wanted to bring attention to the California Redwoods. A Secret Service agent grabbed the gun and prevented it from firing. As after any breech of security, procedures are reviewed, more precaution on future presidential outings.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, after failed attempt at assassinating President Gerald Ford.

Like the one three weeks later in San Francisco, he was leaving the St. Francis Hotel when Sara Jane Moore aimed her gun at Ford from a crowd of people wanting a glimpse of the POTUS from across the street. Moore, like the first wannabe presidential assassin Richard Lawrence in 1835 attempted two shots, first shot missed and just as she was about to shoot another bullet the shot is deflect and misses nearly hitting the president in the head, but the bullet, now ricochet, wounds a taxi driver.

Ford, the Secret Service, the press and everybody react to the shots fired at the president.


Sara Jane Moore after her arrest.

Both wannabe-assassins were sentenced to life in prison, however Moore was paroled in 2007 and Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, was paroled in 2009. Richard Lawrence is still dead.

Book 'Em: Ike the Washington of 1952

"In March [1952] Eisenhower won the New Hampshire primary in a walk, without shaking a single voter's hand; he declared himself 'astonished' and 'deeply moved.'"

-excerpt from:
The Presidents Club - Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity
by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
"The News Hounds Are Trying to Drive a Wedge Between Us"
Chapter 3
"The Shadow Campaign"
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