Talk Elections

In other words, if you could lay them out on the slab and jolt them with electricity until both their bodies and political careers became zombified, what parties do you believe they would feel more at home in today? I understand that this is purely speculative, and hence pretty well vague and subjective, but the mood struck me to post it all the same.

I've chosen to end the question at Franklin Roosevelt because the modern political alignment largely began with him and there'd likely not be as much difference. Naturally you must assume that, while their temperaments and ideals carry over, they have been updated for centuries of development, or you may have some unpleasantness in making your list.

My thoughts:



George Washington - a Republican-leaning Independent with a strong nationalist streak who may, however, not be altogether sympathetic to the more radically laissez-faire tendencies of the modern Republicans.

John Adams - when Teabaggers and their kind complain about elitist "latte liberals", this is the prototype of the cause of their complains. Adams was very fond of Hamiltonian statist economics, though he may be Liebermanesque in his foreign policy and security views.

Thomas Jefferson - I can't see Jefferson feeling too at home in a Republican Party dominated by religious conservatives, and yet the thought of him being a modern Democrat is ridiculous.

James Madison - I perceive Madison as a moderate Republican, relatively hawkish on foreign affairs but friendly to civil libertarianism. He would have been of a sort to vote for McCain in the 2000 GOP primaries and against him in the one national election he actually participated in, I feel.

James Monroe - Monroe would in my view be a Paulite today, given his quarrels with Congress over domestic improvements and his support for American neutrality in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. I could, however, be mistaken on this.

John Quincy Adams - a quintessential liberal Democrat, through-and-through.

Andrew Jackson - I had great difficulty in deciding this one, simply because almost no Party presently existing actually represents anything close to what Jackson stood for while he was alive. The Republicans will try to claim descent from his ideals by virtue of being opposed to centralized banking and in favor of a strong national defense, yet Jackson's positions would have been on the left of a hypothetical left-right spectrum adjusted for the political and economic environment of the time. All the same, Jackson would certainly not be a Democrat as we know them today, and he was far too hawkish to ever have been a libertarian.  Ultimately I think he would be almost the image of a modern swing voter.

Martin van Buren - van Buren, as a political party boss of New York City and opponent of slavery, was relatively liberal in his day, and would surely be so in ours as well.

William Henry Harrison - Harrison's closest modern equivalent might be someone along the lines of Wesley Clark; Harrison was a Whig, and so favored the Whig programme of government intervention into the economy, and so I doubt seriously he'd be a Republican despite his former military career.

John Tyler - of the first ten Presidents, this is the one of which I am most sure. Despite his ostensible membership in the Whig Party, Tyler was the chiefmost proponent of the Democratic-Republican economic philosophy in his time and would be a strong southern conservative today.

James Polk - another no-brainer. If his term as President would be any indication whatsoever of his present sympathies, Polk would be a national defense oriented Republican.

Zachary Taylor - Taylor is problematic in ways similar to Jackson and Harrison, except in his case the problem rests in the fact that General Taylor was essentially a non-political man who took political office only at the behest of his friends. I wouldn't be surprised if Taylor didn't even vote were he alive today.

Millard Fillmore - I rank Fillmore as a Republican mostly on the basis of his post-Presidential activities as the candidate of the Know-Nothings in the election of 1856. I can easily see President Fillmore as being active in the nativist contingent of the Tea Party.

Franklin Pierce - the posterboy for the Northern 'doughface', Pierce's Dixie sympathies would likely not have changed in the one hundred and forty-two years since his death.

James Buchanan - for some reason unbeknown to me, reading about Buchanan's character reminds me strongly of fellow Pennsylvanian Democrats Ed Rendell and Bob Casey, and not just because of their home state. I get the intuition that Buchanan may have been a populist-oriented Democrat today had he survived into our era.

Abraham Lincoln - this will doubtless be the single most controversial decision I make in this thread, and I am more than prepared to justify it. If anyone wishes to dispute my reasoning for it, I leave this space open.

Andrew Johnson - largely self-explanatory.

Ulysses S. Grant - Grant was an economic corporatist then, and I doubt that would change very much in the interval between his era and ours. I suggest that Grant would be a moderate on social and foreign policy issues today, but quite 'conservative' on economics.

