Rooney's Presidential Election Rankings

[Rooney]

#40: The Election of 1984

Landing at number forty on the list is the election of 1984. Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection offered an incredible Democratic Primary battle followed by a lackluster general election battle. Themes, as opposed to issues, dominated the campaign. Like FDR in 1936, the incumbent president was the only issue in the 1984 campaign. Photogenic and friendly, Ronald Wilson Reagan was the larger than life personality who dominated a decade. His eventual Democratic opponent was former Vice-President Walter “Fritz” Mondale. Mondale’s gutsy running-mate choice and liberal general election campaign was hardly enough to stand up against the Hollywood projected image of Dutch Reagan.

The election itself was not one that many voters followed strongly. Much like 1988, the voters seemed content to sit back and watch the campaign unfold. The novelties of the campaign include the campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the first serious African-American presidential candidate for a major party nomination, and selection of Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as Mondale’s running-mate. The selection of the first woman to ever run on a major party’s presidential ticket did little to give Fritz’s campaign a needed jolt. Mondale himself complained to his campaign manager Bob Beckel: “This campaign is glacial.”

The 1984 Democratic Primary was hardly glacial, though. It is one of the best campaigns in the history of United States presidential campaigns. While Reagan was only challenged by perennial candidate Harold Stassen and “Boxcar Ben” Fernandez for the Republican nomination, Mondale faced a whole array of opponents. The Reverend Jackson ran a spirited campaign based on the social justice themes of his friend and mentor Martin Luther King, Junior. The tall Senator Alan Cranston of California, 1972 nominee George McGovern, Florida favorite son Reuben Askew, South Carolina Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, astronaut and Senator John Glenn and Senator Gary Hart of Colorado entered the fray against the former vice-president. Hart emerged as Mondale’s primary rival, yes that pun was intended. Senator Hart ran on a campaign of “change” and “new ideas.” While these platitudes were just what the doctor ordered in 2008 Mondale hatchet man Bob Beckel knew exactly how to hand Hart is heiney. Mondale quoted the famous Wendy’s hamburgers advertisement: “Where’s the beef.” Hart was never able to respond to the commercial quip. Mondale and Hart traded primary victories throughout the campaign. Ernest Hollings endorsed Hart while calling Mondale a “lap dog” and Glenn a “Sky King” who was “confused in his capsule.”

The vicious battle between Mondale and Hart is worth placing the primary battle in the upper echelon of primary campaigns. Hart won more popular votes at the end of the campaign and was seen by many Democrats as the right energetic campaign to place against the seventy-three year old, grandfatherly Reagan. The two candidates attacked each other so viciously that at one debate hosted by Phil Donahue that Jackson had to tap on his water glass in order to get a word in edgewise. Mondale used arcane rules in the Democratic rulebook to use his big wins in industrial and reliable Democratic states to defeat Hart, who won caucuses in heavily Republican states. In the end it came down to the highly undemocratic Democratic superdelegates who voted heavily for Mondale. At the San Francisco Convention Mondale won the party’s nomination of the first ballot, but only narrowly beat Hart in the delegate count. Governor Mario Cuomo excited the delegates by giving a speech accusing Reagan of separating the nation into “two cities.” Shortly afterwards, Congressman Gerald Solomon of New York threw the reference back in his face by declaring that Cuomo’s Tale of the Two Cities was nothing but a Dickensian farse. “You will have plenty of time to read your Dickens, Mr. Cuomo, after November” Solomon said, “When Reagan will take your candidate, Mondale, and beat the dickens out of him (Charles Dickens, that is).” That is exactly what Reagan would do. In 1984 the Democrats would end up inheriting a Bleak House while Reagan lived up to his own Great Expectations.

The general election of 1984 lacks the pop and glamour a Reagan Campaign should have had. Reagan made his share of clever quips during the campaign and Mondale did throw all he had at the incumbent. When asked about his health Reagan said he kept in shape by jogging three times a day around Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil. When Mondale questioned the wisdom of increasing the already ballooning deficit Reagan laughed it off: “I don’t worry about the deficit. It’s big enough to take care of itself.” When Mondale rightly questioned Reagan’s age the Gipper delivered his most famous one-liner ever: “I am not going to, for political purposes, exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The whole campaign of 1984 was Reagan making funny quips and Mondale failing to get any point across at all.

This does not mean that Mondale did not try. In the first debate with Reagan the former vice-president cleaned the Gipper’s clock by being conversational and knowledgeable. “He out-Reaganed Reagan,” complained campaign manager Ed Rollins. However, Mondale made far too many missteps to make the race even slightly competitive. In order to combat the deficit he promised to raise taxes. A Saturday Night Live skit from November 1984 entitled “What Were You Thinking?” made the greatest point ever:  no one who has ever ran for office had ever promised to RAISE taxes. Mondale’s gutsy selection of Ferraro as a running-mate also backfired.  Only 22% of women were excited about her selection, versus 18% who agreed that it was a "bad idea". 60% of all voters thought that pressure from women's groups had led to Mondale's decision, versus 22% who believed that he had chosen the best available candidate. Ferraro’s husband John Zaccaro proved to be a mobbed up, bank fraudster who pedaled pornography. “Fritz and Tits” proved to be little too no match for the Reagn/Bush campaign of “It’s Morning Again in America.”

In the end the 1984 campaign offered a great primary campaign but a very lackluster general election campaign. Issues of religion, abortion, school prayer and tax credits for parochial school dominated the scant issue plane of the campaign. Lee Iacoca threw his hands into the air in anger: “These guys aren’t running for pope!” In the end the issues of religion and taxes did not mean a great deal. Reagan won a landslide because the people liked him and the economy was expanding. A scant 53% of voters braved the polls as Reagan won every state except Minnesota. When Reagan was asked in December 1984 what he wanted for Christmas he joked, "Well, Minnesota would have been nice" You know what would have been a good gift for America in 1984? An exciting presidential race. Well, at least they got a primary battle worth remembering.        

[Rooney]

#39: The Election of 1900

Number thirty-nine on the list is the election of 1900. The campaign of 1900 was a repeat performance of the epic election of 1896. Incumbent President William McKinley ran for a second term in a nation transformed from the depression ridden, globally exclusive America of 1896. By 1900 the American Army marched across Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. In a war attacked by Mark Twain and others as “imperialist” the United States had humbled an already humble Spain and acquired new lands and troubles from the “splendid little” Spanish-American War. William Jennings Bryan fought the good fight but the Boy Orator of the Platte found that his views from just four years back were already old hat. In just four short years the world, the nation and the campaign trail had changed irreversibly. “The period of exclusiveness is past,” McKinley declared in Buffalo in September 1901. The period of free silver was also past. Bryan never learned.

The campaign of 1900 falls at number thirty-nine because it involves some excellent episodes and characters but a lackluster climax. 1900 was not another free-silver campaign. The 1892 and 1896 Populist campaigns were out of style in a world where increased supplies of gold led to inflation in prices. The complaints about the low cost of corn and unfair freight rates were a hollow shout in world gilded in gold and glory. When the Democrats met in Kansas City to nominate a candidate they found the cupboards bare. The bookish and bewhiskered Admiral George Dewey appeared to be a good candidate to place against Big Bill McKinley. The admiral was a hero following his smashing victory over the Spanish Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón at Manilla Bay. However, Dewey brought baggage along with laurels. Dewey’s short lived candidacy was plagued by public relations gaffes. Newspapers started attacking him as naïve after he was quoted as saying the job of president would be easy, since the chief executive was merely following orders in executing the laws enacted by Congress, and that he would "execute the laws of Congress as faithfully as I have always executed the orders of my superiors." Like Wes Clark in 2004, Dewey was also forced to admit not voting in a presidential election in years. Dewey additionally made a prophetic gaffe when he told the New York Times that the next war was to be with Germany. With Dewey sinking faster than a Spanish Fleet the Democrats turned to Nebraska and William Jennings Bryan. The Great Commoner was nominated on the first ballot without any opposition. His running-mate was a retread: former Vice-President Adlai Stevenson, whose grandson would go on to become a twice beaten Democratic candidate. As a young Harry S Truman served as a paige at the convention and his father John Truman shouted himself hoarse for Bryan, the Democrats must have realized they stood no chance. When Senator Reed of Missouri stated in a speech at the convention that Mrs. Bryan would be sleeping in the White House after March 4 a delegate from the Midwest replied: “If so she’ll be sleeping with McKinley.” Hope did not spring eternal.  

The main reason why Bryan fell flat on his face in 1900 is because he simply had nothing to bellow about. In 1896 the issues were almost tailored made for the silver tongue, leather lunged populist orator. By 1900 his issues seemed out of place. An anti-imperialist who was nominated for president by the Anti-Imperialist League, Bryan had nonetheless supported the 1899 Treaty of Paris and acquiesced to the U.S. gaining control over the Philippine Islands. While Aguinaldo and his rebels fought against the U.S. troops and General Arthur MacArthur led an inhuman war of attrition against them, Bryan failed to make an issue out of the occupation. Bryan was made a colonel during the war but spoke out against the very war he had entered on his own free will. Bryan had difficulty getting Americans excited as they had been in 1896. His calls for free silver were not taken seriously because the nation was no longer involved in an economic depression. Bryan still rode the rails from shore to shore decrying the evils of big business and the gold, but there seemed to be no one who cared to listen. Former Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed was quoted to have said that Bryan, “Would rather be wrong than be president.” Running as an anti-imperialist in an age of victory and a pro-silver salesman in an age of prosperity were the wrong positions to win high office in 1900.

The Republican Convention offered far more drama and that is why this campaign has been given a decent rank on the list. The machinations of Senator “Boss Tom” Platt of New York and his fellow Big East Republican bosses make the Philadelphia Convention one to remember. Senator Tom Platt was known as Roscoe Conkling’s sidekick for most of his life. When Conkling opposed the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt, Senior, as Collector of the Port of New York Platt jumped up to support him. Upon his death, the New York Times stated of Platt that "no man ever exercised less influence in the Senate or the House of Representatives than he," but "no man ever exercised more power as a political leader." Platt, who was drawn by Pluck magazine as a small weather balloon trailing off of an overinflated Conkling, had made the mistake of nominating Theodore Roosevelt for governor of New York. By 1900 he wanted him gone. Roosevelt was an eccentric of incredibly varied talents and interest. A rancher, writer, police commissioner and colonel, Roosevelt rode the fame of Teddy’s Terrors and San Juan Hill into the governor’s office in 1899. Immediately he began to annoy Platt and the Republican controlled State Legislature. The death of Vice-President Garrett A. Hobart gave Platt and his friends a great place to retire the Lion of Sagamore Hill.

While T.R. disclaimed all interest in the vice-presidency he had to admit that it was an honor to be thought of as the candidate. A funny story mentions when Governor Roosevelt visited the State Department in 1900 and told Secretary of State John Hay that he had no interest in the vice-presidency. Hay responded, “Why Theodore, no one is thinking of naming you as vice-president.” Roosevelt swallowed his anger and stamped out of the department. Hay commented that Roosevelt’s angry response was, “As fun as a goat.” The fact was that TR wanted the vice-presidency. It was one heartbeat away from the bully pulpit of the presidency. When Roosevelt arrived at the Philadelphia Convention he did not don a straw hat like all of the other men. He instead donned a broad-brimmed black hat like those of his famous Rough Riders in Cuba. “Gentlemen,” one delegate said, “that’s an acceptance hat.” On the first ballot McKinley won the presidential nomination and TR won the vice-presidential nomination. The Republican Ticket is arguably one of the strongest ever assembled: “William McKinley, a western man with eastern ideas, and Theodore Roosevelt, an eastern man with western ideas.”                            

[Rooney]

Election of 1900, continued

The last campaign of the 19th century was considerably tired when compared to the Republican Convention. Mark Hanna warned of “that damned cowboy” being so close to the president’s chair but Roosevelt was a hit on the campaign trail. Bryan and Roosevelt ran against one another in the only campaign the two giants of oration would face off head-to-head. McKinley did not even run a front-porch campaign. He widdled on a stick and planned a grand national tour after the election was over. Teddy Roosevelt traveled 21,000 miles, spoke in hundreds of towns and cities and held audience as spell bound as any who listened to Bryan’s bombastic spiels. A cartoonist noted that Teddy was not running for vice-president, “He’s gallopin’!” The Republican Campaign out messaged, out financed and outdid the pathetic Democratic effort at every step. The Republican message of “four more years of the full dinner pale” and “victory” was an incredible message when compared to the memory of Cleveland the Panic of 1893. While Bryan tried to run against imperialism the war loving Roosevelt fired back: “We are a nation of men, not weaklings!” “The American people,” he declared were, “as ready to face the responsibilities of the Orient as they were ready to face them at home.” Bryan responded by declaring that the Philippines should be given independence and the war against the insurgents ended as soon as possible. “I would not exchange the glory of this Republic for the glory of all the empires which have risen and fallen since time began,” Bryan eloquently stated in response to jingoistic Republicans. Bryan also assaulted the sugar, oil, steel and coffee trusts and their control over the pocketbooks of the American consumers. Bryan introduced his own Axis of Evil in the campaign: empire, trusts and gold. A nation in the midst of economic growth due to gold and industry had no interest in hearing the cries of the Cassandra Bryan. As Teddy Roosevelt was leaving a campaign stop in Ohio a small girl ran to his train with a dinner pale. “It’s full just like you promised!” she cried to a beaming Teddy. Bryan was no match in the end for the marketing.

