The lesson from presidential primary history is that it doesn’t hurt to try
Mike Pence and Chris Christie have now jumped into a suddenly crowded field for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. They’re both polling in single digits, like everyone else running against Donald Trump who isn’t named Ron DeSantis. What do they hope to gain when facing such imposing competition?
The answer is, in the long term, much more than they have to lose.
Ronald Reagan fought two losing battles for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 and 1976. He exploited the national prominence he gained from those races to build his brand as the “great communicator,” eventually winning the 1980 nomination and becoming a two-term president.
George H. W. Bush, who finished a distant second to Reagan in 1980, ended up as Reagan’s running mate that year, serving eight years as vice president, and won his race for the presidency in 1988.
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