Rooney's Presidential Election Rankings

[Rooney]

Elections are what bring us all together at this site. We love the hand shaking, back slapping, ass-ahem-baby kissing that makes an election the greatest show on earth. There is no denying that of all elections the quadrennial calumny of the United States Presidential contest is the gaudiest and grandest of all elections in this Land of the Free.

However, which elections were the best and which were critical and commercial flops? The United States has experiences fifty-seven national contests. Some are historic battles of ideologies, others a game of Trivial Pursuit while some were nothing more than flops.

In this list I will count down all fifty-seven of these elections from the most mundane to the most exciting. In this list I will not take the ideology or politics of the winner into account. For example, in a comparison of the 1836 election and the 1912 election I much prefer the victor in 1836. However, there is no denying that 1912 has many more intriguing, unique and entertaining factors. Thus, even though the victor of 1912 is not to my ideological liking the election is an excellent one that will attain a high ranking.

Now I am off to analyze the campaign trail. After all, while elections may very well make history and alter the policy of a nation we all know what they are supposed to do: entertain us.

[Rooney]

#57: The Election of 1820
 

This crazy train starts out with a leisurely caboose ride. In 1820 the nation was riding high on a time of unchecked pork barrel politics and internal “improvement” spending spearheaded by the mild-mannered President James Monroe of Virginia. Leading the nation in a time known as “The Era of Good Feelings” Declaring that political parties were “incompatible with free government” Monroe had sought in his first term to coopt members of the defunct Federalist Party into the Republican fold. Known to some as the “Young Washington”, Monroe’s one-party rule produced a lull in election action but not in political troubles.

The main reason why the election of 1820 is such a bore is that it could have been an incredible contest if there had been any formal opposition to Monroe and Vice-President Daniel Tompkins. In 1819 the heavy borrowing and inflationary monetary policies of the U.S. government brought about a specie strain that led to the Panic of 1819. This first great economic struggle could very well have caused an issue for Monroe’s reelection had he faced an opponent willing to run against the Second Bank of the United States and the lose money policies of the Madison and Monroe governments. Additionally, the sectional trouble caused by the Missouri Compromise could also have led to an anti-slavery candidacy from a Northern or Western candidate to oppose Monroe. Alas, there was no vessel and so Monroe, a former wily politico turned pacific executive, was reelected by the margin of 227 to 1.

The reason why this election is the most boring in American history is the lack of good drama. This is not to say that there was no drama in the election. There simply was no memorable drama. There was the surprise vote for John Quincy Adams from Baptist lay preacher William Plummer of New Hampshire. While it would be nice to believe the story that he voted for Adams in 1820 in order to ensure that only Washington was unanimously elected close scrutiny has shown this dramatic response is quite tepid. It appears that Plummer voted for Adams because he thought Monroe to be a “mediocrity” and Tompkins to be “negligent” of his duties as vice-president. These are very logical conclusions and while logic is nice it is hardly dramatic.

There was also a brief struggle over whether or not Missouri’s electoral votes would be counted. This came down to the technicality that Missouri was not actually a state when it cast its electoral votes for Monroe. New Hampshire proved itself to once again be the only state that wanted to make this election interesting when Congressman Arthur Livermore of the Granite State raised his voice in protest of the Show Me State’s electoral votes. The Senate, however, destroyed all drama by passing a resolution allowing for the state’s electoral votes to count provided they did not change the outcome of the election. This could have been a great controversy had the election been so close that the state’s three electoral votes been the linchpin for a presidential victory. However, this was not the case and is merely a legal footnote in the history of elections.

Monroe’s near unanimous reelection was a major personal victory for him and for his one-party state. If the election of 1820 is to teach us anything we should take from it two lessons. The first is that one-party states are either boring or tyrannical. Sometimes they are both! The second lesson we should take is that while political parties can be annoying they make elections a heck of a lot more fun.

[Rooney]

#56: The Election of 1804

Thomas Jefferson’s reelection campaign was hardly a dramatic or interesting election. His first term as president is fascinating, no doubt. In his first term he had slashed taxes, reduced Adam’s bloated navy, destroyed the Additional Army, purchased Louisiana, increased free trade on the Atlantic and managed to sever the close alliance of the Barbary States. While the constitutionality of Louisiana and the mission to Tunisia, as well as the later Lewis and Clark Expedition, stands on shaky ground the American people always seem to love constitutional violations. In 1804 President Jefferson was highly popular and looked forward to a sunny second term.

