Which US President Ran A State Smaller in Population than Howard Dean?
| So after determining that I was voting for Larrison over Dean, due to Dean's inexperience in running anything larger than Monmouth County's 615,000 citizens, I was wondering exactly how far back would you have to go to find a Governor who ran a smaller state than Dean before becoming President.
Let's see, here's a list of Presidential Occupations. Thomas Jefferson would be a good place to start, he was governor of Virginia, more than 200 years ago, so he must have run a state smaller than Howard Dean! Ooops. Nope. The 1790 census shows 747,550 citizens. Hmmm, maybe this is going to be tougher than I thought. Clinton, Carter, Wilson, and the Roosevelts are the 20th Century gubernatorial ascendants to the bully pulpit. New York's been over a million since 1810, so that's out. Arkansas and Georgia are obviously bigger than a million people. How about Jersey under Wilson? Nope, 2.5 million. Back another century then. Ohio under McKinley or Hayes? Nope, another big state with 3.5 mm. How about Tennessee under James Knox Polk? Man, I don't even know when he was President. Let's see he's between the guy who died from eating too many cherries and the guy whose long-winded inauguartion speech killed him, so must be 1850 or so. Let's look up Tennessee's population in 1850.... darn! 1,002,717. I should actually look up when he was Governor.... The White House site says 1840s, so I guess the correct figure is the 1840 number: 829,210. Still bigger than Dean's Vermont. I'm getting exhausted Stoners. But, in the interests of national polity, let's soldier on. Andrew Jackson was Governor of Florida! Woo hoo! And Florida in 1830 had a population of 34,370, so it looks like we have a winner! UPDATE: Oh no. Can't be. Dear Stoners, Florida did not become a state until 1845, so Jackson's governorship doesn't really count. So it does turn out that Howard Dean would be the least experienced chief executive, having managed the smallest population as governor, since before even Thomas Jefferson. So when Howard Dean, who is a clever, internet-thriving, Linux-based, New Yorker, like I aspire to be, is trying to get a promotion, I'm all for it. But don't you think he should get a "stepping stone" job before going for the stretch goal? When he's talking about "re-regulation" and "increasing taxes", does he really have the experience to know how those measures impact a nation of 290 milliion people? That's why I'm voting Larrison in 2004. |