McKinley’s easy, but by no means landslide, reelection was what would be expected given the campaign. All Bryan managed to do was lose his hair in a campaign that was doomed from the beginning. It is not to be believed that the election win was a mandate for the imperialism of the Spanish-American War. It appears more likely that it was in response to the general productivity and economic growth of the McKinley Administration. During the campaign a young Bryanite had pleaded for his Missouri farming community to resist militaristic imperialism. “Well I guess we can stand it,” a farmer replied, “as long as the hogs are 20 cents a hundred.” This anecdote explains why the 1900 campaign is a good one but not a great one. Incredible issues were argued by excellent characters and personalities. Backroom deals dominated a convention and a potential candidate talked himself into oblivion. However, in the end the victory of McKinley was assured. Senator and industrialist Mark Hanna told McKinley soon after the election, “It is your duty to the country to lvie for four years from next March.” The failure of McKinley to live up to that duty is one reason why the election of 1900 is so important. Once his last words of “Nearer my God to three,” slipped from McKinley’s lips in that September sun of a Buffalo summer the nation would never be the same again. Boss Platt told reporters after TR was nominated for veep, “I am glad that we got our way.” He quickly corrected himself, “The people, I mean had their way.” Oh Boss Platt, Matt Quay, Mark Hanna and the rest really did give the people what they wanted. However, it was hardly what they wanted.   

[Rooney]

#38: The Election of 1932

Placing at thirty-eight on the list is the Great Depression election of 1932. Incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover, a hard working but misguided public servant, faced off against the sunny Governor of New York Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The election is dramatic due to the incredible comeback of FDR from defeat in 1920 and the debilitation of polio. The election of 1932 is a great contest with an expected ending.

With much ho-hum the Republicans nominated Hoover for a second term. Once a nationally hero who was elected president by a massive majority, Hoover had shown himself ill-tempered for the White House. He seemed to shy from the press only when it could benefit him. As the nation’s economy dipped into the first part of the Great Depression he made it clear he would raise taxes, cut spending and increase tariffs. All three are a wonderful recipe for economic disaster. While the media saw Hoover raise taxes on those who needed tax cuts they failed to see his human side. When two boys from Detroit hitchhiked to Washington, D.C, to meet with Hoover he made sure to make time to see them. He gave them both money and sent them home with a promise of work for their father. This type of story would have been exploited by practical politicians like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, but Hoover failed to mention the tale of the two boys once. In fact, he told no one to tell the press about it in fear of making the boys “unwitting celebrities.” Hoover’s failure to make himself into an interesting candidate was one of the major reasons he failed as president. The successful orphan of Quaker background refused to engage in political games. That was his undoing…along with a outrageously bad economy and a trade war he started.  

The Democratic campaign is a great deal more interesting than the Republican one. The three candidates who emerged as the potential Hoover slayers were all very different and interesting. The Southern, dry candidate was Speaker of the House “Cactus Jack” Garner. Garner, a former Texas judge, had supported prohibition but constantly held meetings of the alcohol swigging “board of education” where he called his drinking binges, “a blow for liberty.” John Nance Garner advised the Democrats that they needed to “sit down, do nothing and win.” Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst pushed hard for Garner as well. 1928 nominee and former New York Governor Al Smith ran as the choice of big city bosses once again. The capitally beaten Catholic of 1928 was the same old Roman hat in 1932. He still was opposed by western and southern Democrats. Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 1920 vice-presidential nominee and controversial former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, emerged as the choice of rank-and-file party men. His campaign was attacked as “vague” by pundits. Heywood Broun mocked FDR as a “corkscrew” and the liberal columnist Walter Lippmann commented that Roosevelt was “an amiable man” but not much more. These three candidates arrived in Chicago in July 1932 and none had the edge. This allowed for an incredible struggle at the Democratic Convention. FDR led comfortably on the first three ballots but the Curse of 1832 haunted him as it did Smith in 1924: he could not attain that blasted two-thirds majority. The drama of the campaign is greatly increased by a late night meeting between “Prince Will” Hearst and Roosevelt campaign manager “Big Jim” Farley. The “Treaty of Chicago” established that Hearst and William Gibbs McAdoo would throw California, which had been for Garner, to FDR in exchange for Garner being placed as vice-president on the ticket. An angered Al Smith would never forgive FDR for working behind his back and join the anti-New Deal Liberty League in 1935. “It’s a kangaroo ticket,” a Texas delegate would say of the Roosevelt/Garner ticket, “Stronger in the hindquarters than the front.” This Texan and millions of others would discover FDR was no paper tiger.

The campaign of 1932 is an exciting one but one that is kept out of the top thirty elections because the ending was expected. It is like a novel in which the protagonist is charming and charismatic but the villain is so vile there is no way the ending can be in doubt. While I am not fan of FDR one cannot deny he was a sunny figure on a gloomy day. Hoover, on the other hand, was a gloomy day on a funeral. FDR declared that he would not allow his disability, his lack of leg usage due to polio, to keep him from the campaign. “There is nothing I love more than a good fight!” he told Farley as the campaign opened. He made history by flying to Chicago to give his own acceptance address in person to the delegates at the Democratic Convention. Quoting a popular Rollin Kirby cartoon Roosevelt pledged to himself and the nation, “A New Deal for the American people.” Despite the fact that Walter Lippmann had claimed that FDR was “no crusader, no champion of the people against the entrenched interests” Lippmann would later eat his words and be ostracized at Manhattan cocktail parties for the comments. FDR ran an active campaign assailing Hoover. However, he assailed him for overspending, high taxes, unbalanced budget and talk of taking the U.S. off of the gold standard. The New Deal of Rexford Tugwell and the other utopian socialists was not spoke about in the campaign. Instead some saw Hoover and Roosevelt as the same candidate. The socialist newspaper of Reading, Pennsylvania, bemoaned the election between “Herbert Roosevelt” and “Franklin Hoover.” The socialist-leaning Eleanor Roosevelt told the press years later that she would have voted for Socialist nominee Norman Thomas if she had not been married to Franklin.

The campaign was at time shrill and negative. “Hoover Derangement Syndrome” dominated the campaign and Republicans came back with very ugly rhetoric themselves. Hoover’s life was threatened as his campaign swung through Baltimore. Angry crowds screamed “lunch him” as Hoover spoke. The thin skinned and soft-spoken Hoover burst into tears following the speech, telling his wife Lou Henry, “I can’t got through with it.” John Nance Garner delivered only one speech the whole campaign but in it he accused Hoover of “inching toward socialism.” Hoover was convinced FDR’s polices would spell doom for the nation. If Roosevelt was elected, Hoover warned, “The grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns.” Hoover also called Roosevelt “Un-American” and said that he was under the foreign control of Red Russia. In the end all of the shouting was for naught.

Democratic Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma commented to FDR a few days before the election that if every Democrat in Iowa was arrested the day before the election he would still carry Hoover’s native state anyway. Iowa was won by Roosevelt along with nearly every other state in the Union. 1932 was an election of great excitement but the ending was expected. It ranks at number thirty-eight because it offered some great campaign moments but very little suspense. I blame Hoover for this, of course.

[Rooney]

#37: The Election of 2012

Landing at number thirty-seven is our most recent presidential campaign. The contest between incumbent President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor W. Mitt Romney will not rate as one of the great campaign of American History, but it will register as a pretty good election. The campaign offered some drama and twists of plot, much more than 1932, 1900 or 1984 had in store for the voter. The gods of elections offered many tokens to the hungry masses in 2012.

Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama should have been toast in 2012. All of the signs pointed to him losing his job as president. The economy had not recovered nearly enough during his three and a half year tender, his signature achievement in health care was highly controversial, Republicans were united against him and his approval ratings were mediocre at best. The president seemed far too intellectual and aloof as if the Oval Office was his professorial pulpit and the nation the drunken frat boy hoping for a C-. The first African-American president, however, was underestimated. The 2012 election is unique in one way because the approval polls and economic indicators could not be used to pinpoint where Obama’s election chances fell. His brilliant on-line presence and community of local activists made the sagging economy and controversial health care law secondary in the campaign. Republicans claimed that they wanted to make Barack Obama the issue of the 2012 election. Obama also had the idea of making himself the issue of the campaign. David Plouff, his brilliant campaign manager, realized that making Obama the issue was a good thing. Republicans seemed unable to stop making dumb comments about the president while the president united Democrats and independent minded voters. The GOP foolishly allowed Obama to become the issue as opposed to his policies. Had Obama had to run for reelection on his record odds are he would have lost. The 2012 election is unique in the Obama made himself the issue and was able to win. The Republican sideshow of primaries is also a big reason why he won a second term.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was in many ways the ideal Republican candidate: a perceived moderate conservative businessman who was governor of an East Coast State. His voice was a fine baritone and his hair was impeccable. He had a lovely wife and photogenic children. In short, he looked and sounded much like a president in a Hollywood movie, right out of central casting. If that is so than why did he lose? The answer goes down to the second great treat of 2012: the Republican Primary. I never thought I would see so many debates where people cheered for executing people. However, they were there on display for the world to see from 2011 to 2012. One can only applaud the wonderful cast of characters given to the political state by the 2012 Republican Primary. Romney was dull compared to the egocentric book peddler New Gingrich, the ever bombastic Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, the pious porn crusader Rick Santorum, bombastic businessman Herman Cain the cowboy impersonator Rick Perry and, my favorite, the eclectic Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Romney, it is fair, outshone John Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty, yet a piece of dull obsidian could have done that.

The 2012 Republican Primaries were a great deal of fun because the Republican Party had a front-runner every week. This is odd for the elephant derby because that party usually selects its candidate for president early on and generally holds a primary coronation. This was not the case in 2012. Between October 2010 and July 2012 the Republicans hosted no fewer than nine front-runners in the general public opinion polls. Such diverse figures as Governor Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, Bachman, Perry, Cain, Gingrich and Santorum all managed to top Romney in the public opinion polls before the Iowa Caucus. The colorful Herman Cain made Republican cheer for his 999 Plan as Newt Gingrich insulted the media for daring to have debates. In the end what saved Romney was the money he had raised and the fact that his opponents seemed to commit political suicide one after another. Cain said that he had made women perform sexual acts for jobs but Jesus had forgiven him. Bachmann claimed that vaccinations caused autism. Rick Santorum was simply himself, for better and for worse. The same can be said for Ron Paul. Newt Gingrich allowed his love of open marriages and fancy clothes to sink his already skeleton heavy boat.

The problem was the Tea Party voters were just not into Romney. He was not the man they wanted. He had supported tax increases, abortion, gay marriage and Obamacare in the past. He was the moderate governor of a liberal state. The man they wanted was Mike Huckabee, but he was too busy making money on Fox News peddling CGI conservative rehash American history DVDs to run for president in 2012. Romney won the Iowa Caucus and then magically lost it to Santorum two months later. He was beaten in Missouri, Kansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama to more socially conservative opponents. More fringe-like candidates such as Santorum, Gingrich and Paul appealed to Tea Party conservatives far more than Romney, even though they could never defeat Obama in the general election. The 2012 Republican Primaries are important to history and to the ranking of the election because they showcase the failure of the Tea Party to crystalize around one candidate (such as Reagan in 1976 and 1980) and also their failure to vote against a person who did not share their worldview. One can say that if the Tea Party could not beat Romney in 2012 it is likely they will never elect a Tea Party president.