Jefferson had also spent his first term dedicated to coopting Federalists into the Republican Party. “We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans” he waxed eloquent in his first inaugural address, one of only two public speeches he would make as chief executive. If only the current occupant of the White House was so economical with his words. Jefferson rejected highly partisan judicial appointments and broadly interpreted the constitutional powers of his office in order to appeal to those Federalists excluded by the High Federalists and the Essex Clique. Thus, the Federalist Party was a weak shadow of its former self when it nominated former Minister to France Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for president and former Senator Rufus King for vice-president. Pinckney, who was once mocked in a sermon by the mercurial Reverend Timothy Dwight, never stood a chance outside of Connecticut.    

This scenario makes for one boring election. Landslides are usually boring. They are like when the Miami Heat plays the Detroit Pistons. It is fun to watch a beat down for a little while but pretty soon you turn off the TV and open up a book on moral philosophy. This is not to say that there were not some exciting and dramatic moments in this election but none of them had anything to do with the ultimate outcome.

One amazing moment of 1804 was, of course, the field of honor at Weehawken. The Burr-Hamilton Duel was attached to an election in 1804, just not the presidential campaign. President Jefferson had already dropped Burr (“The American Cataline”) for the jovial, doddering Governor George Clinton of New York. As all students of history know, Burr shot Hamilton over Hamilton’s machinations against him in his ill-fated quest for the New York governor’s post. The story of the duel and Burr’s later dreams of an American Empire stretching from Mobile Bay to Monterrey is one of the epics of American History. However, it plays very little to no role in the reelection of Jefferson. In fact, it played no role at all. Thus, this grand drama has nothing to do with Mr. Jefferson’s reelection.

There is also the story of Jefferson’s gunboats. The Federalists mocked Jefferson for his gunboat fleet. Gunboats were far cheaper to maintain than any ship-of-the-line so Jefferson, a penny pincher in public and a spendthrift if private, obviously fell in love with them. Fifteen gunboats floated across the Eastern seaboard to defend the nation from piracy. In September 1804, a terrible hurricane off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, picked up Gunboat Number One and tossed it into a cornfield. The proprietor of the cornfield actually tried to sue the government for damages! The Federalist campaign mocked Jefferson by stating that he had finally found a good use for his gunboat: as a scarecrow. While these gibes made victory starved Federalists smirk and giggle they are merely fun historical trivia. They added nothing to the campaign itself and added no drama to the final outcome.

A third interesting story that came from the election was the scurrilous charges that Jefferson had sired children from one of his female slaves. In September 1802, political journalist James T. Callender, a disaffected former ally of Jefferson, wrote in a Richmond newspaper that Jefferson had for many years "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves." "Her name is Sally," Callender continued, adding that Jefferson had "several children" by her. Jefferson never commented on these accusations and Sally, who could not write, never recorded any letters or documentation to back up the story. Callender, who was found drowned in less than three inches of water in 1803, was a well-known political crank and scandal monger. While the faltering Federalist campaign tried to make “Black Sal” a campaign issue it never gained traction. This was not the first time that base rumor mongering would be used in an election but many times such dark tactics can dramatically effect an election. In 1804 this was not the case.

The main reason why the election of 1804 is the second most boring presidential election is that there was no drama. While Jefferson and Pinckney are “big names” in American history neither ran an active campaign. Unlike in 1796 and 1800 both parties were docile and tame. There was no incredible politicking for control of state legislatures or wonderfully juicy accusations of atheism and monarchism. The campaign was bland and calm. That makes for a nice tea party but a downright dull presidential campaign.            

[Rooney]

It may have been pointless, but it was the first election under the new rules.

The rule change made absolutely no difference in the outcome of the election. While the addition of the 12th Amendment made a difference in other races it is not really all that consequential to the election of 1804. Thus, 1804 ranks as #56 on the list. 

[Rooney]

#55: The Election of 1816

1816 ends up at the number fifty-five spot for more or less the same reason that 1820 and 1804 are ranked low: it was a one-party show. James Monroe’s first election to the presidency boasted more struggle than the previous two elections, no doubt. However, the struggle was primarily in the Democratic-Republican caucus. This makes for one important episode but when compared to elections to come this one blip of excitement does not even register on the scales.

The end of the Madison Administration ushered in a civil, silent election. The War of 1812 was over without victory, the Second Bank of the United States was in full swing and the nation was slowly recovering from the economic disaster of the war. One would think that in such an environment a strong Federalist challenge may well have arisen against Little Jemmie’s government. The great trouble was that the Federalist’s opposition to “Mr. Madison’s War” and the meeting of secessionist High Federalists at the Hartford Convention had made the party as dead as their founder, Hamilton. Federalism was no longer even relevant in Massachusetts or Connecticut. “Our two great parties have crossed over the valley and have taken possession of each other’s mountain,” former Federalist President John Adams wrote. Yes, the Federalists were no longer a legitimate threat to anyone, not even to themselves.

