A stepping stone to the presidency.

• Position: STATESTATS - State legislature

So you want to be president. The state legislature is a good career path. President George W. Bush is the nation's 43rd president. He didn't spend any time in the legislature (although he was governor of Texas), but 22 of our presidents did. Colonial legislators, not surprisingly, gave us some of our most famous presidents: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. Jefferson, of course, wrote the Declaration of Independence. He started his political career in the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he served with first president and signer of the U.S. constitution, George Washington.

The legislature was the training ground for a number of other presidents, including some of our most illustrious: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. John Quincy Adams was a Massachusetts senator before becoming president and is the only president to hold office in the state house after leaving the White House. He went back to Massachusetts and served in the House for 17 years. Other state legislators who moved into the White l louse are...