Clay ran for president five times but was never able to win.
* In 1824 Clay ran together with John Q. Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William H. Crawford, all as Democratic-Republican candidates. There was no clear majority in the Electoral College. After Crawford died during the process of deciding who would be president, his votes went to Clay. Jacksonians accused Clay of this "Corrupt Bargain" in which Clay's votes went to Adams in return for Secretary of State; Clay denied this and no evidence has been found to support this claim to date.
* In 1832 Clay was unanimously nominated for the presidency by the National Republicans; Jackson, by the Democrats. The main issue was the policy of continuing the Second Bank of the United States. He lost by a wide margin to the highly popular Jackson (55% to 37%).
* In 1840, Clay was a candidate for the Whig nomination, but he was defeated in the party convention by supporters of war hero William Henry Harrison. Harrison was chosen because his war record reminded people of Jackson and he was seen as more electable than Clay. If the Whigs had been more-aware of the weakness of President Van Buren, they would have probably selected Clay.
* In 1844, he was nominated by the Whigs against James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate. Clay lost due in part to national sentiment for Polk's program "54º40' or Fight" campaign which was to settle the northern boundary of the United States with Canada then under the control of the British Empire. Clay also opposed admitting Texas as a state because he felt it would reawaken the Slavery issue and provoke Mexico to declare war. Polk took the opposite view and public sentiment was with him, especially in the Southern United States. Nevertheless, the election was close; New York's 36 electoral votes proved the difference, and went to Polk by a slim 5,000 vote margin. Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney won a little over 15,000 votes in New York and may have taken votes from Clay.
o Clay's warnings came true as annexation led to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) while the North and South came to heads over the extending slavery into Texas and beyond during Polk's Presidency.
* In 1848, Zachary Taylor, a Mexican-American War hero, won the Whig nomination, again depriving Clay of the nomination.
Henry Clay's presidential bids were lost by wide margins, representing in his earlier presidential bids a failure to form a national coalition and a lack of political organization that could match the Jacksonian Democrats. And although the Whigs had become as adept at political organizing as the Democrats by the time of Clay's final presidential bid, Clay himself failed to connect to the people, partly due to his unpopular views on slavery and the American System in the South. When Clay was warned not to take a stance against slavery or be so strong for the American System, he was quoted as saying in return, "I'd rather be right than be President!"