The great drama of the campaign was the Democratic-Republican Congressional Caucus. This could very well have been an incredible battle of egos. Potential candidates for the Democratic-Republican nomination included Monroe, Secretary of War William H. Crawford, House Speaker Henry Clay, New York Governor Daniel D. Tompkins and former Senator and the Hero of New Orleans Andrew Jackson. Clay, Jackson and Tompkins bowed to the inevitable. While New York Republicans grumbled about the “Virginia Dynasty” all they could do was grumble. Crawford ran a spirited race in which he questioned Monroe intelligence and vision, but the well-liked Monroe was always the front-runner. The Congressional Caucus of March 1816 was close but the Monroe was the winner by a decently wide margin. The overwhelming selection of Tompkins for vice-president concluded what could have been a wild, crazy caucus.

The Federalists failed to even nominate a candidate for the general contest. Senator Rufus King was nominally selected as the candidate but he knew from the very beginning that he was a sure loser. Long before the electoral votes were counted in December 1816 King had commented: “Federalists of our age must be content with the past.” It is to be applauded that Senator King realized the fight was lost but that does not add to the joy of the campaign.

The contentious fight for the Democratic-Republican Party nod proved to be quite anti-climactic. So too did Senator King’s pathetic candidacy. Monroe, the only man to serve as both secretary of state and secretary of war at the same time, coaxed to victory without writing and letter of issuing a statement. The main reason why this election is ranked low is because it was yet another one party romp. The one party romp may well have been interesting had more legitimate candidates jockeyed for the Republican presidential nod but that did not occur. While there was a controversy over whether or not Indiana’s electoral votes would count the issue was worked out quickly and with no issue. Additionally, it is not as if the 3 electoral votes from the Hoosier States mattered for the final outcome.

I believe that the former Federalist newspaper the Boston Daily Advertiser put the election of 1816 the best: “We do not know, nor is it very material, for whom the Federalist electors will vote.” John Randolph of Virginia further commented that amongst the people there was a, ‘Unanimity of indifference if not approbation.”        

[Rooney]

#54: The Election of 1996

“The era of big government is over,” President Bill Clinton declared in his 1995 State of the Union Address. With the help of known troll Dick Morris he was able to trick the nation into actually thinking what he said was true. Yes, Clinton is one of the master politicians of our time and that is the reason why the 1996 election- his triumphant reelection- ranks as #54 on the list.

The election of 1996 could have been the Waterloo for Clinton and his curious Little Rock Crew. His wife had been temporarily silenced by her health care beat down, Clinton had fumbled Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Republicans were in a post-Poppy Bush resurgence. A strong Republican presidential nominee running on eloquent conservative, free market principles could very well have evicted Bubba and his buds from the Oval Office. It was the Grand Old Party’s golden opportunity to settle the score with their most successful and hated rival. They gave the world Bob Dole.

The main reason why 1996 falls into the #54 spot is that the election was not very exciting. There were no great moments of drama, no epic arguments and no real discussion of contentious issues. Dole and Clinton agreed on many core issues: national defense, education, gay rights and welfare reform. Dole, when not talking about himself in the third person or stage diving, muttered about a 15% tax cut but never explained how he would get this tax cut done, how he would pay for it or how this loss of revenue would affect his pledge to balance the budget. In the 53rd quadrennial contest Dole more or less proved that he was a relic of the 1960s. He referenced the Brooklyn Dodgers as a baseball team and appeared sleepy at the debates. Clinton rarely fell below 50% in the public opinion polls and led Dole in different tracking polls by margins ranging from nine to fifteen points. At no point was the election’s results in doubt and Bob Dole did little to fight back.

Massive landslide reelection victories do not naturally deem an election boring. In 1972 and 1964, for example, upstart senators were able to manipulate party rules in order to surpass establishment candidates. Even though their nominations led to the incumbent winning by a wide margin the election is still thrilling because one was able to witness the meteoric rise and noble decline of the upstart underdog. In 1996, Pat Buchanan was the underdog who had managed to beat Dole in the New Hampshire Primary. Beaten in New Hampshire in all three of his quests for the presidency, Dole commented that he realized how the Granite State got its name: “It’s tough to crack.” Buchanan, like Ron Paul in 2012, attempted to use the machinations of party to attain the nomination but was stopped time and time again by establishment party attorneys and bigwigs. A Pat Buchanan vs. Bill Clinton race would have showcased real differences between candidates and made the election of 1996 a memorable race. Buchanan would have won 39% of the popular vote and 60 electoral votes but the race would have been a real difference. It would have offered the American people a choice, not an echo.

