n a string of indistinguishable presidents in the late 1800s, memorable mostly for their generous facial hair and waistlines, this is how we single out Rutherford B. Hayes: He's the one who stole his election.
As president, he was called ''His Fraudulency'' and ''The Usurper'' - labels that George W. Bush or Al Gore might have trouble avoiding when all the votes have been counted and recounted. And history tells us that presidents sent to the White House after narrow, disputed victories often have touble getting their programs through and establishing strong legacies.
Hayes, the easygoing Republican governor of Ohio who ran as a Washington outsider, went to bed on Election Night in 1876 convinced his Democratic opponent had won. And he had. Samuel Tilden had garnered 51 percent of the popular vote and 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 166. But Tilden was one vote shy of the electoral majority he needed, inviting a period of jarring presidential uncertainty that was not settled for four months, and then was never really settled at all.
Among the four states whose votes were in question in 1876 were Florida and Oregon, with the Sunshine State ultimately playing the decisive role.
If this is all starting to sound eerily familiar, Bush and Gore might do well to make sure the similarities end there. After allegations of widespread voter fraud and intimidation, a bipartisan commission was appointed in 1876 to sort it all out. The commission contained seven Republicans, seven Democrats, and one independent, leaving little doubt as to which member would be the kingmaker. But the independent resigned and was replaced by a Republican.
Not surprisingly, the commission voted to send all of the contested electoral votes toward the Republican, Hayes.
Also not surprisingly, Hayes ''came into office with probably the worst mandate any president ever had,'' said Ari Hoogenboom, professor emeritus at Brooklyn College. Author of a respected 1995 biography of Hayes, Hoogenboom said he wondered if he was in a time warp as he watched the contorted election coverage early Wednesday.
Worse than the absence of a mandate was what Hayes gave up to get the Democrats to drop their challenge of his election. In the compromise of 1877, Hayes, a Civil War hero who was viewed as a progressive on civil rights, agreed to yank federal troops out of several Southern states. That essentially returned control of those states to unrepentent Confederates, paving the way for an unsparing period of new discrimination against blacks.
Hoogenboom argues that Hayes is unfairly criticized for selling out the rights of Southern blacks in exchange for his election. All but two of the post-Civil War Republican governments in the South had fallen by the time he took office, he said, and even the survivors were headed out.
The Democratically controlled Congress would never have authorized the additional troops needed to keep the white racists from reclaiming their control of the Southern states. And had Tilden won, Hoogenboom said, ''the troops would have been yanked even faster.''
Still, history has never forgiven Hayes for that election and the Faustian bargain he made to ensure it.
For Bush, another historical comparison is equally troubling. If he wins, he will be only the second presidential son in history to capture the White House. The first, John Quincy Adams, grabbed just 31 percent of the popular vote in 1824, compared with Andrew Jackson's 41 percent. But because of the presence of two other candidates in the race, Jackson failed to get a majority, and the election was turned over to the House of Representatives, which chose Adams.
Perhaps the most brilliant man ever to be president, Adams had an ambitious agenda that looked like a 19th-century New Deal. But he never got over the taunt that he had robbed the presidency from someone else, and he accomplished little.
Yet other winners of narrow elections, such as Thomas Jefferson and Grover Cleveland, were more successful. Hoogenboom insists that Bush or Gore can compensate for the missing mandate by reaching out to the opposition. ''If they conduct themselves in a statesmanlike manner,'' he said, ''they can overcome this.''
