No matter who becomes the 44th President of the United States, the odds will be against his surviving a full term in office. Both Barack Obama and John McCain are current members of the U.S. Senate. The winner will become only the third person in U.S. history to move straight from the Senate to the White House. The two previous men to do that were Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy. Both died in office (Harding by natural causes; Kennedy by assassination).
There was one other person who made the trek directly from Congress to the White House. That man was James Garfield, who was elected president while a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives, still the only one ever to accomplish this feat. But guess what? He died in office as well (by assassination).
Here's something else to consider. It's been nearly 45 years since a U.S. President (Kennedy) did not survive his term in office. Since William Henry Harrison became the first president to die in office (by natural causes, 1841), we hadn't gone more than 22 years without this happening until the most recent streak. We've now doubled that. And we've never gone more than 52 years (the period between the first president and William Henry Harrison) all-time. Some might say we are long overdue for the next one.
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. His commentaries offer a unique point of view that is not often found in mainstream media. His articles here on SearchWarp represent only a small portion of his work. All of it can be found on his blog. If you like his articles, you'll love his blog.
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Let's hope that we don't have another death of a president in office. We can't always go by the odds, but rather if we have evolved from our aggressive past.
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