H. Ross Perot was not even able to add flavor to the campaign’s stoic soup. His Reform Party was plagued by intraparty rivalries and laws which set up obstacles for third parties. Perot was unable to attend the debates because the League of Women Voters had had their power over the debates snatched from them by the cold, iron grasp of a major party amalgamation known as the Commission on Presidential Debates. Despite lawsuits, the CPD set the bar so high that Perot was not allowed to talk straight to the American people as he had in 1992. Plagued by ill health and a party that was not totally united behind the Lilliputian leader, Perot was a nonentity in the 1996 race.

In the end the main reason why 1996 is ranked as #54 on the list is because it offered no surprises and took no chances. The establishment Republican ran a lackluster campaign against a popular incumbent. The economy was decent and the nation was not embroiled in any unpopular wars so the incumbent won by a large margin. It was a “nice” little election. Yawn.      

[Rooney]

I will get two updates in tonight. Thank you for your patience. I teach special education and have had a huge amount of IEP paperwork for the start of the month. You guys are awesome for waiting.

[Rooney]

#53: The Election of 1792

George Washington’s triumphant reelection in 1792 is ranked as #53 because it was a great deal of humdrum with only one major moment of dramatic suspense. This in itself is a disappointment because the emergence of the First Party System in the United States promised far better than what the people were given.

Haunted and depressed by divisions in his government, President George Washington had intended to refuse to seek reelection. The emergence of Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans had caused Washington much torment. While he leaned strongly toward Hamilton and the Federalists, the general hoped that the emergence of factions could be nipped in the bud. This was not to be and Washington’s own strong support for the National Bank, tariffs, whiskey taxes, debt consolidation and other Hamiltonian centralization plans did little to heal the divisions.

The race for president in 1792 was never in doubt. Washington’s popularity was no longer at its height as it was in 1789, but he was still the hero of the Revolution. His reelection was never in doubt. The reason why 1792 could have been a great race lies in the vice-presidential contest. With Washington assured one vote from every elector the second electoral vote was the one to fight over. Vice-President John Adams assumed that he would be the easy choice for vice-president. In a system with no parties this very well would have been the case. However, anti-Hamiltonians put forward three opposition candidates to the stout vice-president. Governor George Clinton of New York was the principal anti-Hamiltonian vice-presidential candidate but five votes were given to Thomas Jefferson and Senator Aaron Burr. Anti-Federalists vice-presidential candidates managed to win 55 electoral votes to Adam’s 70. Upon reading the results Adams later commented to his wife Abigail, “Damn them, damn them, damn them.” The race for vice-president was far closer than the crotchety Adams had expected or wanted.

The vice-presidential contest is a testament to the fact that there was obvious resistance to the Washington-Hamilton system. The fact that George Clinton, with no campaigning or even a letter stating he would accept electoral votes, managed to win 50 electoral votes shows that the Federalist system was propped up strongly on the shoulders of Washington Rex. Washington chose to run for reelection in 1792 out of fear that a partisan campaign for the top office would weaken the new republic and toss the system into civil war. It is in the opinion of this writer that Washington truly feared that the Federalist system that Hamilton had built would collapse if he was not there to be the face on the billboard of the unpopular programs. The general and the president was to be proven correct when Adams became president.

1792 is an election that could have been a great one but in the end was tame and calm. That is to be expected when George Washington was a candidate but that does nothing to further its place in campaign history or, more importantly for me, the ratings.

[Rooney]

#52: The Election of 1808

The election of 1808 winds up at the number fifty-two on the list. This marked the last campaign of Jefferson’s America and the old First Party System. The Federalist Party was given a major shot in the arm by Thomas Jefferson’s unpopular Embargo Act. Throughout his presidency Jefferson had made it a habit to ignore his classical liberal roots. The Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the First Barbary War were all highly unconstitutional. However, they all pale in comparison to the Embargo Acts. Known as the Damnbargo in Federalist New England, the embargo betrayed all of Jefferson’s work in his first term to encourage free trade and instead forced recession and trade war onto the United States. The arrests of innocent merchants trying to make a living only reminded Americans of the Federalist regime of John Adams and his arrest of innocent printers. The Federalist Party, which was on the ropes in 1804, was given a boost by the unpopular new law.

The fact that the Federalists had an unpopular law in their favor is one of the reason why the election of 1808 places at fifty-two on the list. The Federalists, in theory, could have made a triumphant return to the White House on the back of Jefferson’s economic fumble. However, this was not to be the case because the Federalists were old hat by 1808. The candidate they produced was a nationally famous also-ran. Former American Ambassador to France Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (of XYZ Scandal fame back in the year 1798!) was informally selected as the Federalist Party presidential nominee and former New York Senator Rufus King was selected as his running-mate for the second time in a row. The same uninspired ticket from 1804 was hardly enough to energize Federalist candidates for state assembly in New York or state voters in Pennsylvania. The party of Hamilton was a as dead as its founder.