The 2012 general election is a treat. I feel everyone can agree to that. Romney’s selection of Congressman Paul Ryan as his running-mate was a good one. Ryan appealed to the Tea Party budget hawks as well as the mainstream Republican voter. The Republican Convention was a hit with John Kasich declaring he could golf better than Vice-President Biden and Clint Eastwood delivering a unique and creative impromptu speech comparing the president to an empty chair. The establishment media mocked the veteran actor but the Eastwood speech was unique, inventive and highly memorable. Even Romney’s acceptance address was well delivered with his polished diction. This GOP convention, however, was not any fun at all when compared to the Charlotte Convention which gave Obama and Biden the nod for a second term. It was at this convention where Obama would come up with his divisive and effective reelection strategy. It is the strategy which won him reelection and made the 2012 election one to watch.

No one knew who Sandra Fluke was before she was strangely called to speak to important members of Congress. A random law school student who is truly not all that good at public speaking, Fluke was called a “slut” by right-wing talk radio guru Rush Limbaugh for simply wanted the government to pay for her birth control. This fairly noncontroversial medical program was made into one of the lynchpins of the Obama 2012 reelection campaign. Republican missteps, or possibly full truth telling, concerning rape and women’s health issues were an incredible help to the Obama reelection campaign. The third most memorable part about the 2012 election was how effectively the Obama campaign was able to divide Americans along gender, racial and class lines. It is to be applauded how effectively Plouff and Axelrod set people apart in order to win votes. The Republicans only helped the Obama campaign with such memorable gaffes as “legitimate rape” and “the 47%.” The 2012 election will be a decently remembered one because the Obama Campaign was able to take social issues such as abortion and immigration, fringe issues the right usually used to divide and conquer, and use them to benefit the Democratic Party. Some claim that Obama is a babe in the woods when it comes to politics but his 2012 campaign strategy shows he is a devious, intelligent political player.

The general election offered a lot of laughs and plenty of thrills. The polls were generally close with the exception of two spots. In September 2012 a successful Democratic Convention, coupled with Romney’s awkward 47% insult, placed Obama eight to nine points ahead of Romney. The second time was in mid-October when Romney decimated the president in the first debate. The debates themselves give a lot of humor to the race. Romney’s wonderful awkwardness was on full display as the nation watched. He spoke about the “binders full of women” he has reviewed as governor. Romney brought up a want to get rid of Big Bird and all of PBS. Obama worked in some clever one liners, such as his reminder to Romney that the U.S. military doesn’t spend much money on horses and bayonets anymore. Perhaps the best moment of all the debates occurred when CNN’s Candy Crowley reminded Romney that the president had referred to the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as a “terrorist attack.” One can only imagine Obama giving himself a mental high five when he asked Crowley, “Could you repeat that for everyone to hear?” The debates were a lot of fun, far better than the boredom they wrought in 2008, and for that reason are another example of 2012 being a decently entertaining race.

In the end the election of 2012 was a good race but not a great one. While the polls changed hands several times and it was a close race nationally, Obama led in the swing states a good deal of the time. In the end only a few swing states were even that close. Florida was decided by a hair but even if Romney had carried the Sunshine State he still would have lost. 2012 was no 2000. The most memorable event to come out of the 2012 election was the victory and vindication of the Obama Coalition. Like the Roosevelt Coalition of the 1930s, the Obama Coalition was a disparate group of voters united under the banner of a single, effective political leader. I know it can easily be argued that Obama is not FDR, not am I saying that. The Obama Coalition, however, is real. Early voting, voter drives and prodigious Election Day GOTV efforts enabled urban, suburban, blue collar, college educated professional, middle aged white, Hispanic, Asian and moderate voters to all reelect the president. Despite the fact that he had a meager 51% approval rating and 65% of voters thought the nation was on the wrong track, this coalition trusted Obama to do the right thing for another four years. That is some incredible power and, if Obama can hold on to his coalition, it could spell victory for the Democrats in 2016, 2020 and beyond. 2012 will be an historic race even if not the most memorable.                  

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Why isn't 1932 above 2012? That's a pretty important election.

[Rooney]

#36: The Election of 1836

Finding its unique place at number thirty-six is the election of 1836. The last election in which a vice-president was directly elected to the presidency until 1988, the election of 1836 pitted the elegant and ingenious Democratic Vice-President Martin van Buren against a cadre of accomplished Whig Party opponents. It was the first election of the Third Party System of U.S. political history and it offers some unique and interesting moments.

In February 1835, President Andrew Jackson decided to not seek a third term despite the fact he would have won without breaking a sweat. Still the hero of the common people and the Democratic Party, Jackson urged his party to hold a national convention composed of delegates “fresh from the people.” These “people’s delegates” made sure to nominate Jackson’s team at the 1835 Democratic Convention in Baltimore: Vice-President Martin van Buren of New York for president and former Senator Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky for vice-president. While there is no drama in the selection of the candidates there is a great deal in the acceptance of the Van Buren/Johnson ticket. The selection of Van Buren as the nominee made many Southern Democrats angry. Virginia delegates hissed angrily at the Van Buren selection and then walked out of the convention. To Southern Democrats the Baltimore Convention was the “Northern Van Buren Convention” and they charged it was as closed as the old King Caucus system. It was pointed out by some that many states sent only one delegate to the convention while others sent so many they were vastly over-represented. Jackson’s own Tennessee, for example, did not send a single delegate “fresh from the people.” Nashville attorney Edmund Rucker was in town and agreed to cast all fifteen delegate votes from Tennessee for Van Buren and Johnson. The anti-Jackson and anti-Van Buren mocked “ruckerism”, which was used as a synonym for engaging in political hijinks.

The nomination of Richard M. Johnson for vice-president was especially controversial. While Van Buren was attacked for being a fence sitter his running-mate was something far worse for the 19th century: a man who lived with an African-American woman and had children by her. Johnson was a war hero who was credited with slaying the Shawnee war chief Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames (“Rumpsey dumpsey Colonel Johnson slew Tecumseh!”) but he had lived with Julia Chinn, an octoroon slave, as an informal common-law wife since he inherited her from his father. This interracial relationship led to great controversy as the general election opened. Southern Democrats who were already angry at the Jackson Administration’s tariff increases and rejection of nullification grew even more uncomfortable with a Northern Democrat for president and a man with a black “wife” for vice-president. South Carolina electors would not vote for Van Buren and Johnson but instead cast their votes for North Carolina Senator Willie Person Mangum, a member of the disorganized but growing Whig Party.

One main reason why the election of 1836 is unique and exciting is because of the genesis of a new major political party. The birth of new political parties is nothing new. Political parties get started every day in people’s living rooms. However, none of these parties ever become major political parties that control Congress and elect presidents. The anti-Jacksonian Whig Party was able to become a major party almost overnight due to the genius of its founders and the lack of steady opposition to the Democracy. By 1834 disgust with Jackson’s Bank War, veto of internal improvements and fetish for gold backed currency united the many disparate anti-Jackson groups into one political force. Former Federalists, Southern Nullifiers, western merchants and Anti-Masons formed into the Whig Party. The English Whigs of old, such as John Wilkes and Lord Grey, opposed royal despotism. The American Whigs of 1836 opposed the despotism of King Andrew the First. The Democrats mocked the new party at first. They laughed at it as a new grouping of “Federalists, nullifiers and bank men” which constituted an “organized incompatibility.”

The Democrats claimed they had nothing to worry from the Whigs but the campaign strategy they formed did scare the Little Magician of Kinderhook. Too loosely united to hold a national convention or run a national campaign, the Whigs instead nominated regional tickets. This adds a great deal of color to the campaign as it increases the number of players. The hope of the Whigs was that they would win enough electoral votes to deny Van Buren a majority of the electoral votes. This would throw the election of the House of Representatives where the Whigs would unite to support one candidate. This is a clever and ingenious plan for a party that had just been born and had no way of competing with the established Democratic Party. The three candidates who ran as the Whig standard bearers came from three different sections of the country and all were nominated by state legislatures. The western candidate was General and former Governor William Henry Harrison of Ohio. The man who had led the soldiers of the republic against Tecumseh at the Thames, “Old Tippecanoe” had defeated Tecumseh’s crazy brother The Prophet at the costly Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana. Harrison was the Whig candidate for the West. Southern Nullifiers placed Tennessee Senator Hugh Lawson White into contention for the presidency in 1834 soon after his break with Jackson. White was a moderate on the states' rights issue, which made him acceptable in the South, but not in the North. The third candidate had appeal in his native Massachusetts but really nowhere else: the mercurial Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. A grand orator who had represented two states in Congress, Webster ran on Henry Clay’s American System. His campaign in 1836 would define the Whig platforms in 1840 and 1844.

The general election of 1836 is a wonderful contest. The Whigs mocked Van Buren incessantly as a “dandy” and even referred to him as “hermaphroditic.” The anti-Jacksonian triumvirate of the United States Senate of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and candidate Webster made chaos in the Senate chambers whenever Van Buren was presiding. The lady’s man clay blew kisses to women in the galleries as Webster encouraged disorder in the galleries. Clay, who had learned politics from his former client Aaron Burr, knew how to run a good nasty race. Masters of parliamentary procedure, the three senators arranged for tie votes which forced the waffling Vice-President Van Buren to have to cast a vote and take a stand. Clay made fun of “vanburenish” behavior. Van Buren was known for his refusal to commit to anything of importance. The Whigs told a story that when Van Buren was once asked to take a stand on whether the sun rose in the east he replied: “I have heard that is fact but since I never rise until after the sun is up I cannot possibly make a comment.” Former Whig Congressman David Crockett, the “King of the Wild Frontier”, unleashed a scathing campaign book entitled “The Life of Martin van Buren.” In the work Crockett stated that at six Van Buren “could actually tell when his book was wrong ends upward; and at twelve could read it just as well upside down as right-side up.” Furthermore, Crockett attacked Van Buren as “what the English call a dandy.” “He is as different from General Jackson as dung is from a diamond,” Crockett declared as the mud continued to fly.

The Democrats responded in kind. Harrison’s intelligent and military record were openly mocked by the Democratic newspapers. Webster’s financial record was scrutinized and Hugh L. White was attacked as a radical nullifier because he was a moderate on the issue of state’s rights over federal authority. In the end, all the mud did not matter. The Democrats won because they were the better funded and organized political party. Despite the fact that the Tammany Hall and “Locofoco” branches of the  New York Democratic Party were at war with each other Van Buren still easily won his home state against Harrison. Van Buren comfortably won the election of 1836 but his running-mate did not. When the electoral vote was counted in Congress on February 8, 1837, Van Buren was found to have received 170 votes for president, but Johnson had received only 147 for vice-president. The Virginians who had stormed out of the 1835 convention had come back to bite the Democrats in the behind. While all the Democratic electors had pledged to vote for both Van Buren and Johnson, the state's 23 "faithless electors" refused to vote for Johnson, leaving him one electoral vote short of a majority. This led to a first and only when the Senate was charged with electing the Vice President under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. In a party line vote Johnson was elected over one of the two Whig Party vice-presidential candidates, Francis Granger. John Tyler was not considered for the vice-presidency by the senate in 1836 but by 1841 he would have far larger fish to fry.

The election of 1836 is a fun election in which a lot of incredible things happened. It was the first election to feature the Whig Party and was the first time Van Buren and Harrison would face off in a presidential election. The second match between the two will be rated a lot higher because of its use of gaudy, and fairly modern, campaign tactics and hoopla. The Senate electing the vice-president, Crocket’s vicious campaign book and the Whig strategy all make a for a memorable and interesting race.  

[Rooney]

Why isn't 1932 above 2012? That's a pretty important election.

Important, yes, but the ending was a sure thing. It got a pretty high rating so no need to complain.

[Hamster]

This is excellent, please continue!

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

This is excellent, please continue!

[Rooney]

#35: The Election of 1852

The number thirty-five spot goes to the election of 1852. The last election to field a Whig Party candidate, the election of 1852 is a unique race. It is one in which a major political party was torn apart by its own inner demons and an intriguing Democratic convention produced a unique dark-horse nominee.

By 1852 the nation had lived through four tumultuous years. The presidency of Zachary Taylor had been a rough road to hoe. The crotchety Old Rough and Ready was prone to butting heads with Congress. Secretary of War George W. Crawford was investigated for improprieties involving the Galphin land purchase in Georgia while Taylor threatened to veto the special interest fueled Compromise of 1850. Taylor’s death from bad milk and cherries in July 1850 elevated the consummate New York politico Millard Fillmore to the president’s chair. President Fillmore’s administration signed off on the Compromise of 1850, including the opening of slavery into the New Mexico Territory and the controversial Fugitive Slave Act. Despite the fact that both technically existed before the compromise, Northern “Conscience Whigs” broke with the administration over what appeared to be major concessions to slave holders. Some formed their own “Union Party” and declared they would nominate a strong anti-Southern man for the presidency in 1852. The Democratic Party, divided by warring factions as per usual, was little more united when the canvass of 1852 came around. With Fire-eaters in the South and the sliver tongued abolitionists in the North it is no wonder why 1852 was a great election.

