
Besides Lincoln and FDR, other wartime presidents who won re-election were James Madison, who won a second term during the middle of the War of 1812, and William McKinley, who remained popular in 1900 after the Spanish-American War of 1898. "Wartime" presidents who won re-election on peace planks include Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. When Wilson sought re-election in 1916, World War I had already begun in Europe, but the United States hadn't entered the fighting, and Wilson campaigned on a promise not to get involved. Nixon likewise won a second term in 1972 largely because Americans believed he was finally bringing an end to American involvement in Vietnam; a treaty was signed the next January. Like Truman and Johnson, James K. Polk did not profit electorally from military success. Despite the U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War, Polk did not run for re-election. And George H.W. Bush, most recently, lost his 1992 re-election bid despite the American victories in Panama in 1989 and the Gulf War in 1991.
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