1808, however, was not a completely anti-climactic contest. The 1808 Democratic-Republican Caucus was a bitter affair that would spill over into the general election and the electoral vote canvass in December 1808. Secretary of State James Madison, Jefferson’s long-time protégé and acolyte, was the front-runner for the party’s presidential nod but faced opposition from sitting Vice-President George Clinton and popular former Virginia Governor James Monroe. The aging Clinton, who secretly yearned for retirement, was put forward as the candidate in opposition to the “Virginia Dynasty.” Clinton did not actively seek the nomination and would not be given it. Monroe actively wrote letters to congressmen stating his interest in the presidential nomination but this small time campaigning also proved to be useless. Madison had spent the better part of a year convincing Republicans in Congress that he was the choice of Jefferson, who was still the idle of the Democratic-Republican brass. The final tally for the presidential nod at the caucus was hardly close: Madison 83, Monroe 3, Clinton 3.

On the day in December when the electoral votes were cast Madison won an easy victory over his hapless Federalist challengers. Pinckney’s ability to win almost all of New England, Delaware and three electors from North Carolina are a testament to an election battle that might have been. Had Chief Justice John Marshall tossed his hat into the presidential ring perhaps a stronger race would have happened in 1808? It is to be noted also that there were some divisions in the Democratic-Republican fold. George Clinton attained 6 electoral votes from his native New York while Monroe won over 4,000 popular votes from his native Virginia. While these defections did not manage to make a difference in the overall election these defections are to be noted as factors that may have caused trouble to Jefferson’s party had the Federalist Party had a stronger ticket.

In the end the reason why the election of 1808 is ranked at number fifty-two is because it fell at the end of the First Party system. The Damnbargo and the anger from New England gave it some drama as did the opposition to Madison at the convention but in the end it had to fall in the bottom part of the list. The election offered much promise but in the end delivered very little action.     
           

[Rooney]

#51: The Election of 1988

Coming in at number fifty-one is the last election of the Reagan Years. In 1988 the United States was given an uninspiring choice between a career resume builder and a liberal Northeastern governor. The election was one in which it appeared that it would emerge as a climactic struggle between Reagan’s America and the days of Roosevelt and Johnson. In the end it turned into a trivial pursuit.

By 1988 President Reagan was a great deal like Thomas Jefferson in 1808: personally popular but dogged by policy failures and political scandal. While Reagan’s inflationary spending and tax policies continued to prop up the economy the Republicans could continue to claim that it was “morning in America.” Vice-President George H.W. Bush, the son of a senator and a walking resume in a suit, scrambled to claim the mantle of the Reagan Revolution. Conservatives at the National Review sighed at the thought of the man who called Reagan’s economic program “voodoo economics” leading the crusade to vindicate supply side theories. Senator Bob Dole, Congressman Jack Kemp, former acting president Al Haig and the Reverend Marion “Pat” Robertson (as well as Du Pont of Delaware and some others) attempted to steal the Gipper’s crown from his nerdy veep, but in the end the GOP Primary was fairly tame. Following Dole’s win in Iowa, which is hardly that important to winning the nomination in retrospect, Bush steamrolled his neophyte opponents and won the nomination in New Orleans. It is to be applauded that Bush selected Senator Dan Quayle as his running-mate and in doing so introduced a little anarchy to what was a fairly even headed Republican primary. This adds a little spice to the campaign soup. One also needs to applaud Bush’s “Mr. Rogers” like reading of the Peggy Noonan speech he was given. The “read my lips line” is a classic no matter how silly it sounds.

This campaign was greatly helped by the adorable efforts of the Democrats. In 1984 the Reverend Jesse Jackson had run a spirited campaign for the presidential nomination and was an early leader for the party’s presidential nod. Former Senator Gary Hart could easily have made the Democratic Primary as boring as the GOP contest had he been able to control his libido. Thank God that most politicians have no self-control. The meltdown which Hart was kind enough to show the nation from 1987 to 1988 entertained the sadistic amongst us almost as much as the crying fit that Congressman Pat Schroeder volunteered to the 1988 Democratic Primary freak show. I do not know what was in the water in the Rocky Mountain State in 1988 but one can only thank the god of campaigns that it was present in the H2O. Jackson emerged as the front-runner but was not alone after Hart sunk along with his Monkey Business. The primary struggle between Jackson, technocratic Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis, Senator Al Gore, Congressman Dick Gephardt, bow tie enthusiast Senator Paul Simon and Senator Joe Biden was very memorable. Biden, a well-known piece of skin with a grin stretched over it, decided that he did not want to take time to write his own speeches. Al Gore was insulted when a heckler told him he would make a really good vice-president. The 1988 Democratic Primary remains the primary in which the most candidates won states and delegates. That is exciting and it shows what a weak field of candidates can really do when they are unleashed on the nation. When Dukakis finally emerged as the bloodied primary victor at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta he held off Jackson’s delegates and then declared that the election was about “competence.” Dukakis then went on to prove he had none.

