Obama May Campaign for Successor on Unprecedented Scale

In the upcoming campaign for president in the general election for 2016 President Obama has promised to be fully engaged in the discussions.   To openly participate in the campaign for one's successor, which one might expect to be the norm for an incumbent president planning to leave office, is actually...at least in recent years...a relatively rare phenomenon.  Of course, this scenario doesn't exist in every presidential year: in my lifetime (I was born in 1956) it has only happened in 1960, 1968, 1988, 2000, 2008...and this year.  In 1960, incumbent President Eisenhower was reportedly kept from campaigning for Richard Nixon through the intervention of his wife Mamie, who was concerned about her husband's wealth...he did, though, step out at the end to speak on behalf of Nixon.  In 1968, Lyndon Johnson was very unpopular nationally and as such was considered a liability by Hubert Humphrey.  In 1988, Ronald Reagan broke the pattern by campaigning for George ("the first") Bush, but again in 2000, Al Gore rejected the offered help of incumbent President Clinton...a decision that many felt cost him this extremely close election.  In 2008, George W. Bush was very unpopular and was also considered a liability by his nominated successor, this time Senator John McCain.  But Barack Obama, while currently only at about 50/50 in the national popularity polls, still is seen as a powerful voice to mobilize his party.  During the coming months leading to the election, we may well see the sitting president intervening in the campaign on a scale unprecedented in modern memory...