Neither party knew who they were going to nominate for the highest office in 1852. This makes for two highly intriguing and dramatic national conventions. Rarely in American history do both the major parties struggle to find a nominee for president. In 1852 the Whigs and the Democrats went into the convention cities with no front-runner and no idea on who they would pin their hopes for the White House in November. The Whigs, having won the election of 1848, with a Mexican-American War hero looked to rally around General Winfield Scott. The brilliant conqueror of Mexico City, General Scott was a career soldier. A lover of uniforms and a blustering martinet to his good friends, Scott was known as “Old Fuss and Feathers.” As a young soldier he was so impressed by his figure in uniform that he purchased three body length mirrors and set them up so he could look at three different angles of his martial form. Scott was known for primping like a prima donna before meetings and as a the commander of the Mexico City Campaign he had worked above the Polk Administration’s head to make peace with Santa Anna. Extremely rank conscious, he constantly battled with Democratic General Gideon C. Pillow over who got to lead parades down the main thoroughfare in the conquered Mexican capital. Scott was vulnerable to attacks because of his flamboyant nature. Democrats warned of a “Reign of Epaulets” if Scott was elected president. When the Whigs met in Baltimore, Maryland, their party was bitterly divided. New England Whigs clamored for the long-awaited nomination of “God-like Daniel of Massachusetts” for the presidency. Secretary of State Daniel Webster was openly interested in the nomination and felt he deserved it after decades of loyal service to the anti-Jacksonian Democracy cause. Rank-and-file Whigs from the West and Mid-Atlantic states liked Scott because he was a national figure. Southern Whigs and office holders stood behind President Millard Fillmore. A deadlock occurred because most New England delegates supported the hopeless Webster. On the first ballot, Fillmore received all delegate votes from the South except four, but only received 18 northern delegate votes. The vote was 133 for Fillmore, 131 for Scott, and 29 for Webster. This type of close voting would occur for the next fifty-two ballots until on the 53rd ballot Scott bested Fillmore 159–112. The final ballot was an entirely sectional vote with Northern Whigs siding with Scott and Southern Whigs joining with Fillmore. The party was badly divided. The placing of Secretary of the Navy William Alexander Graham, a sometimes poet but a constant North Carolinian, was done to bridge the divide between the Cotton Whigs and Conscience Whigs. In the end this would prove to be a bridge too far.

The wonderful Whig Convention appears boring when compared to the raucous Jacksonian convention the Democrats convened in Baltimore. There was no candidate who stood out as the Democratic front-runner but there were a good deal of candidates who wished to have that role. Former Secretary of State James Buchanan, the 1844 front-runner, returned to the fold as the choice of Northern moderates on the slave and sectional issue. 1848 nominee Lewis Cass trumpeted the call of popular sovereignty, but his age made him a less than ideal nominee. Supreme Court Justice Levi P. Woodbury appealed to Northern Democrats who leaned against the South but were not abolitionists. Former Secretary of War William Marcy counted on his home state of New York to deliver the nomination to him. The loudest of all the candidates was Senator Stephen Arnold Douglas of Illinois. “The Little Giant” was the represent of the Young American Movement. Tammany Hall politician Daniel Sickles was Douglas’s man at the convention and raised considerable hell when he called Buchanan, Cass and Marcy “Old Fogies.” Douglas was running as a man who wanted a young and vibrant nation to expand West with railroads, canals, roads and land grants. Realizing he stood to make a lot of money off of building a Transcontinental Railroad from Chicago to San Francisco, Douglas attacked the Democratic policy of opposing internal improvements. The “Old Fogey” comments of Dan Sickles, who would kill Francis Scott Key’s son in a rage of passion in the same house where William Seward was almost stabbed to death, did not endear the little Douglas to the big Democratic Party. In fact, none of the candidates seemed to be able to break through. Former Senator Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, who was supporting Woodbury, rose as a compromise choice when a few Pennsylvania delegates through his name in contention as a possible compromise choice. By the 49th ballot Pierce had emerged as the second dark-horse Democratic presidential nominee in eight years. The Buchanan delegates were given the right to name Pierce’s running-mate. They chose Buchanan’s close friend and associate Senator William Rufus Devane King as Pierce’s running-mate. Known to some as “Mr. Buchanan’s Wife” or “Mr. Buchanan’s better half”, King was dying of tuberculosis in Cuba when he was nominated. He would never campaign for the office and would die before ever arriving in Washington to assume his vice-presidential duties.
The general election of 1852 was highly negative and that is mostly because the two candidates differed so greatly in terms of background and temperament. Hen being told of Pierce’s nomination, a friend from his home town in New Hampshire commented wryly: “Now Franks a good fellow…and nobody can’t complain of him as a Congressman, but when it comes to the whole United States I do say that in my judgment Frank Pierce is going to be spread durned thin.” This low opinion of the former Granite State Senator was one of the Whigs major talking points. Accusing him of making money off of public land grants, the Whigs also maligned him as an alcoholic. Criticizing Pierce’s decent war record in the Mexican War, the Whigs mocked him as the “hero of many a well fought bottle.” As Democrats maligned the martinet Scott for his love of pomp and protocol, the Whigs called Pierce “the fainting general” because at the Battle of Conteras his horse was startled by a cannon blast and injured Pierce’s groin. The pain would cause Pierce, a general named by President Polk, to faint during the heat of the struggle at Churubusco. Pierce was accused of cowardice by General Scott himself at Churubusco, so it was to be expected his campaign would do the same. It was said that when one Scott orator in Ohio fell from his platform on a church’s step he commented that he had only been showing, “How General Pierce fell from his horse.” It is to be noted that General Ulysses S. Grant, the military genius who saved the Union, wrote this about Pierce in his memoir: "Whatever General Pierce's qualifications may have been for the Presidency, he was a gentleman and a man of courage. I was not a supporter of him politically, but I knew him more intimately than I did any other of the volunteer generals." This is not half a bad endorsement.

Scott, knowing that his party was falling apart at the seams, engaged in an unheard of “non-political” tour of the West in October 1852. On his “non-political” tour he made sure to attack the Democratic platform and speak on behalf of several Whig Party congressional candidates. Scott’s claim that he was traveling to find a suitable spot for a soldier’s home fooled no one and the first ever campaign swing embarrassed Scott more than bolstering his party with “drum and fife” enthusiasm.

The election of 1852 was made exciting by the conventions and by the general election, but the final incredible moment of the election was the utter destruction of the Whig Party. The Whigs were badly fractured in 1852. The Union Party, led by angry Southern Whigs, had nominated Webster for president and the Sage of Massachusetts had agreed to accept votes. The Union Party nominated Webster while attacking Scott as nothing more than a military figure used as a puppet by Northern Whigs like William Henry Seward. The Democrats, on the other hand, ran a united, organized campaign. The Locofocos supported Pierce over Senator John P. Hale, the Free Soil Party nominee, and the Southern Fire-eaters backed him over the Southern Right’s Party. In the end “Gunpowder Glory” failed to save the Whig’s campaign or their party. Pierce’s overwhelming win the electoral and popular vote began the rapid deterioration of the party of Clay and Webster.

The death of a party is always a dramatic and unique experience in American political history. While the final outcome of 1852 was never in doubt the conventions and campaign do a great job entertaining election followers. The piercing of the Whig’s overinflated balloon would cause a massive explosion that would produce another major party and eventually a bloody civil war.     
             

[Rooney]

#34: The Election of 1868

Coming in at number thirty-four is the election of 1868. The first general contest after the end of the American Civil War, the contest pitted a national hero against a classical liberal New York politico. The 21st presidential campaign was marked by both national unity and deep, vicious racially charged division. The campaign focused on one major issue: Reconstruction. Perhaps the most divisive and transformative moment in 19th Century America, Reconstruction deeply divided the nation in terms of North and South, black and white and Grant and Seymour.

Following the tragic martyrdom of Abraham Lincoln at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, a mischievous and vainglorious actor, the nation was handed over to Andrew Johnson. A tailor by trade and hell raiser by temperament, the Johnson Administration passed through the stormy tempest of Reconstruction with very little easy sailing. Following a brief honeymoon with the Radical Republicans, Johnson then insulted them by declaring that presidential reconstruction was the way of the future. During 1866 and 1867 Johnson vetoed one Reconstruction act after another and even encouraged states to not ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. In an epic struggle over civil rights, Johnson agreed to giving ex-slaves limited rights while Radicals called for full suffrage and equality. General Ulysses Simpson Grant, the savior of the Union, was greatly in favor of full rights for African-Americans. His relationship with Johnson soured during Grant’s brief, unpopular tenure as acting Secretary of War and Johnson’s humorously inept “Swing around the Bend” campaign tour in 1866. The Radicals in Congress eventually plotted to replace Johnson with Senator Benjamin Franklin Wade of Ohio and in 1868 the House of Representatives impeached the president. The president survived conviction because eight Republicans in the Senate decided that being a son of a bitch was not enough of a reason to impeach a president. “The country is going to the devil!” the bald, crippled Pennsylvania radical Thaddeus Stevens steamed histrionically on the floor of the House when the acquittal was announced.

It was in this highly partisan and volatile atmosphere that a most pacific nominee for president would be nominated. The campaign of 1868 ranks as an election which put forward two qualified, honest candidates for the nation’s highest office and honor. On May 20, 1868, the Republicans convened in Chicago, Illinois, and the Windy City swept General Ulysses Simpson Grant into the position as presidential nominee. Grant was by no means the most politically savvy choice, nor had he spent years struggling to become the president. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Senator Ben Wade, Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania or Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax from Indiana would have all been better politicians to serve as the GOP nominee. General Grant was something far more than a mere politician. Grant was the savior of the Union, the conqueror of Donaldson, Vicksburg and Lee. Perhaps the greatest military mind to ever wear a U.S. uniform, Ulysses Grant represented far more than just military glory. His simple, American features showed the people that he was a common man who was forced to become great. Grant was honest, simple and quietly intelligent. A math genius and lover of novels, Grant had risen slowly through the Union ranks through hard work, victories and the constant efforts of Congressman Elihu Washburne. His nomination for the presidency in 1868 was a message to the nation: the struggle of war and Reconstruction will soon end. Paired with the perennial politician Colfax, Grant shrewdly declared to the convention: “Let us have peace.” The great irony of this statement is that Grant’s close friend and military aide John Rawlins wrote most of Grant’s acceptance speech, all of which has been forgotten except the comment “let us have peace.” Grant read and approved of Rawlins’s speech, signing the bottom of the address, “Let us have peace, U.S. Grant.” “By God!” Rawlins declared, “That clinches it!” The comment was added and has become one of the most well-known campaign slogans in political history.

On the opposite side of the political coin, the Democrats met in New York City. The seat of a great deal of political corruption and talk of treason during the late war, the Democrats wanted to shake the shadow of Fernando Wood and Clement Valandigham. The 1868 Democratic Convention is a great show of wonderful political theater and drama. The front-runner for the presidential nod was the party’s 1864 vice-presidential nominee, former Ohio Congressman George H. Pendleton. A Copperhead during the war, Pendleton was hardly a good candidate to face off against the man who saved the Union. Several candidates lobbied to pick up Pendleton’s slack, including Lieutenant General Winfield Scott Hancock, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field,  former Congressman Francis P. Blair and even ex-Republican Party grandmaster Salmon P. Chase, the U.S. Chief Justice. No candidate managed to emerge with the needed 2/3rd majority. The Curse of Jackson deadlocked the convention until Governor Horatio Seymour of New York broke through with the backing of Ohio Democrats. Chase withdrew in favor of the heavily whiskered Seymour and a massive stampede occurred for Seymour.  “I must not be nominated by this Convention, as I could not accept the nomination if tendered!” Seymour cried out as the stampede continued. Finally, by the 21st ballot Seymour was declaring from the floor that he would accept the nomination if it would help the country and the Democratic Party. “Then accept the damn nomination then!” a wily Illinois delegate cried out. Seymour reluctantly agreed to run against the popular Grant. His constant refusals to take on the mantle as Democratic nominee gained him the unshakable nickname “the Great Decliner.” General Francis P. Blair was named as running-mate after not one but three other men declined the honor. The 1868 Democratic Convention is a lot of fun and should be remembered as one of the great conventions in American politics.

