I keep reading "analysis" from people who should know better, that Sarah Palin, after going down in defeat with John McCain this year, is looking ahead to a presidential run in 2012, where she will be the obviously Republican front-runner. A look at the last 60 years of presidential elections makes me wonder how anyone can conclude this.
Here is a list of the VP candidates for the losing party in each presidential election from 1948 through 2004. How many of them ended up winning the nomination in the next presidential election?
Year Losing Pres. Candidate VP Candidate
1948 Thomas Dewey Earl Warren
1952 Adlai Stevenson John Sparkman
1956 Adlai Stevenson Estes Kefauver
1960 Richard Nixon Henry Cabot Lodge
1964 Barry Goldwater William Miller
1968 Hubert Humphrey Edmund Muskie
1972 George McGovern Sargent Shriver
1976 Gerald Ford Bob Dole
1980 Jimmy Carter Walter Mondale
1984 Walter Mondale Geraldine Ferraro
1988 Michael Dukakis Lloyd Bentsen
1992 George HW Bush Dan Quayle
1996 Bob Dole Jack Kemp
2000 Al Gore Joe Lieberman
2004 John Kerry John Edwards
Only Walter Mondale won the nomination of his party in the next election, and he had actually spent four years as a sitting vice president. Bob Dole eventually won the Republican nomination 20 years after a losing run as a VP candidate. And that is it. Most others never even ran for president four years later (Earl Warren, Henry Cabot Lodge, William Miller, etc.) and those that did (Edmund Muskie, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards) never came close to winning their party's nomination.