Harris has history to overcome

When Kamala Harris took to the Democratic National Convention stage Thursday night, she became the first sitting vice president to accept her party’s presidential nomination in Chicago in more than half a century.

The last one was Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

Of course, we all know how that one worked out.

“We cannot help but reflect the sadness we feel at the violence in the streets of this great city and for the personal injuries which have occurred,” the Minnesota Democrat told delegates at the International Amphitheater in August 1968.

“Surely, we have learned the lesson that violence cannot be condoned, whatever the source. I know that every delegate to this convention shares tonight my sorrow and my distress at these incidents.”

Not quite the vibe you want in an acceptance speech — especially from the politician who actually coined the phrase, "the politics of joy."

Sound familiar?

But luckily for Harris — and Chicago — the convention is going a bit better this week.

Only time will tell if whatever bump Harris gets from Chicago will be enough to propel her into the presidency. But if she is elected in November, Harris will join the exclusive club of sitting vice presidents who moved right into the Oval Office.

And she will be only the second Democratic VP to do so.

A Harris victory would certainly blaze even greater trails — first woman president and first Asian American president. But making the leap directly from No. 2 to No. 1 has proven no easy feat.

Only four have done so. Spoiler alert: All were white men.

Of course, other vice presidents have been elected after they left office, including Democrat Joe Biden, who returned to the White House four years after he served as Barack Obama’s vice president, and Republican Richard M. Nixon, who lost his first presidential bid in 1960, when he was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s VP, but returned eight years later to beat Humphrey.

But Harris is seeking to follow a path last successfully traveled by Republican George H.W. Bush, who went directly from serving as Ronald Reagan’s wing man to the top job in 1988.

Coincidentally, Bush’s son, George W. Bush, would thwart the efforts of Vice President Al Gore to win the presidency in 2000 — although Gore’s popular vote victory earned the Tennessee Democrat historical bragging rights of sorts.

And another eight vice presidents moved directly into the top job when presidents died in office either by assassination or illness — a cold caught on inauguration day, in the case of William Henry Harrison in 1841.

And Republican Gerald Ford has the dubious distinction of being the only vice president to replace a president who quit. Ford himself took over from scandal-plagued Spiro Agnew, who resigned in 1973, and then succeeded Nixon, when he resigned in disgrace in 1974.

Yeah, those were pretty wild times, too.

As for the handful of sitting vice presidents elected president, besides George H.W. Bush, they are Federalist John Adams in 1796, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and Democrat Martin Van Buren in 1836.

Perhaps the most unusual vice presidential ascension came in the case of Adams and Jefferson, the second and third presidents. They were of different parties, but Jefferson wound up Adams’ vice president in 1796, because at the time, the No. 2 position went to the candidate finishing second in electoral votes.

Four years later, Jefferson challenged Adams for the presidency in a campaign that was, not surprisingly, heated and contentious. But Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, wound up tying in electoral votes, forcing the U.S. House of Representatives to decide.

And Burr, of course, would famously kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804.

Makes this year’s event seem almost dull.