Rutherford Hayes - Hayes was probably the first President to display what we would today regard as 'progressive' sensibilities in a modern context, championing greater government involvement in education and civil rights. This must be tempered, however, by the understanding of his use of Federal troops as strikebreakers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877) in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and his restoration of the gold standard and retirement of the greenback. Hayes is very difficult to peg politically - a problem that plagues many Reconstruction-era Presidents - and so I place him as an independent as a matter of convenience.

James Garfield - Garfield's support of the Chinese Exclusion Act and opposition to the bureaucracy outs him as a modern Republican, though, I'd argue, a moderate one.

Chester Alan Arthur - this pick may prove controversial as well. Chet was reared in the civil service of the State of New York, a position that today would immediately incline one towards the Democratic Party. Moreover, Arthur initially vetoes the Chinese Exclusion Act, which, if framed in modern terms, would not endear him to Teabaggers and other nativists. I'd regard Arthur as a moderate Democrat, likely friendly to the DLC.

Grover Cleveland - everything he stood for as a Democrat then the Republicans stand for today.

Benjamin Harrison - high tariffs, high spending and the Federal Elections Bill mark Harrison out as a liberal.

William McKinley - McKinley would likely be more at home in today's Republican Party than he ever was in the GOP of his own time. He would likely be enthused at a Party which had largely abandoned the protective tariff and had accepted a far more assertive foreign policy than the Republicans of his day would ever have happily embraced.

Theodore Roosevelt - I think Teddy could set aside the rivalry between Oyster Bay and Hyde Park to support the accomplishments of his cousin. Aside from his militarism, Theo. Roosevelt shares almost nothing with his current heirs.

William Howard Taft - Taft's reputation for conservatism is (mostly) overrated. What Taft was as President was a placeholder, and he knew it; I can't see him bucking his personal feelings for party loyalty today.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson - along with Lincoln, this will likely be the most controversial of my picks. Yes, I'm well aware that Wilson inaugurated the Federal Reserve, the institution which Republicans are united together behind their loathing of. Yes, I'm aware that Wilson has been popularly mythologized as a 'progressive'. What I'm also aware of is that Wilson was a late convert to 'progressivism', having been quite conservative in his tenure as President of Princeton University. I'd also suggest that his record as a foreign policy hawk and social conservatism would today outweigh his relative economic liberalism, as well as his southern sympathies.

Warren Harding - Harding would be a member of whatever Party would promote him further.

Calvin Coolidge - Coolidge would probably be roughly analogous to someone like Gary Johnson, sympathetic to the activities of Ron Paul and his supporters while skeptical of the extremism of some of them.

Herbert Hoover - Hoover, like Taft, is one President whose conservatism is hugely overrated by individuals on both sides of the schism. Hoover was basically a 'progressive' of the Progressive Era - not a New Dealer by any means, he was nevertheless friendly of increased government intervention in the name of social justice. The man who campaigned on "a chicken in every pot" would probably have switched over to the Democrats during the 1980s.

Franklin Roosevelt - and how!



I don't expect anyone to follow my insanity of typing out lengthy explanations, but I'd be more than happy to hear your thoughts or suggestions all the same.

None.

80% of their views are too anachronistic.

That's the point - keep the personalities and temperaments and broad sensibilities of each while discarding the contextually-dependent views of each. Hence:

The "liberals" of the 19th century would be considered conservatives today, and not merely conservatives, but very right-wing conservatives.

Washington - Constitution Party
Adams - ""
Jefferson - Libertarian Party
Madison - ""
Monroe - ""
Quincy Adams - Constitution Party
Jackson - Republican
Van Buren - ""
William Henry Harrison - ""
John Tyler - ""
James Polk - ""
Zachary Taylor - ""
Millard Fillmore - would not be welcome in any modern party, likely Republican or Constitution
Franklin Pierce - Republican
James Buchanan - ""
Abraham Lincoln - ""
Andrew Johnson - ""
Ulysses S. Grant - ""
Rutherford B. Hayes - ""
James Garfield - ""
Chester A. Arthur - ""
Grover Cleveland - ""
Benjamin Harrison - ""
William McKinley - ""
Theodore Roosevelt - Democrat, but could be an Olympia Snowe/Mike Castle-style Republican.
William Howard Taft - Republican
Woodrow Wilson - Democrat
Warren G. Harding - Republican or third-party
Calvin Coolidge - Republican or third-party
Herbert Hoover - independent or third-party
Franklin Roosevelt - Democrat
Harry Truman - Democrat or moderate Republican
Dwight Eisenhower - Republican (taking into account background)
John F. Kennedy - Democrat (ditto)
Lyndon Johnson - Democrat

Don't take into consideration any of the historically determined elements of their points of view - if you do, every President until Lyndon Johnson is a segregationist. I want you to instead privilege the broad trend of their views and sentiments and how those might fit into a modern historical context. I wouldn't expect even Millard Fillmore to want to expel Irish Catholics today, for instance.

