Hillary Clinton Passes on 2012

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton insisted on an appearance on Fox News Sunday that she was not planning to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012 and that she was done with seeking electoral office.

Despite the fight that Clinton gave Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2008, the White House was clearly not losing sleep over the matter. Politicians who leave the administration almost always come up drastically short in their bids to knock off the president they once served. After being dismissed by Harry Truman as Secretary of Commerce, Henry Wallace ran a poor campaign in 1948. FDR crushed a number of members of his administration who looked to stop him from having a third term in 1940. Despite being one of the most popular Republicans of his generation facing an unpopular president, James G. Blaine resigned as secretary of state to take on President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 -- and was routed. Salmon P. Chase fumbled in his bid to knock off Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

The one exception was James Buchanan. Buchanan, who served as minister to Great Britain under President Franklin Pierce, came home and won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1856 after his main rivals -- Pierce and Stephen Douglas -- were damaged by being involved in passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act.