The general election of 1868 would, at first glance, seem like a mismatch. Grant, a popular war hero in a nation that sorely needed heroes, took on a tainted New York politico in Seymour. Seymour was mocked as “the rioter” because his apparent encouragement of Irish riots in New York City in July 1864. Despite this different the volatile issues of the campaign made it a close and memorable race. Reconstruction was the only issue of the campaign and the Democrats felt that it was one which worked well for their side. Blair wrote a nationally published letter which declared boldly that the “real and only issue in this contest was the overthrow of Reconstruction, as the radical Republicans had forced it in the South.” The Democrats attacked Grant mercilessly as a Black Republican whom wanted to force whites to serve free blacks. They sung a grotesque song to the tune of the minstrel ditty “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines”: “I am Captain Grant of the Black Marines/The stupidest man that ever was seen.” The intelligence of Grant was a favorite Democratic punching bag in 1868. The only time Grant had ever voted was in 1856 and he voted for the Democrat James Buchanan. The Democrats mocked Grant as a “deaf and dumb” candidate who was a mere puppet of Wade, Stevens and Sumner. Seymour went on the stump and toured the nation speaking against Radical Reconstruction while Grant stayed at home in Galena, Illinois, in the house that the admiring citizens of the town erected for him. A silly little Democratic pamphlet entitled “The Lively Life of U.S. Grant, the Dummy Candidate” mocked the general by claiming, “Grant has nothing to say and says it day and night.”

With little ammunition to use against Grant, the Democrats unleashed even more vicious assaults on the free African-Americans of the North and South. Blair, the veep nominee, unleashed the most vitriolic assaults on the Republicans and their Reconstruction Plan. Blair accused Thad Stevens of wanting to “Africanize” the South. “This is a white man’s country, let white men govern it,” a popular Democratic slogan in Southern states proclaimed. One of the most interesting aspects of the Seymour Campaign is that it was two campaigns in one. In the South the Seymour men ran as strong anti-black, anti-Republican crusaders. In the North, however, Seymour’s supporters tried to win the votes of newly enfranchised African-Americans. A writer in Nashville offered some unique logic to encourage freed slaves to vote for the Democrats: “If your State and her sister Southern states had not seceded from the Union you would not today be free…If you are indebted to any party or power for your present liberty, you are indebted to the Southern People [and]….the Democratic Party.” Most African-American voters did not fall for this pretzel logic.

[Rooney]

The Election of 1868, continued

The Republicans gave as well as they took. “Scratch a Democrat,” cried the New York Tribune, “and you’ll find a rebel under his skin.” Seymour was portrayed as a Devil by the Republican media machine. The New York Tribune led the cartoon campaign with the picture of Seymour standing on the steps of the City Hall calling a mob of murderers "my friends." The Hartford Post called him "almost as much of a corpse" as ex-President James Buchanan, who had just died. Additionally, Republicans alleged that insanity ran through the Seymour family, citing as evidence the suicide of his father. As for Frank Blair, he was attacked as a drunkard. A famous anecdote of the time was when Blair stayed in a Harford, Connecticut, hotel and spent $10 on room and board but over $60 on liquor and lemons.

In the end the 1868 election came down to the black vote. 500,000 or so freemen voted for Grant and that is how he won the day. The electoral college was a landslide for Grant but the popular vote was fairly narrow. Had the freemen not voted for Grant the New Yorker Seymour would have won the White House in November 1868. This is one of the main reasons why within four months of the election the Fifteenth Amendment was passed by the Republican state legislatures. This amendment was focused on protecting suffrage for blacks. This amendment is one of the great heritages of the 1868 election.

The 1868 election is a great election with some good candidates. While Grant should have been an easy winner a tough campaign was needed for Ulysses to cross over the finish line first. 1868 took place during an incredible moment of time and is a fine election which fits the temper of the times like a glove. It is a great campaign that only is placed in the thirties because there are many others which are even better.               

[Rooney]

#33: The Election of 1880

Placing at number thirty-three on this election list is the election of 1880. A contentious Republican Convention and a truly narrow victory for “Boatman Jim” Garfield place this otherwise placid campaign in the number thirty-three spot.
Compared to 1876, the campaign that preceded 1880, the election is fairly dull. At one point Pulitzer’s New York World gave higher billing to the arrival of English actress Sarah Bernhardt in America than the nomination of the Democratic presidential nominee. One could argue that the election of 1880 was ignored by many at the time because the nation had gone through hell and back during the Grant and Hayes years. Reconstruction’s end in 1877 was followed by massive labor unrest. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 paralyzed much of the Eastern seaboard. As Maryland National Guardsman fired on railway strikers in Baltimore the unpopular President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in the military to break up strikers in Pennsylvania. As the Pennsylvania Railroad burned in a Pittsburgh evening, the military opened fire on strikers. In Scranton vigilantes shot and killed three strikers. The strike would spill over into Illinois and Missouri before it was all said and done. The controversial election of  1876, the bloody Reconstruction and the disastrous Great Upheaval of 1877 made many Americans turn from politics in 1880. A power vacuum in the Republican Party would save the campaign from political oblivion and make for one of the most entertaining conventions in American history.

“I believe in a party that believes in good crops, that is glad when a fellow finds a gold mine, that rejoices when there are forty bushels of wheat and acre,” Republican orator Robert Ingersoll waxed as the 1880 Republican Convention opened in Chicago, Illinois. “The Democratic Party is the party of famine, it is a good friend of an early frost, it believes in the Colorado beetle and the weevil.” This highly partisan, if fairly odd, diatribe began a truly intriguing political convention which should rank with the 1912 and 1924 Democratic Conventions. As delegates filed into the convention hall they all had one name on their mind: Ulysses S. Grant. Encouraged by his incredible world tour from 1877 to 1879 and the calls of conservative Stalwart Republicans to “save the party from itself”, the former president openly declared he would seek a third term in the White House. Backed by New York Senators Roscoe Conkling and Thomas Platt, Grant was the choice of Pennsylvania Railroad President Tom Scott and the board of the New York Central Railroad. Mocked as “a Trojan horse’ by the reform minded Half-breed Republicans, it appeared as if Grant was going to walk away with the nomination. Ingersoll’s “Plumed Knight” James G. Blaine, senator from Maine and 1876 candidate, was only one of many anti-Grant candidates. Pennsylvania boss J. Donald Cameron, Illinois boss John Logan, and Conkling were attacked as the “triumvirate” who would rule the nation if Grant was elected president in 1880. However, there seemed to be no way to stop the “Hero of Appomattox.” Conkling came up with the brilliant scheme of forcing a Unit Rule on the convention. If passed, it would have meant that every delegate in a state’s delegation would have to vote for the choice of the majority of the state’s delegation. This rule would have handed Grant the nomination. This was the first real battle of the convention where Congressman James Garfield would boldly declare, “I regard it [the unit rule] as being more important than even the choice of a candidate.”

J. Donald Cameron, the chair of the convention, planned on using his position of power in the party to adopt the unit rule without a vote from the delegates. When Stalwart delegate William E. Chandler heard about this he recruited Colorado Senator Jerome Chafee to oppose the ruling. The Half-breeds removed Cameron as chair and the convention would have fallen apart had Conkling lieutenant Chester Arthur not intervened. In a deal he made with the 30 most anti-Grant delegates, Arthur brokered the decision that Cameron would return as chair and the unit rule would be voted on by the convention. This deal is what opened the way for James Garfield. A longtime Ohio Congressman and Civil War veteran, Garfield was the son of a widowed mother who had one almost drowned in the Erie Canal. Known as “Boatman Jim”, “Sunny Jim” or “Preacher Jim” Garfield, the Ohio congressman had offended no one on either side of the debate. When the unit rule was voted down the convention was thrown open. The high drama of the unit rule debate is only eclipsed by the balloting itself. Grant, Blaine. Senator John “the Ohio Icicle” Sherman and ex-Secretary of State Elihu Washburne all competed for the nomination, along with many favorite son candidates. James A. Garfield, who was representing the Ohio delegation, gave a major speech in support of Sherman, but soon found himself among those receiving delegate votes. When a rogue elector from Pennsylvania decided to vote for Garfield on the eight ballot a slow and steady tidal wave began to overtake the convention. Senator Ben “Kid Gloves” Harrison was sent to Garfield’s hotel room in Chicago to ask him to accept the nomination. The teacher from Mentor Ohio reluctantly agreed to seek the nomination and by the 36th contentious ballot he had beaten Grant and Blaine. Arthur, the man who saved the convention and killed the unit rule, was made vice-presidential candidate in order to appease Conkling, Cameron and the other pro-Grant bosses. The high drama of this convention is one of the finest moments in American political history.

The Democratic Convention was no bad either. Meeting in Cincinnati, the Democrats could taste victory. The nation was in recession and the incumbent president was an unpopular Republican. All they needed was a top tier candidate; however Governor Samuel Tilden, the 1876 nominee, had withdrawn his name from consideration. Congressman Samuel Randall of Pennsylvania, a Copperhead during the Civil War, emerged as the top choice of the Tilden men. Wary of naming another Seymour or Greeley, the Democrats looked to someone else to lead the campaign. Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, a West Pointer who served with bravery at Cemetery Ridge as Pickett’s legions were thrown at it, emerged as a potential game changer. He had tried for the party’s nod in 1868 only to be denied. With his opposition divided and weak, Major General Hancock was nominated easily on the third ballot and given businessman and pro-gold Hoosier activist John English as his running-mate. A conservative ticket adopted a conservative platform calling for the end of greenbacks, withdrawal from world affairs, reduction of the tariff and even a nod for civil service reform. “Hancock was superb,” Major General George Brinton McClellan said of Hancock’s serve on the field of Gettysburg and it was hoped by the Democrats his campaign would also be superb. After two excellent conventions the general election would be messy and vindictive. Mud would fly and sully the superb uniforms of both General Hancock and Garfield.  

[Rooney]

The 1880 election, continued

The great conventions of 1880 are only partially complimented by a good general election. The two parties spent little time discussing the serious economic or social issues of the day. Congressman James B. Weaver of Iowa, the Greenback-Labor Party nominee, and former Augusta Portland Neal Dow, the nominee of the dry and daring Prohibition Party, were the only candidates to make serious comments about the new industrial order in the U.S.A. Dow, who had notoriously taken all the rum in Portland and killed those who tried to take it back, spoke passionately about the evils of “Demon Rum” and the need to give women full property and voting rights. Congressman Weaver introduced the Progressive Party platform decades before TR would don the Bull Moose antlers. Weaver’s party called for full civil service exams, the regulation of interstate commerce, the eight hour day, an income tax, the direct election of U.S. Senators, the abolition of child labor, free and funded public schools and a uniform national sanitation code. These radical theories, for the 1880s, played well with European ethnic voters and urban city dwellers. As Dow and Weaver spoke about issues it is upsetting to note that all the major parties wished to do was insult one another. Dow and especially Weaver make for great characters in this election and did much to elevate the discussion. The Republicans and Democrats did a great deal to deflate it.   

While Republicans boosted Garfield they did all they could to insult Hancock. He was attacked because his son married a Southern girl, called him a coward on the battlefield, questioned his leadership at the Battle of the Wilderness in spring 1864 and released a pamphlet of blank pages entitled, “A Record of the Statesmanship and Political Achievements of General Winfield Scott Hancock.” If one issue was discussed in full it was the tariff. Republicans mocked Hancock for declaring in his acceptance address, “The tariff is a local issue.” The Republican-leaning Harper’s Weekly declared in amazement that Hancock’s statements were, “loose, aimless, unintelligent, absurd.” More and more it looked as if Hancock did not understand political issues. Thomas Nast famously drew a cartoon of a perplexed Hancock whispering into someone’s ear as he spoke: “Who is tariff and why is he for revenue only?”

The Democrats answered the “Hancock is ignorant” charge with “Garfield is corrupt.” In 1868 Garfield received a $329 check from the corrupt Union Pacific dummy corporation Credit Mobilier. Garfield never once allowed the money to nudge him toward Union Pacific’s way of seeing things but the Democrats called it a bribe. The Democrats reminded voters that as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Garfield had made $5,000 off of a pavement contract for D.C. Above all the Democrats tried to jockey for half-breed support by reminding voters that Arthur, the Republican VP nominee, had been removed from his job as Collector of the Port of New York because of corruption. It was a Republican president who removed him and Republicans had stopped the reform-minded Theodore Roosevelt, senior, from taking the job. The October Surprise of 1880 came from the Democrat’s campaign. On October 20, 1880, a New York newspaper called the Truth published a letter allegedly written by Garfield to an H.L. Morey of Lynn, Massachusetts, the preceding January. Just three sentences long, this letter—written on congressional stationery—implied that Garfield fully favored Chinese immigration. It also charged that Garfield was in favor of importing Chinese whiskey. The fear of the “Yellow Peril” was felt so strongly on the West Coast that Garfield was forced to attack the letter. He called it a forgery and it turned out that it was. However, it would cost him California and almost the election.

