On November 3, 1973 President Richard Nixon's two principal lawyers, Fred Buzhardt and Leonard Garment, flew to Key Biscayne, Florida, to recommend that he should resign. Nixon guessed what their mission was and chose decided not to.
WHAT IF?
Buzhardt and Garment were able to get Nixon to meet with them and so convinced him to resign, and as Spiro Agnew resigned just weeks before on October 10 there was no sitting Vice President in office. After President Nixon resigned on noon of November 5, 1973, the presidency passed to the Speaker of the House Democrat Carl Albert of Oklahoma. President Albert refused to effectively reverse the mandate of the Republican landslide victory of 1972, so he announced in a televised address to the nation that he would only serve for one year and would request for Congress to amend the Constitution to hold a special presidential election on Tuesday November 5, 1974.
He also announced that he did not intend to seek the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in the 1974 Presidential election and that he would support Nixon's choice for Vice President, the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, Republican Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan (Albert would nominate Ford to be his Vice President within a few days).
Within a mere five weeks, a new (twenty-seventh) amendment was approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and by the end of January 1974 it had been ratified by the state legislatures of 38 states. And so a presidential election was set for November 5, 1974.
In the 1974 spring Primary elections Vice President Ford narrowly outpaced his major Republican opponents California Governor Ronald Reagan and former Texas Governor and Treasury Secretary John B. Connally.
Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine won the Democratic nomination after a bitter primary battle and chose Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter for his running-mate. In the election Democrats Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace chose to run for president as independents. This fractured the Democrat vote in numerous states and enabled Vice President Ford and his running mate Ronald Reagan to not only win a plurality in the popular vote, but a large majority in the Electoral College and therefore the presidency.
As a result of the 1974 presidential election, the four-year cycle of presidential elections in the United States was shifted.
President Ford chose to only serve one term and in 1978, Vice-President Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination. He defeated the Democrat candidate Arizona Congressman Mo Udall in the presidential election and went on to serve from 1979 to 1987, defeating Colorado Senator Gary Hart in the 1982 election.
In 1986, Democrat Senator John Glenn of Ohio defeated Vice-President Howard Baker. However, President Glenn was defeated in his bid for re-election in 1990 by Republican former Secretary of State George H.W. Bush of Texas. President Bush served from 1991 to 1999, defeating former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in the 1994 election. Vice-President Pete Wilson was defeated in the 1998 election by Democrat Senator of Tennesse Al Gore, however Wilson did win the popular vote. President Gore was re-elected in 2002, defeating Governor George Patkei of New York by a very narrow margin.
In the 2006 presidential election, the Republican nominee, Texas Governor George W. Bush defeated Vice-President Evan Bayh. Bush along with his running mate, then Arizona Senator John McCain defeated the ticket of Bayh and his running mate, then Illnois Govenor Hilliary Clinton with 327 electoral votes to the Democrats's 211. In the popular vote Bush received 52 percent of the ballots cast and Bayh received 45 percent.
The most recent presidential election took place on November 2, 2010. President Bush was re-elected with 532 electoral votes and 59 percent of the popular vote. He defeated Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, who received just 39 percent of the popular vote and just 6 electoral votes (from Delaware and Washington, D.C.).
The following table summarizes U.S. presidents starting since 1969.
| Order | President | Term started | Term ended | Vice president |
| 37th | Richard Nixon (R) | January 20, 1969 | November 5, 1973 | Spiro Agnew |
| 38th | Carl Albert (D) | November 5, 1973 | January 20, 1975 | Gerald Ford |
| 39th | Gerald Ford (R) | January 20, 1975 | January 20, 1979 | Ronald Reagan |
| 40th | Ronald Reagan (R) | January 20, 1979 | January 20, 1987 | Howard Baker |
| 41st | John Glenn (D) | January 20, 1987 | January 20, 1991 | Lloyd Bentsen |
| 42nd | George H. W. Bush (R) | January 20, 1991 | January 20, 1999 | Pete Wilson |
| 43rd | Al Gore (D) | January 20, 1999 | January 20, 2007 | Evan Bayh |
| 44nd | George W. Bush (R) | January 20, 2007 | January 20, 2015 | John McCain |