You have to look at their views exactly as they were at the time.  Otherwise your question makes no sense.  I'm assuming none of them are doing anything that would be illegal today (like slaveholding) and nothing else.  Most of them had opportunities to become radical socialists during their lifetimes, and chose not to, nor governed in that fashion, so it could be surmised that they would not be "liberals" in a modern sense.  Try to ease back on the hackery, too.  Grant a segregationist?  Teddy Roosevelt?  Coolidge?  Ike?!?  Kennedy?!?  LBJ was more racist on a personal level than 6 of the previous 7 presidents.

You're still not getting what I'm asking.

Imagine for a moment a world in which reincarnation was real. With every cycle you'd start once more up the karmic ladder, taking with you only the basic kernel of your previous personality - a proud Roman legionnaire of the fourth century might come back a Teutonic knight of the eleventh, taking with him only his basic warrior's personality but not his allegiance to Caesar.

Or, if you need something less poetic, imagine a kid born in the 80s with the exact personality type as George Washington Hisself. How would that kid react to modern events?

Do you see where I'm going with this?


Yes, I think Ike would be a racist today. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/23918575/Dwight-Eisenhower) No, it doesn't matter in the slightest. How would someone with his same disposition, temperament, personality and broadly ethical-moral-religious-personal-ideological views who grew up in a more recent time behave?

To return to my example of Millard Fillmore: no, someone of his exact same personality in this age may not want to evict Irish Catholics from the United States. Yes, someone of his exact same personality in this age may well want to evict Mexican Catholics from the United States.

Comprende?

Well, someone of LBJ's background would certainly be more racist than the average today.  I don't think there's really an epidemic of racism among Kansans.

In any case, that's shifting the goalposts, because that wasn't what you were asking, and it's also not a question that makes any sense, as you can find people of all backgrounds in all political parties and ideologies.

I'm sure that LBJ was privately racist, though I don't think that he (nor Eisenhower, whom I also believe to have been racist) was stridently so.


Yes, it is:




Yes, it does. Boiled down to its basic, the question is this: how would these individuals behave as political and social creatures if stripped of the historically and culturally determined variables but retaining their core personalities as formed by those contexts? Or, if you want to reduce it even further: how far removed from our former leaders are we as far as our sentiments are concerned?

I think he'd be very much like Eisenhower and 'true conservative' republicans would be calling him a RINO.


 
While I agree that the Teabaggers would hate Adams, I dont follow you regarding  him being 'very fond' of Hamiltonian statist economics and I dont understand what you mean by Liebermanesque. 



Oh i can see him being right at home in the Republican party -- like say Newt Gingrich.




I think you are.  Monroe would be nothing like a Paulite.



HUH?  I dont see any justification for thinking he would be on the left.  He would be a tea party favorite.


Was he relatively liberal or just a political opportunist?  Perhaps like a Giuliani or Romney type.



See  Lieberman.



I think you assume to much about his role in the 1856 election.  In my understanding, for Filmore the American party was a vehicle for him to use in making a run for the president, since the Whigs had collapsed. 



Buchanan was a career politician who I dont see as having any populist views.   He is the guy running for president becuase over the previous 35 years he has already been congressman, senator, ambassador and cabinet secretary, so he feels he earned the presidency.



I don't think he would have been quite conservative on anything.   The guy was advocating for national public education and was big on separation of church and state.



No, that was Grant. 



The author of the McKinley tariff would be enthused over abandoning protective tarriffs???



IMO, see GW Bush.



Damn.   I see him as more of a John Edwards or Bill Clinton type.