The election results of 1880 are highly entertaining and dramatic. Many Republicans feared that their run of luck was over. In Plymouth Notch, Vermont, a young Calvin Coolidge asked his father, Justice of the Peace John Coolidge, for a penny to buy some candy. John told Calvin that the Democrats were going to win the presidency soon and that this meant hard times were coming. No pennies could be spared for candy. When Garfield and the Republicans narrowly kept the White House the ever dry Calvin asked his father, “The Republicans won so may I have the penny now?” The Republicans won but it was by the skin of their teeth. Garfield won the popular vote by a little more than 9,000 votes. Hancock won 53% of all the counties in the country, including Adams County, Pennsylvania, where he had struggled for the Union at Gettysburg. Both sides won 19 states and the switch of only a few thousand votes in New York would have changed the winner of the popular vote. Republican shenanigans in Indiana returned that state to the GOP Column as did vote buying in Connecticut. In December 1880, Vice-President-elect Arthur enjoyed a sumptuous feast at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City. He laughed about the voter fraud in Indiana as Conkling and Cameron applauded the dirty tricks that won the election. In the Democratic Solid South voter suppression was used to keep Republican blacks from the polls as well as lynching, shootings and other forms of violence. Both sides used voter intimidation and dirty tricks to try to win in 1880. This is just one of many reasons why it is a dramatic and interesting election. It shows what lengths people are willing to go to in order to triumph in our nation’s quadrennial contest.   

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hancock's II Corps faced Pickett's charge on Cemetary Ridge, not Cemetary Hill, which the XI Corps defended along with what remained of the I Corps. I should note that elements of the I Corps were also reinforcing Hancock's position partically between the Angle and Cemetary Hill and towards to the South of the Angle where the Vermont brigade and a few others were stationed.

[Rooney]

Hancock's II Corps faced Pickett's charge on Cemetary Ridge, not Cemetary Hill, which the XI Corps defended along with what remained of the I Corps. I should note that elements of the I Corps were also reinforcing Hancock's position partically between the Angle and Cemetary Hill and towards to the South of the Angle where the Vermont brigade and a few others were stationed.

Senator, I meant ridge and not hill. I will make a change. One has to admit that for all I wrote one error is not too shabby.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hancock's II Corps faced Pickett's charge on Cemetary Ridge, not Cemetary Hill, which the XI Corps defended along with what remained of the I Corps. I should note that elements of the I Corps were also reinforcing Hancock's position partically between the Angle and Cemetary Hill and towards to the South of the Angle where the Vermont brigade and a few others were stationed.

Senator, I meant ridge and not hill. I will make a change. One has to admit that for all I wrote one error is not too shabby.

This is not an Atlasia board, so there is no need for addressing me by that title here.

I am generally satisfied with your series Rooney and look forward to its continuance, so don't think otherwise based on that post about Gettysburg. Hancock is one of my favorite Civil War Generals.

[Rooney]

#32: The Election of 1848

In the revolutionary year of 1848 the election that year will land at thirty-two on this list of lists. As Europe plunged into fire and socialist chaos the United States experienced the first election after the great land grab at Guadalupe-Hidalgo. A vastly expanded nation faced vast problems in terms of slavery and sectional rights. 1848 was the first presidential election to occur on the same day. The same day voting was directly correlated to the incredible economic and technological strives the capitalist United States had experienced since the dawn of the 19th Century. The 1848 election would be fought in a nation in transition.

The election of 1848 can be included in the aftermath of the U.S.-Mexican War. President James Knox Polk, elected by the whisker of a hair in 1844, had put forward a plan to achieve four main goals for the United States in four years. He wanted to lower tariffs, establish an Independent Treasury System, gain the Southwest from Mexico and acquire the Oregon Territory from Great Britain. Through an ingenious mixture of diplomacy, warfare, double dealing and intense political angling Polk achieved all four goals. The Democrats in 1848 would run with the Polk Legacy proudly as their platform. The gaining and tired president had no interest in the presidential nod and he did not have a preferred candidate. The Whigs, in contrast, sought to reverse most of the Polk Administration’s accomplishments, especially in the economic sphere. The Mexican Cession, one of Polk’s greatest accomplishments, reintroduced an old political issue with new, steaming vitriol.

The expansion of slavery was the dominant issue of the 1848 election. Democratic fire breathers in the South saw the Wilmot Proviso as a Northern scheme to deny them their rightful political place in the new territories. More and more Americans were beginning to form strong opinions about the moral and economic place of slavery in American society. Pro-slavery southerners argued strongly that slavery was protected by the U.S. Constitution and could not legally be kept from the new territories. Northern and border state Whigs and Democrats began to espouse the theory of popular sovereignty- the idea that slavery should be determined by a popular vote in the territories. The idea that human rights can be put to a vote is, as Abe Lincoln would later say, a doctrine that is as morally robust as, “a broth made of the shadow of a crow which starved to death.” However, in 1848 one can see why popular sovereignty was so appealing. The idea that slavery would go down to a handful of voters in the Western territories is a nice idea because it does not require deep political and philosophical thought on morality and economic policy. In 1848 the Democrats would run proudly on the doctrine of popular sovereignty. This would lead to a rebellion in their ranks and the rise of a new, dynamic political party.   

1848 is an exciting race because it introduced a political party which would contest two national elections and poll well in both of them. As some argued that slavery was Constitutionally protected and could not be limited, some Northern Democrats and Whigs contested that the Congress was given power to regulate the territories by Article I of the U.S. Constitution and pointed to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 as proof that slavery could be banned from territories. These individuals, mostly Northern Democrats who belonged to the radical reformist Locofoco faction in New York State, rebelled against the Democratic Party as a whole and met to form the Free Soil Party. The Free Soil Party stood for, “Free labor, free men and free soil.” Radically opposed to the spread of slavery into the territories they would play the role of spoiler in the 1848 contest and in so doing make the election much closer than it should have ever been.

The Democratic Convention of 1848 is interesting because of the battle inside the New York State Delegation. Following the death of former New York Governor Silas Wright, a former U.S. Senator who declined the 1844 Democratic vice-presidential nomination, the state party began to tear itself apart. The “Hunkers” were conservatives who “hunkered down” in their views to win office squared off against the “Barnburners”, antis-slavery men whom Hunkers charged would burn down the barn to get rid of the rats. Hunkers from New York liked Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, the general who famously broke his sword over his knee at Fort Detroit to protest General William B. Hull/s surrender of it. Barnburners liked former President Martin van Buren or New Hampshire Senator John Parker Hale for the presidential nomination. Senator Cass, who had almost won the nod in 1844, was an easy winner over Van Buren, former Secretary of State James Buchanan and Associate Justice to the Supreme Court Levi Woodbury. His nomination was coupled with the nomination of General William Orlando Butler for vice-president. Butler, who had been in charge of the administration of Mexico City after General Winfield Scott captured it in, was a southerner and slave owner. Cass and the Democratic Platform endorsed popular sovereignty whole heartedly and in so doing alienated the Barnburners. They walked out of the convention and in June and July held a convention which created the Free Soil Party. This convention nominated Martin van Buren for president and Charles Francis Adams, the son of the late, great John Quincy Adams, for vice-president. The histrionic storming out of the convention coupled with the creation of a new political party headed by a former president is excellent political theater. The Democratic Convention in Baltimore in May 1848 is a good convention and one that adds to the story of the campaign.

The Whig Convention in Philadelphia is also quite entertaining. Perennial candidate and soothing statesman Henry Clay threw his hat into the ring one more time. Clay, who stewed angrily that he had been denied the 1840 nomination when he was sure to win, was afraid that the Whigs would nominate a Mexican War general only because they wanted to win. Clay had lost his son in the war and was bitter towards anyone who had achieved glory in the war. He compared military glory to a rainbow over a field of skulls and he meant it too. Senator Daniel Webster, another candidate, was equally unimpressed with the warlike candidates. He referred to General Zachary Taylor as “an illiterate frontier colonel” and warned there were thousands of Whigs who “will not vote for a candidate brought forward only because of his successful fighting in this war against Mexico.” The Whigs were not united behind Major General Zachary Taylor, the nominee who had never voted in an election and did not even vote for himself. Taylor also refused to even read the letter informing him of his nomination because the postage was not paid in advance on it. The Whigs eventually had to send a prepaid letter to Baton Rouge and made a big deal out of how frugal their nominee was. Senator Webster was nominated for vice-president but declined the honor, quipping: “I do not wish to be buried until I am actually dead.”

The general election of 1848 is a wonderful ride. The Whigs attacked Cass as being corrupt and dishonest as the Democrats called Taylor stupid, unhealthy and purposefully vague. Taylor never took a firm stance on the issue of the expansion of slavery. A Louisiana slave owner, it was assumed that Taylor was for the expansion of slavery to the West. A dark joke went around the campaign trial that Taylor had died of lockjaw. The Whigs never attempted to put forward a wordy platform that said much beside praising Taylor’s war record. Outgoing Congressman Abraham Lincoln addressed the Democrat’s point in a memorable speech on July 27, 1848. Lincoln made a virtue of vagueness. “The people,” he said, “say to General Taylor, ‘If you are elected, shall we have a national bank?’ He answers, ‘Your will, gentlemen, not mine…If you do not desire [one] I will not attempt to force [it] on you.’” Lincoln also insulted Andrew Jackson’s love of forcing his will on the people and viciously ridiculed Lewis Cass’s war record. Indignant Democrats on the House of Representatives floor threw up their arms and left the room crying out, “We give up!” It was one of Lincoln’s finest hours.

Taylor remembered the campaign as one marked by the “vilest slanders of the most unprincipled demagogues this or any other nation was ever cursed with, who have pursued me like bloodhounds.” Yes, the Democrats called Taylor semi-literate, England’s candidate and a man so cheap that he refused to wear nice clothes, but the Whigs gave as good as they got. They found in Cass a fountain of evils. He was accused of encouraging white slavery in the Northwest Territory, engaging in graft as chief of Indian Affairs and making millions off of insider land speculation deals as Secretary of War for Jackson and Van Buren. One Whig newspaper simply entitled a headline: “GEN. CASS IS NOT A TRUTHFUL MAN.” In the end it is quite a safe bet to state that neither side told the full truth.

The election results are intriguing. Van Buren’s Free Soil campaign took 10% of the vote and outpolled Cass in New York State. In a nation experiencing massive economic growth and incredible land expansion over the past four years, one would have expected the Democrats to have won easily. The Whigs ran a smart campaign by nominating a vague, uncontroversial war hero and exploited the Democratic weaknesses on slavery. The narrow Taylor win can be directly tied to the Van Buren candidacy and the votes he syphoned from the Cass ticket. The election of 1848 is a memorable campaign because it introduced a third party political force and focused on the major issues of the post-Mexican War political sphere. The issues of slavery’s expansion would dominate the elections of 1852, 1856 and 1860. 1848 was the first election dominated by this important issue and that makes this election an important one in U.S. history.

[Rooney]

#31: The Election of 1976

Landing at number thirty-one on the list is America’s bicentennial campaign. The election of 1976 involved the rise of a Southern dark horse candidate and a spirited conservative primary challenge to an incumbent president. The election was one of “insiders” versus “outsiders” with both sides claiming victories in America’s two-hundredth year.

The campaign of 1976 is a truly wonderful election because it allows the election watcher to witness the rise of not one but two Washington outsiders, both of whom would become president. The nation hungered for an outsider following the incompetence, dishonesty and government meddling of the Nixon and Ford years. President Richard Milhous Nixon, a perennially sinister Washington man, and his well-meaning vice-president for a few months Gerald R. Ford had mismanaged the nation’s affairs for eight long years. The nation was crushed under the heel of stagflation and betrayed by the lies of Watergate and Vietnam. Nixon’s resignation and pardon showed the country that the nation’s capital could not be trusted to deliver change. To find that agent of change the Democratic Party would turn to a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia. The Republicans would make a selection between President Ford, a politician since 1949,  and a former actor and businessman who wanted to take the left-leaning Republicanism of Nixon and Ford and transform it into a conservative alternative in American politics.  
              
