Incumbent President Quotes

Today, we say the only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush.

A candidate challenging an incumbent president has the advantage [in a debate]. The president of the United States is an awesome figure. Merely to share the platform with him on equal terms is to gain in stature: a good performance will be judged even better.

George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936.

In my mind, the re-election of Richard Nixon, compared with what was available on the other side, was so much more important that I put it in just that context.

The President? Hmmm, I wonder who that might be? Could it be, perhaps, the sitting two-term incumbent of the same party holding its convention? The person whose economic and military policies shape the environment the next president will deal with? As best I can tell, in the tens of thousands of words making up the combined remarks of John McCain, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Lindsay Graham, the Name That Must Not Be Uttered appeared exactly once.

Anytime you have a reelection campaign against an incumbent president and you're the party out of power - on the one hand it's wide open because there's not an heir apparent - but people are also gauging how strong is that incumbent president and what are my chances.

I've noticed that in the U.S., when the president hits the three-year mark in office, he goes into re-election campaigning.

Pat Buchanan's challenge to George H.W. Bush in 1992 helped elect Democrat Jimmy Carter.

If you look at that 2008 Democratic primary, there was no more formidable, unstoppable candidate - other than an incumbent President - in modern times than Hillary Clinton.

I don't think Obama will get re-elected.

No [electoral] challenge to an incumbent President is ever a “walk in the park,”

No sooner does an American president take his oath of office than the speculation begins: Will he be reelected in four years' time? If not, who will succeed him? A member of his own party? The other party?

For an incumbent like a president, who's been in the news every day, their family, they're well known.

Midterm elections for first-term presidents are notoriously difficult.

Romney has to convince the American public that they need to do something they're not usually inclined to do - replace a sitting president with a challenger. And unlike in 1980 and 1992, when the public was persuaded to do just that, the incumbent president has not been weakened by a primary opponent.

I think that what is always true when you run against an incumbent president is, is that you end up talking more about that president's record than your vision for the future, and I think that the Democrats do have to present a proactive agenda and vision for the country and not simply run against something if they're going to be successful.

In 1996, President Clinton put together a detailed agenda called 'A Bridge to the 21st Century' that told voters why, in his words, 'rehire him' for another four years. That's the right way for an incumbent president to run for re-election.

History has shown that challenging an incumbent president in the primary almost inevitably leads to defeat in the general election.

I have never heard a president in bad times running against - let's face it, that's what he's doing here - running against bad times, when he's the presiding officer.