The political spectrum in the eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries, if there was such a thing, was almost the reverse of todays: the "big government" position was mercantilism, the policy of choice of the European monarchies and the ancien regime in particular. Jeffersonian agrarianism was perceived similarly to how left-wing economic policies are perceived today: as championing the cause of the common man as against the elite. It's counterintuitive, but it's true - the 'conservatives' of the day would probably regard the Tea Party types with a mixture of shock and horror, and no little bit of confusion as to why they'd possibly want to liberalize the economy when a strong central government was more effective at securing the primacy of the elite. This preference was reflected in the Hamiltonian programme of the Federalists, though the accepted social meaning it bore began to change when the Whigs adopted a variation of it under their American System.

The association of a free-trade, free-market liberalism with conservatism is almost wholly a modern historical fabrication.


I don't see any commonalities at all between Jefferson and Gingrich.




See my discussion of John Adams above. A lot of this probably lingers on today in the influence of right-wing populism in America.


Quite possible.



Almost the opposite, in fact. Tyler was involved in disputes with the Whigs in Congress who wanted to increase the size and scope of the Navy, something which horrified the Anglophone Tyler. Lieberman, on the other hand, would almost have certainly been in favor of increasing the size of the Navy.


That was Hayes: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_B._Hayes#Post-Presidency)




McKinley vacillated on the tariff. While he was in Congress he was a staunch supporter of them, but by his Presidency he pursued a policy of moderate tariff reduction.


Ideals are not policy positions, but are rather the trend of one's thinking - what aims one uses to achieve one's ideals may differ with the times; one's ideals never do.

Socialism was scarcely an influence whatsoever before 1830, and was not codified as an ideology separate from liberalism and nationalism before the 1850s. You don't understand just how much of a melting-pot the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were in terms of political outlook, or that liberalism (in the European sense), nationalism, socialism, libertarianism and Romanticism all came out of the same primeval soup of that era.

No, its an opinion.  

Paulite policies and Teabagger policies are also presented as championing the common man against the elite.   GOP congressman rant on and on about helping 'main street', 'the little guy', 'small business' against the urban NY/Hollywood elites.  These aren't left-wingers.





See my response about Adams/Jefferson.  Right-wing populism is a good way to put it.  I see nothing 'left' about Jackson.  


No, the opposite:  Tyler pushed for expansion of the navy.   He was also someone who was VP candidate for a party he really doesnt belong in and who tried to make his own party to run for reelection, similar to the Connecticut for Lieberman party, though Tyler was unsuccessful.



Grant advocated for compulsory national education before Hayes was president and Grant's support of federal involvement in civil right was much greater than Hayes.  



No, the bill he signed in his first year in office raised tarriff rates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingley_Act

Except in the case of the early American agrarians they actually were putting forward objectively more progressive policies than the mercantilists of the monarchies and the Federalists who inherited that legacy. I will remind you that Jefferson and Jackson saw in agrarianism the kernel of the fight for republicanism and against monarchism; this view is reflected in the foreign policy divides of the era, with the "big government", aristocratic Federalists backing monarchical Britain, as against the "small-government", yeoman Democratic-Republicans favoring revolutionary France. I'll also say that this is a heritage the modern Left would do well to reclaim.


In a modern context? No, absolutely not. If we re-interpret the loose framework of 'left' and 'right' politics and recontextualize it to suit his era? He looks very far left. Jackson was a 'man of the people', feared by the banking and industrial establishments and beloved of the mob. That's very much a 'left-winged' phenomenon, if we allow for the fact that time and circumstance have radically changed the political spectrum.


No, Tyler agitated against any Congressional expansion of the Navy. Polk wanted to increase it. The only real similarities between Tyler and Lieberman are their circumstances with regards to party politics.


Then we're both right.


Conceded.

I disagree that the policies of Jefferson or Jackson were objectively more progressive than the policies of the Adamses.



Made some tweaks.



So your saying that Sarah Palin is a left-winger?



In his first State of the Union he asked Congress to expand it -- "I take upon myself, without a moment of hesitancy, all the responsibility of recommending the increase and prompt equipment of that gallant Navy" .

While there is nothing wrong with this thread in isolation, it was started by a banned user who has since been rebanned.  I'm locking the thread and will delete it in a few days as I'd prefer to have no posts by E II on this board.  If one of the others who posted in this thread wishes to restart this thread and use what they wrote here as a starting point, please do so.  That's precisely why I didn't simply just delete the thread wholesale.