Why aren't representatives typically seen as presidential material?

[brucejoel99]

Yeah, as my fellow respondents have observed, the demographic support for congressmen is substantially smaller than that of a senator or governor, & while some congressmen do run for president, the only ones who actually became president are b/c of their other roles (e.g. Jerry Ford as VP following Agnew's resignation; Senator-elect + General James Garfield; etc.).

What I'd like to add is that politics is, in some ways, a profession like any other, w/ a career hierarchy & a ladder to success. Unless you're born into a political dynasty like the Kennedy or Bush families, or have wealth, like Trump, the main way to achieve success in politics is to move up through the ranks, starting at the state legislatures, moving up to Congress, & then from there to the Senate or as a governor. There are other pathways, such as moving from being a mayor to being a governor, or from holding a state office like attorney general & then becoming governor. But all of the pathways tend to require a certain amount of dues paying, perhaps even starting at the local level (e.g. school board, city commission, etc.). In the hierarchy of things, to try to go from being a member of the House to being a presidential candidate is essentially to skip a step. In recent history, apart from Dick Gephardt having carved out a real power base over a long time of service in the House or Beto's charismatic Senate candidacy capturing the party's imagination, all of the congressmen who ran for president (Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, Dennis Kucinich, 2000's John Kasich) were dark horse candidates w/ only the thinnest chance of getting their party's nomination. There's a reason it's called "the lower house."