The 1976 Democratic Primaries are fascinating for one reason: the metamorphosis of Jimmy Carter. Former George Governor Jimmy Carter had transformed himself from a small town, petty racist state senator into a progressive executive of the New South. A fiscally conservative governor who spoke the populist talk, Carter entered the 1976 primaries soon after the McGovern travesty in 1972. Hamilton Jordan and Pat Caddell, Carter’s political brain trust, sat with the governor in December 1974 and put together their game plan for victory in November 1976. Carter, they said, was not a lawyer, not from Washington and not a career politician. In short, Carter was everything President Ford was not. Carter was also everything his better known primary opponents were not. Carter’s announcement for president was mocked at first. Even his mother did not believe it when he told her he was running for president. “President of what?” Ms. Vivian Carter had asked. A famous newsreel from 1975 portrayed people giggling in confusion when asked the question, “Who is Jimmy Carter?” The best answer came from a young man who replied with a smile, “I know who Jimmy Carter is. Jimmy Carter’s a basketball player!” As Birch Bayh, Terry Sanford, Sergeant Shriver, Hubert Humphrey, Mo Udall, Scoop Jackson, Frank Church and George Wallace laughed; Carter began to show that young man that while he did not have the skills on the court he did have them on the trail.  

Carter’s campaign made effective use of public funding. He was able to tackle one obstacle after another and attain public funding of his campaign. This was a public relations coup because it showed the nation that his campaign was one to be taken seriously. Carter was determined to prove to the media that he was no also run. Carter’s fervent religion proved to be a media attention getter as much as his successful campaign for public financing. A devout Baptist, Carter picked up support from the newly minted evangelical movement. George Gallup, Junior, called 1976 the “year of the evangelical.” The economic hardships of the 1970s coupled with the black despair of the unwinnable Vietnam quagmire drove thousands into the fold of born again Christianity. Carter’s sister Ruth Stapleton was a famous evangelist and he had served in the inner cities as a missionary in the 1960s. Just ten years after meeting with black youth leaders in New York City he was not running for president. The evangelical flair of his young campaign staff and workers was equaled only by his pious observance of the Bible. The Carter Campaign of 1976 is one of the most interesting case studies in presidential politics. It was half-political campaign and half-tent revival. Carter was, according to Time, the “most unabashed moralist to seek the presidency since William Jennings Bryan.” In a nation betrayed by war and scandal, the Sunday School teacher who wanted public funding for his campaign and a Bible on his campaign busses was just the moralist they wanted.

The story of the 1976 Democratic Primary is one of Carter running ahead of everyone else. A long series of “anti-Carters” rose and were punched down by the plucky peanut picker. Carter’s strategy to win the Iowa Caucus, despite the fact that it had no delegates at stake, proved to be wise as it gave him a lot of airtime with very little money spent. His big win in the Hawkeye State created a media buzz around the former Georgia governor. By the time he arrived in New Hampshire his opponents were campaigning that the media was ignoring them. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, “the Senator from Boeing”, made a fateful decision not to compete in the early Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, which Jimmy Carter won after liberals split their votes among four other candidates. Carter then stormed into the South and walloped Governor George Wallace, a former arch-segregationist and presidential gadfly, in the Florida and North Carolina Primaries. While Jackson won victories in Massachusetts and New York, his campaign ran out of military-industrial complex money and he was beaten badly by Carter in Pennsylvania. Mormon Congressman Mo Udall, a gifted wit, then took the place as the “anti-Carter.” Udall ran closely behind Carter in several primaries before staking his campaign on Wisconsin. Carter’s evangelical campaign workers overwhelmed the Latter Day Saint powered Udall team. Carter beat Udall in Wisconsin with the clever congressman quipping, “The people have spoken, the bastards.” As Carter closed in on the nomination, an "ABC" (Anybody But Carter) movement started among Northern and Western liberal Democrats. They saw Carter as far too tightfisted with public collars and not at all in love with the Great Society. The leaders of the "ABC" movement - Idaho Senator Frank Church and California Governor Jerry Brown – decided to destroy their chances at stopping Carter by both announcing their candidacies for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. The divided opposition divided their victories and Carter won the party’s nod at the 1976 Democratic Convention in New York City. The exciting primary season ended with a spirited speech by Congresswoman Shelia Jordan and the nomination of Senator Walter “Fritz” Mondale for vice-president. “Gritz and Fritz” were off and running into a wild general election.

The real marquee race of 1976 does not lie in the Democratic fold, but on the right side of the aisle. Neoconservative and social conservatives in the Republican Party were sick of the Nixon and Ford years. After toying with the idea of forming a conservative third party, the William F. Buckley crowd called former Governor Ronald W. Reagan from his ranch and into the sling and arrows of outrageous political fortune. Reagan entered the campaign assaulting the “evil incarnate in the buddy system of Washington.” This thinly veiled assault on Ford’s pardon of Nixon started off the Republican Primary on rocky ground and it only got more vicious. The 1976 Republican Primary is exciting because Ronald Reagan was always an interesting player to watch on the public stage. Folksy and witty, he could be serious and determined when he needed to be. President Ford, with all the powers on the presidency behind him, was able to spend freely and won a narrow victory in the New Hampshire Primary. This was followed by large wins in Florida, Massachusetts and Illinois, the birth state of Reagan. When it looked as if the Reagan campaign was finished the Gipper pulled out what would become his signature issue: military spending. Reagan assaulted Ford and Henry Kissinger for “allowing” the Soviet military to surpass that of the United States. Pounding away at the “arms gap”, like JFK in 1960, Reagan was able to cream Ford in the North Carolina and Texas Primaries. The pipe smoking Ford nearly swallowed the tobacco accessory when he saw that he was behind in delegates to the renegade Californian. Ford came back to beat Reagan in his home state of Michigan and ran neck and neck with Reagan as the two arrived in Kansas City for the convention. Very rarely in modern presidential history has the nominee of a major party not been selected by the time the convention opened. Reagan and Ford faced off in a duel of wills in the old cow town of Kansas City and Reagan blinked. By selecting liberal Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker as his running-mate, Reagan alienated conservatives in Mississippi who threw their support to Ford. Reagan gained no support from liberal Republicans who never vote for conservatives but often whine that conservatives will not vote for them. Had Reagan named the conservative Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina as his running-mate odds are he would have held onto Mississippi and won the nomination. However, only one outsider campaign could win in 1976 and Reagan’s was not it. Ford was nominated on the first ballot and selected moderate Senator Bob Dole of Kansas for vice-president. In a fairly boring address Ford defended his policies and did what people who are behind in the polls always do: challenge their opponent to a ridiculous number of face-to-face debates. Reagan’s impromptu speech following Ford’s was more memorable and left many delegates thinking they had nominated the wrong guy. They were right.  

[Rooney]

The Election of 1976, continued

The incredible primary season of 1976 eclipses the general election. While it was by no means a boring campaign, it just does not shine as bright as the sterling primary campaigns. Carter started out the campaign thirty points ahead of Ford. Carter then went to work chipping away at the huge lead. Before the campaign began he had foolishly sat down for an interview with the pornographic Playboy magazine. After telling the magazine that he had committed adultery by “lusting in his heart” and claiming “I’m human…I’m tempted” the media made a huge joke out of the honest responses. The Washington, D.C., news corps- a more out of touch, pompous group can rarely be found- wrote a clever parody of the barbershop song “Heart of my Heart” called “Lust in my Heart.” Carter also stayed vague on almost all important issues. While Ford laid out clear plans to combat inflation and poverty Carter seemed to only want to discuss lofty platitudes. One reporter joked that while paying bridge with Carter he raised the contract to three spades. Carter replied, “Well then I’ll bid four.” “Four what?” the reporter asked. “I’ll tell you after the election,” Carter replied in kind. Another story relayed that when young Jimmy Carter was asked if he had cut down the family’s peach tree he replied, “Well perhaps.” Ford assailed Carter for being “everything to everybody” and “wavering, wiggling and waffling.” Carter’s poor performance in the first debate cost him ten-points in the polls.

Odds are quite good Ford would have won had he canceled the second debate. I do not need to retell the story of the infamous “No Soviet domination” gaffe as it has been told a million times. What does need to be said is that the gaffe reversed the Ford momentum. One cannot imagine Reagan making a similar gaffe in 1976. Yes, Reagan may well have lost the general election but in 1976 he was no old and doddering. He could be well trained and rehearsed like any good actor. Ford’s gaffe allowed Carter and the media to hammer him for days and made the president look just like the Chevy Chase parody on the new show Saturday Night Live. Ford retreated to a “Rose Garden Strategy” of making speeches from the White House and Bob Dole assaulted the Democrats for, “Starting every war in the 20th century.” Racist comments by Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz forced him from Ford’s team and alienated minorities that he needed badly to win in Ohio and New York. In the end for Ford the campaign fell apart at the seams. That was no good for Ford but for election watchers it is always unique to see an incumbent president’s campaign melt like cheese.

The 1976 election was nearly as close as the epic campaign that happened 100 years before it. Ford’s advisers told the president the day before the election that Carter had 24-hours to make a fatal error. If that did not happen then the president would be sent back to Grand Rapids. The comments were correct. The voters gave Carter 50.1% of the vote to 48% for Ford. In terms of the electoral college the results were also quite tight: 297 to 240. One Republican elector from Washington voted for Reagan because she could not stomach to vote for Ford. Carter had campaigned as an “outsider” and it was a brilliant campaign move. Many would copy the Carter candidacy but none would ever perfect the art of hating Washington as well as the down home peanut preacher from Plains. In the end the 1976 campaign is a lot of fun and involves two incredible primary battles. Carter’s outsider appeal is perhaps best summed up in what he said to disillusioned Southerners: “Isn’t it time we had a president without an accent?”       

[Rooney]

#30: The Election of 1884

Coming it an even number thirty is the election of 1884. A wonderfully nasty and vitriolic campaign, the election of 1884 involves all that sex, filth and mudslinging that makes presidential campaigns worth watching. A presidential assassination three years before, coupled with a long running recession, had changed the nation’s politics once again. A walrus of a reformer rose up as the presidential nominee of the Democrats and he faced off against the patron saint of shady politicians, a certain Monumental Liar from the State of Maine. The dirty laundry was spilt and the ink ran deep with accusations and counter assaults. Yes, 1884 is a gem of an election.

“I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad,” prayed presidential assassin and would-be ambassador to Austria Charles J. Guiteau deliriously before he was hung for shooting the president of the United States. The quirky communal coed turned wayward barrister and plagiarist preacher, Guiteau had killed Garfield in an attempt to save the nation from James Gillespie Blaine, the secretary of state who had told Guiteau to stop bothering him about the ambassadorship. Blaine, an ebullient politician christened “the Plumed Knight”, had been with President James A. Garfield when he was shot in the back at Union Station. He had held Garfield’s hand as the president lay bleeding on the train station floor. Blaine had seen the deed done and it affected him enough to change his views on civil service reform. President Chester Alan Arthur, a former Conkling-Platt political neophyte, rose to the occasion and signed the Pendleton Act to change the way a few civil service jobs were selected. This decision changed the political dynamic of the nation. The era of stand patism on government reform drew to an end when Garfield died and the Pendleton Act was brought to life. Voters struck out against the crusty Republicanism which had dominated state and national government for far too long. The 1882 midterms were a disaster for Arthur, Blaine and the Grand Old Party. In New York State, the administration’s own Treasury Secretary was handily beaten by Buffalo Mayor Stephen Grover Cleveland, a reforming sheriff turned reforming mayor. On the eve of the election of 1884 those Republicans who made up the Liberal Republican Party of 1872 were preparing to jump ship to the Democrats. Carl Schurz, Henry Ward Beecher, William Graham Sumner and Charles Francis Adams declared that they could never support the “Tatooed Man” Blaine for the White House. New York State Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt rolled his eyes at the Mugwumps, as the New York Sun Charles Dana derided them. He referred to them as “effeminate” and “lacking a spine.” These types of attacks would pepper to national conversation of 1884.