The 1988 campaign is a disappointing one because the general election was very bad. To be fair Dukakis, who started out with a huge lead in the polls, started out the race by pointing to the social and economic disparities of the Reagan years and these attacks seemed to stick. Bush was down by 20-points following the Democratic Convention. That is when the GOP had a brainstorming session and came up with a brilliant strategy that won them the race but place the 1988 campaign at number fifty-one on the list. They attacked the ACLU, spoke about the Pledge of Allegiance and scared middle class, suburban voters with a scary looking black man named Horton. One had to give a hand to Atwater and Ailes since they are the men who saved the boring Poppy Bush from himself. Steady attacks on Dukakis’s patriotism and performance as governor led to his campaign going into a steady downhill spiral of failed PR touchups. While the helmet and the tank are iconic the writer can hardly claim that they place the campaign in the upper echelon of elections.

As the Bush campaign toured American flag factories in New Jersey and Senator Symms of Idaho accused Kitty Dukakis of burning American flags the Dukakis campaign proved itself unable to respond to the attacks. One needs to remember that at this time there was a farm crisis, an ending Cold War and a saving and loan crisis. All of these issues could have been major focuses of the Dukakis campaign but he allowed Bush’s men to set the agenda. This is to the credit of Bush’s men but that does nothing to further the rankings of this campaign on the list. The debates themselves produced some memorable lines. Bush’s reference to Dukakis as “the ice man” and Bentsen’s well received, but ultimately useless, “Jack Kennedy” line are fond to remember but they did  not have any effect on raising the campaign’s rhetoric or changing the results of the race in November 1988.

In conclusion, Bush won the election of 1988 as was to be expected. He was the vice-president to a fairly popular president. He was one of only four vice-presidents to be elected directly to the top job from the second job. This was to be expected when the campaign offered so little serious discussion of issues, very few surprises and an incompetent opponent who blew a big lead. The election of 1988 was a game of pursuing the trivial and this is why it places at fifty-one on this list.            

[Rooney]

#50: The Election of 1904

Landing in at number fifty on this list is an election that involved the enigmatic personality of Theodore Roosevelt. Why is it at number fifty then? It is because TR failed to show any personality during the campaign. As the sitting United States President Roosevelt stayed in the White House and did not utter a word on his behalf. While TR’s presence in the 1912 contest places that campaign in the upper echelon of contests his refusal to break tradition and campaign as the incumbent place his triumphal reelection at number fifty.

“Czolgosz, Working man, Born in the middle of Michigan, Woke with a thought And away he ran To the Pan-American Exposition In Buffalo, In Buffalo!” So goes the “Ballad of Czolgosz” in the great Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical Assassins. As soon as the anarchist Czolgosz had unleashed the bullets from beneath his handkerchief it was only a matter of time before the eccentric Renaissance man Vice-President Roosevelt became the man in the president’s chair. In his first three and a half-years in the White House Roosevelt battled J.P. Morgan, ended a coal strike, overthrew Colombia’s government in Panama and started a legal war with Standard Oil. With such an active and controversial first term one could reasonably hope for a great reelection struggle for the president who had turned the nation on its head. This, however, proved too much to be expected.

The Old Guard of the Republican Party could have made this election a good one at the Republican Convention. Angered by Roosevelt’s usage of government power against business conservative elements in the Grand Old Party maneuvered to contest TR’s nomination with the person of Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio; this plan never materialized. Hanna, a Northern Ohio businessman who was friendly to his own laborers but not to organized labor, would have been an effective opponent to run against TR as he was a business conservative and also an anti-imperialist. The epic struggle between Hanna and “that damned cowboy” never came to be as Hanna passed away in February 1804. The Old Guard toyed with running Speaker of the House “Foul Mouth” Joe Cannon against TR but Cannon figured he already had more than enough power as the master of the House. At a prosaic Republican Convention in the usually raucous Chicago, Illinois, all 994 delegates voted for Roosevelt for president and the bearded iceberg Senator Charles Fairbanks for vice-president.

Death would be an enemy to this election. Not only did the Grim Reaper rob election junkies of a great Republican Convention battle it also cleared away the strongest opponent Teddy Roosevelt could have faced in the general election. Former U.S. Naval Secretary and millionaire financier William C. Whitney was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 1902 and 1903. A prominent Bourbon Democrat (though he never called himself that name as it was considered odious), Whitney would have been a fine opponent to oppose Roosevelt. A gold Democrat and anti-imperialist, Whitney had the strong support of both urban and rural Democrats. Then came the nasty winter of 1904 and in February 1904 Whitney died. The remaining Democrats in the campaign were all underwhelming. Judge Alton Bruce Parker, a solid jurist on the New York Court of Appeals, emerged as the Bourbon Democrat choice and the front-runner. Former President Grover Cleveland, who had worked with a young Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt when he was governor of the Empire State, refused to enter the contest. 1896 and 1900 nominee William Jennings Bryan, “the Boy Orator of the Platte”, also withdrew from the race leaving a free-for-all as the successor for the populist Democratic mantle. Absentee Congressman and newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst and Senator Francis Cockrell of Missouri competed with each other for populist Democratic backing. In the end, however, none of these three candidates do anything to heat up the campaign. While Hearst is an engaging and incredible figure in American history his campaign for president was disjointed and disorganized. With the sachems of Tammany Hall and Mayor George B. McClellan, Junior, opposing Hearst and supporting Parker there was no doubt whom would carry the delegates of the Empire State and with them the party’s nomination. At the St. Louis national convention Parker won an easy victory over Hearst and to add to the fun of this race the 80-year old former Senator Henry Winter Davis of New Jersey was named as vice-president. Davis is, to date, the oldest major party candidate ever nominated for national office.

Neither of the primaries offered a great deal of surprise nor did the general election. If Hearst had been the nominee it would have been unique to see the force of his personality and media empire unleashed on Roosevelt. A full court press by Hearst against TR might very well have chased Roosevelt out of the White House and led to a truly epic campaign. However, the polite and conservative Judge Parker refused to point out any differences between the incumbent and himself. When one reads the party’s opposition platforms one can understand why Parker chose not to say much: there were few differences. Big business pumped money into the Roosevelt campaign. H.C. Frick and E.H. Harriman donated a combined $400,000 to TR. When TR targeted U.S. Steel in 1905 Frick commented: “We bought the son of a bitch and he did not stay bought!” Roosevelt later denied that he had sought Harriman and Frick’s assistance. The Democrats were broke and were unable to run a national campaign.

The only drama of the general election came from Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World which accused U.S. Corporate Commissioner George Cortelyou of accepting bribes from the beef, oil, steel, sugar, coffee and paper trusts. Judge Parker gave a speech in October 1904 assaulting “Cortelyouism” and TR responded by calling Pulitzer’s attack “blackmail.” The scandal did not catch on and was quickly forgotten. This was unfortunate because in 1911 the charges would prove to be correct. Oops!

In the end the election of 1904 was a predictable curb stomp. Theodore Roosevelt won a landslide victory, taking every Northern and Western state. Roosevelt was the first Republican to carry the state of Missouri since 1868. The reason why this election is rated low while elections such as 1936, 1964 and 1984 are rated much higher is because this landslide election left very little to the imagination. Two primaries were ruined by death as was the general election. Exciting candidates either were claimed by death or failed to gain nomination. The greatest drama of the election came at the end of the campaign when Teddy Roosevelt announced that he would not seek reelection in 1908. That little address proved to be the greatest speech Roosevelt ever lived to regret. Something can be said for an election where the drama occurred after the votes were all counted and the shouting, what little there was, ended.             

[Rooney]

#49: The Election of 1956

The election of 1956 lands at forty-nine on the list. This election was a rematch of one of the truly great contests in American history. In 1952 victorious Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower gave into the pressure and admiration of the American people and allowed himself to be made into a presidential candidate. An epic Democratic Convention elevated Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson to the unenviable position of opposing the war hero. Stevenson proved himself to be a scrappy underdog and made the campaign a memorable bout. 1956 was very much the opposite. While it had some moments of suspense and drama the entire election was a very mild affair. This is quite disappointing considering that the world was on fire in 1956.

President Eisenhower had made it known to his wife that he wanted to only serve as single term in office. A series of health related shocks and surgeries in 1955 seemed to edge him that way. In March of 1956, after “facing the sheer, God-awful boredom of not being president”, Ike announced he would seek a second term in office. One potential area of dramatic tension in the Republican Primary came with Eisenhower’s strange ideas about reelection. He had told Press Secretary James Haggerty that he had visions of ditching the GOP and running as a “third choice” candidate. He had toyed with naming his brother Milton as vice-president. He also brought up the name of Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson and even Democratic Ohio Governor Frank Lausche. When Milton told Ike that this dream was absurd Eisenhower attempted to pry the devious Vice-President Richard Nixon from the chair one heartbeat away by naming him Defense Secretary. Despite the fact that the vice-presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss Nixon knew that it was his best chance for the presidency. At the GOP Convention in San Francisco gadfly former “Boy Governor” Harold Stassen attempted to lead a conclave for former Massachusetts Governor Christian Herter. However, this did not amount to a heal of Boston baked beans. The 1956 Republican Convention at the Cow Place in San Francisco was a real downer. This was not to be repeated when the GOP came back in 1964.

The 1956 contest is greatly aided by the Democratic Primary. Stevenson had been an all but announced candidate for the 1956 nod as soon as he conceded the 1952 election. Known for his whit (“Eggheads of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your yolks!”) and intelligence, Stevenson was the darling of the progressive, internationalist wing of the Democratic Party. The enigmatic former First Lady of the World Eleanor Roosevelt gave vocal support to “the Man from Libertyville.” Stevenson, however, was forced to battle for the nomination. In 1956 there was to be no draft. This lessens the drama but ups the campaign joy. His major opponent was the comic book crusader Senator Estes Kefauver. After taking on the crime families of New York, Harry Truman and Tales from the Crypt, Kefauver was back to make his second run for president. The battle between Kefauver and Stevenson was a great one in the history of Democratic Primaries. Kefauver’s upset wins in New Hampshire, Indiana and Minnesota allowed him to stay into the battle all the way to June. Stevenson was thoroughly disgusted by the primary campaign. In the pivotal California primary he was forced to don blue jeans, a bolo tie and a ten-gallon Stetson hat in a parade. Following the parade he threw the tie off in disgust and loudly declared for all to hear: “God, what a man won’t do to get public office!”

The additional wildcard of millionaire New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, the candidate backed by the exiled Harry Truman, adds a great deal to the 1956 contest. In May 1956 Stevenson and Kefauver also squared off in one of the first televised presidential debates. These factors led to a good convention in Chicago. What added even more spark to the election was the open battle for vice-president. Senator Kefauver faced off against the youthful, if unaccomplished, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts. While JFK’s father Joe told him not to touch the vice-presidency because “Stevenson is a loser” Kennedy was able to make a strong bid for the nod. It took two ballots for the experienced Kefauver to dispatch of the neophyte Kennedy. The emergence of the doomed Stevenson-Kefauver ticket is a great election story and one that adds a great deal of drama to the campaign.

“Eisenhower stands for “gradualism.’ Stevenson stands for ‘moderation,” comedian Mort Stahl said during his San Francisco night club act. “Between these two extremes, we the people must choose.” Stahl’s bit of gibe says a great deal about the election of 1956. The year was not a placid year but the election was. While Hungary was invaded by the Red Army and French, British and Israeli paratroopers landed in Egypt, neither military event played out a great deal in the election. Stevenson did not let the fact that he was down badly in the polls stop him from campaigning hard. He attacked Nixon as unfit for the presidency in four years. He came out for farm relief and nuclear arms limitation. He openly questioned the intelligence of the “hidden hand presidency.” Eisenhower opposed Stevenson’s call to end the draft.

Despite his strong campaign, Stevenson never stood a chance. When Stevenson asked a farmer who was upset about Ike’s farm policy, “But why aren’t people mad at Eisenhower?” the farmer replied: “Oh! No one connects Ike with his Administration.” A campaign that could have been a close one if Nixon had taken on Stevenson was a landslide because the incumbent was such a beloved figure. Stevenson is to be applauded for trying to make the election a contest but in the end Eisenhower was too much of an institution to be toppled. Perhaps Chicago businessman and NFL hockey team owner “Dollar” Bill Wirtz put it best: “If the Electoral College ever gives an honorary degree, it ought to go to Adlai Stevenson.”  

[Rooney]

#48: The Election of 1928

Landing at number forty-eight on the list is the election of 1928. President Coolidge called it quits in South Dakota in 1927 leaving the path open for hos progressive (if meddlesome) Secretary of Commerce Herbert Clark Hoover. Hoover steamrolled his way into the GOP nomination and over big city New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. It was the election which pitted the East Side against West Branch.

The Republican Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, was a repeat of the 1924 affair. Hoover, though he underperformed in the primaries, was the easy winner on the first ballot. Governor “Pockets” Frank Lowden was the only opponent who seemed he could take on Hoover. However, he dropped out of contention the day before the convention opened. With Coolidge refusing a draft and Vice-President Charles Dawes an unpopular, pompous jackass there was no one who could stop the Hoover tidal wave. “Who but Hoover?” was more than just a slogan; for Old Guard Republicans it was the dim, sad reality. Coolidge’s “Wunduh Boy” was an easy winner in both the primary and the general election. A hero for his work in Belgium during World War I, leading the 1927 relief of the Mississippi flood and meddling in many free market affairs as Commerce Secretary, Hoover was a national figure who was popular with the populace. His very name was a synonym for trim efficiency: “I’ll never learn to Hooverize when it comes to loving you.”

The Democratic Convention was a good deal more interesting because the candidate who emerged as the nominee was as different from the straight laced Quaker Hoover as night and day. Ebullient and friendly, