Don't Forget the Unsung Candidates

Editor's note: Last week, TheStreet.com launched its Politics Blog, where John Fout will track the ongoing campaign for the White House. The following is a recent post to the blog.

In 2003, Howard Dean, a little-known governor from Vermont, joined the 2004 presidential race to raise the profile of health care in the national discourse. A few well-timed comments on Iraq coupled with a revolutionary Internet strategy shoved him into an unlikely role: Democratic front-runner.

It was a monumental moment in American politics and a throwback to elections of decades ago, when candidates could come from nowhere and wind up contending for the White House. We have only to go back 33 years, when Jimmy Carter, a virtually unknown governor from Georgia, announced his candidacy for presidency, only to spend his first year on the campaign as a nonevent in the polls. After his win in the Iowa caucuses, Carter was finally recognized as a possible contender.

Carter is not alone as a long-shot Democrat who wound up in the Oval Office. According to the White House Historical Association, Franklin Pierce, a senator from New Hampshire, emerged as the Democratic nominee for president in 1852 after his name was entered as a compromise candidate on the convention's 35th ballot. Although Pierce received the Democratic nomination, his party renounced him as a failure. Pierce, a handsome man who photographed well, went on to become the 14th president of the United States.

Dean wasn't as successful and wound up a joke after his well-publicized screaming fit. One edited video turned a passionate speech to supporters into a raving rant. Today's candidates have to be reminded that the camera is always rolling.