The Republican Convention in Chicago is as “fun as a goat” to quote Secretary of State John Hay. The Reverend F.M. Bristol prayed as the convention opened that the coming contest would be marked with, “decency, intelligence, patriotism and dignity of temper which becomes free and intelligent people.” God does not always answer prayers. Blaine stood out in 1884 as the most popular and well known candidate, even more than President Arthur. “Elegant Arthur” was dying of Bright’s Disease and, while desiring re-nomination, failed to utilize his popularity among Southern delegates to contest the nomination. When Blaine was nominated for the presidency for the third straight convention “whole delegations mounted their chairs” the New York Tribune reported. As every American flag in the vicinity was marched up and down the aisles the Half-Breed Republicans stewed in their chairs. Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and Benjamin Harrison, three Republican reformers, hoped for the nomination of little known Vermont Senator George F. Edmunds. It was hoped by the reformers that Blaine could be stopped by retired Major General William T. Sherman but his oft quoted Shermanesque statement stopped that dream cold. So did the refusals to mount candidacies by Robert Todd Lincoln and Phillip Sheridan. Blaine’s overwhelming nomination was welcomed by liberal Republicans as much as a flu is welcomed by a school. One observer noted that the reformers, “applauded with the tips of their fingers held immediately in front of their noses.” While Teddy Roosevelt would reluctantly support Blaine many of his fellow eastern Republicans bolted the convention and set up a camp in Boston and New York. At these conventions they added much fuel to the fire of 1884 by announcing they would support the Democratic nominee for president in 1884. The fact that the Republicans split and entered a tough election year as a wounded, divided party adds to the flavor of the election.  The Mugwumps should have recalled the words of the holy scriptures: Proverbs 11:29, which in the King James Bible reads:

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind:
and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.  

The Democratic Convention is not that thrilling but the nominee who emerged from it is larger than life. New York Governor Grover Cleveland had been an anonymous lawyer in Buffalo, New York, just eight years before he was nominated for the highest office in the land by one of the two major political parties. The New York World, a reliable Democratic publication, backed Cleveland for three reasons: “1. He is honest, 2. He is honest, 3. He is honest.” Cleveland worked well with Republicans in the State Assembly and passed multiple laws limiting the power of cities over public improvements. These laws enraged Tammany Hall, who needed public works dollars to doll our graft, and delighted the liberal press. Influential Republican journals such as the New York Times, the Nation and Harper’s Weekly gushed for Grover the Good and turned their GOP backs on Blaine. When Cleveland was hailed for the “enemies he has made” Tammany Boss Jim Kelly rushed the stage and declared he was honored by the compliment. Tall and wide, Cleveland was a bachelor who had loved Biergardens as a youth and had more than once dalliance with the German fraus of Buffalo. Accepted by the vast immigrant voter base of the big cities and also the small town reformers, Cleveland seemed to be loved by everyone except Jim Kelly. Mugwumps pinned their hopes of reform to Cleveland. His nomination is one of the highlights of the 1884 election. While Cleveland would do no campaigning, his broad mustached visage served as the symbol of cross partisan reform. Not since Grant was there such a figure in American politics.

[Rooney]

The Election of 1884, continued

The conventions are child’s play when compared to the wonderful wickedness of the general election. While Cleveland stayed at home with his ward Francis Folsom, Blaine took to the streets in a full campaign. Blaine loved campaigning and the platform he was running on. He barbed the Democrats by condemning them as “rebels” and “free traders.” The Mugwumps, according to Blaine, were “agents of foreign interests.” The Democrats responded with the first letter of the campaign, one of many. The Mulligan Letter was used to show that Blaine was a corrupt politician and a corrupt man. The first released in 1876, the letters from James Mulligan tied Blaine to insider trading deals connected to the Little Rock Railroad. One letter was written to the railroad’s legal counsel and it ended with these damning words: “Burn this letter.” Blaine was assailed as “Old Mulligan Letters” and “Burner Jim.” Democrats mocked Blaine with the taunt of: “Burn this letter!” Some clever New York Democrats even formed the most memorable line of the campaign: “Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The Continental liar from the State of Maine!” Yes, Blaine’s lies actually spread a whole continent. That’s the type of political assault we election fans like to see.

The fiendish Republican response to the Mulligan matter will live in the annals of dirty campaigning for generations to come. On July 21, 1884, the Republican Buffalo Evening Telegraph unleashed the dirtiest piece of dirty laundry they could find on the unimpeachable Grover Cleveland. “A Terrible Tale: A Dark Chapter in a Public Man’s History!” The story was of a young lawyer named Grover Cleveland whom had a sexual relationship with a local Buffalo runaround named Maria Halpern. It was from this little romp through Cupid’s Glen that a boy named Oscar Folsom Cleveland was born. Cleveland’s response to the story is great and adds much to the story of the 1884 election. In reality the child was not that of Cleveland’s at all. In fact, the child Oscar most likely was that of Cleveland’s friend, the late attorney James Folsom. The father of Francis, Folsom was a known womanizer who had asked Cleveland to take on responsibility for Oscar since he did not want to ruin his marriage and reputation. Cleveland, who had volunteered to stay home during the Civil War because he knew he was not needed, simply shrugged and accepted the expenses of the child. When Maria proved herself to be odd and erratic as a parent Cleveland found a new home for Oscar, who would become a successful man. “Above all tell the truth” Cleveland advised his political handlers when they faced the terrible news of the sexual misconduct. E.L. Godkin of the Nation applauded Cleveland’s honest response and commented that it contrasted greatly with the deceptive campaign of James G. Blaine. One Mugwump even joked that of Blaine was so honest in private life it would be best of he simply stayed in private life. The Maria Halpern affair might well have sunk Cleveland but he handled it like a seasoned professional and that is what makes it such a good story for such a nasty little campaign.

No general election is complete without a debilitating gaffe. On October 29, “black Wednesday” befell the beleaguered Blaine campaign. As Blaine gouged himself on a sumptuous feast in the toss-up state of New York, the Reverend Dr. Samuel Burchard, made this fatal statement: “We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Prohibitionist candidate John St. John was already being backed by the Democrats in New York to siphon votes from Blaine. The anti-Catholic gaffe was not good for the health of the Republican cause. While James A. Garfield had used a similar phrase in 1876, this time the Democrats took note of it. Cleveland operatives released copies of the speech into heavily Catholic precincts in New York City. Those Tammany voters who hated Cleveland now found a reason to hate Blaine more. Burchard’s bluster is one of the great moments of any presidential campaign.

The final reason why 1884 stands as a fine campaign is that it came down to just one state and a little over 1,000 votes. Anger over Blaine’s anti-Roman Catholic banquet and the votes for John St. John handed New York over to Cleveland. In the end a razor sharp race was decided on public integrity, though Cleveland’s private virtues were dragged through the mud. The bitterness of the 1884 election was one of many reasons why President Grover Cleveland told a four-year old Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I have a very strange wish for you my little man. May you never become president of the United States.”       

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I do have one complaint.  God does always answer prayers but is he doesn't always answer them the way we want.

[Rooney]

#29: The Election of 1916

Number twenty-nine on the list is the election of 1916. The campaign was waged during a time of war in Europe. The American people were divided by the Great War in Europe. A nation which had emerged from splendid isolation in the late 19th century as a global political and economic power, the great question of 1916 focused on what role the United States would play in the bloody pageantry in Europe. The great issue of 1916 was what position would the United States take in World War I and what type of a world would wait for it after the great maelstrom of war was passed through by the global community. The internationalist Democratic president would run as a tepid non-interventionist and the Republicans would nominate a candidate whom attacked Wilson’s military adventurism without distancing himself from the pro-war members of his own party. In the end the election of 1916 ranks in the top thirty elections because it is an election between two strong personalities with the backdrop of Armageddon.  

The first  reason why the election of 1916 falls in the top thirty is because of the ordeal of Professor Thomas Woodrow Wilson. President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat from New Jersey, had no experience in foreign affairs when he took office in 1913. Recruited for the governor’s office in 1910 by reforming journalist Ray Standard Baker and Democratic publisher George Brinton McClellan Harvey, Wilson emerged as the front-runner for the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination due to the act that he was a progressive to the progressives and a conservative to the conservatives. In an election which will rank in the top five contests, Wilson was able to carve out a middle of the road stance in 1912 and win the election by a wide margin. As early as 1913 Wilson was forced to deal with foreign conflicts. Mexico was involved in a nasty civil war with multiple sides fighting for multiple goals. Wilson ordered General John “Blackjack” Pershing to invade Mexico in 1913 in order to capture the renegade bandit Pancho Villa. Stoked on by William Randolph Hearst, Wilson’s invasion of Mexico enraged the Mexican and the American people. The great tragedy of Woodrow Wilson is that he had no interest in foreign affairs when he took office in 1913. Wilson’s New Freedom program was pro-labor, pro-tariff reduction and pro-small business- the warfare state was not a part of the program. The explosion of the Balkan Powder Keg in June 1914 forced his hand. His narrow scoped New Freedom was coopted into Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism- a warlike socialist program. Wilson took up “preparedness” and sponsored legislation to expand the nation’s armed forces. Wilson’s hope was that a prepared America- united by a strong army and a strong government- would emerge as a “Big America” when the war ended in Europe. In 1916 Wilson hoped that he could focus his reelection campaign on his progressive legislative accomplishments. Tariff reduction, farm land reform and labor legislation were just not all that sexy when compared to Mexico and Europe in flames. “[It] would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs,” Wilson told his Roman Catholic secretary Joe Tumulty in 1914. The irony makes for an intriguing election in 1916.

The Democratic Convention of 1916 is a good example of a convention that kept to message. In 1968 and 1992 the incumbent political party lost control of the convention and that caused incredible damage in the general election. 1916 was the exact opposite of those nightmares. As the Democrats convened in St. Louis in June 1916 the Democratic campaign slogan was marketed like soapflake’s. Former New York Governor Martin H. Glynn started his keynote address talking about Wilson’s progressive “Americanism.” Quickly the spellbinding Glynn realized this was not a good topic and so he threw his text away. Glynn then declared with a booming voice that the “paramount issue” of the campaign was the war in Europe. He then began to give examples of how the United States had handled foreign crises without going to war. The speech caused wild applause as the delegates shouted, “Go on! Go on!” Glynn then outlined how Wilson had avoided war over the 1915 Lusitania crisis as well as the extensive German U-Boat warfare. “What did he do?” the delegates screamed out as Glynn responded, “We did no go to war!” “This policy…”Glynn went on with a not so subtle attack on Teddy Roosevelt, “May not satisfy…the fire-eater or the swashbuckler…But it does satisfy the mothers of the land…” The next day Senator Ollie James of Kentucky and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan hammered home the winning campaign slogan of 1916: “Vote for Wilson who keeps us out of war.” “He kept us out of war” ranks as perhaps the best remembered campaign slogan in American history. Wilson’s firm hope that he could run for reelection based off of his progressive agenda was more or less ended at the convention. What sprouted up in its place was an effective campaign slogan which would be used to flog Republicans over the head until November. The well managed and orchestrated 1916 Democratic National Convention adds much to the ranking of the campaign because it shows how effective a good convention can be on a major party presidential campaign. President Woodrow Wilson and Vice-President Thomas Riley Marshall, the first Democratic vice-president to ever be re-nominated for that office, faced the Republicans with a united party and a thankful nation behind them.

The Republican Convention is a fine example of an opposition party trying, and failing, to unite the disparate factions pulling it from one side to the other. Much like in 2012, the Republicans found a good middle of the road candidate whom seemed he could appease both sides. Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the man who had defeated Hearst for the New York governor’s office in 1906 and had gutted the multimillion dollar life insurance business in the Empire State, seemed to be the perfect choice to unite the party torn by 1912. Former President Roosevelt commented that he wanted the 1916 presidential nomination so bad he “could taste it.” However, his temperamental defection in 1912 made him a pariah to conservatives and party professionals. TR would not be able to win the 1916 nomination in his wildest fevered dreams. Justice Hughes emerged as the choice of progressive Republicans with Senator John W. Weeks of Massachusetts and former Vice-President Charles Fairbanks, a man so cold they named a city in Alaska after him, as the candidate of conservatives. Teddy Roosevelt liked Elihu Root, his much trusted cabinet secretary, for the nomination but Root’s ties to corporations made him far too toxic for Middle America. Party regulars fell in behind Hughes as Senator Warren G. Harding presided over the convention. Harding coined the term “Founding Fathers” as he chastised Wilson for his illegal and unconstitutional intervention in the Mexican upheaval. Hughes won an easy nomination on third ballot at the Coliseum in Chicago, Illinois. The “Bearded Iceberg” Hughes was paired with former Vice-President Charles “Ice-banks” Fairbanks and the Republicans wrote a platform attacking Wilson for his pro-labor polices as well as his opposition to women’s suffrage. Above all they assailed Wilson’s supine foreign policy. It seemed that Hughes was the perfect choice to oppose Wilson. He was a moderate, pro-suffrage former governor with a good working relation with conservatives and business elements. The 1916 Republican Convention shows political watchers that a compromise candidate usually does nothing more than make a the campaign tepid. Hughes refused to take a stand on the war in Europe and in so doing offended everyone. Above all he enraged Theodore Roosevelt, a belligerent war lover, who would take it on his own shoulders to craft the GOP into the “Party of War.” As was said later on, TR would have better served the party if he had just stayed home.

(Fixed image link - TF)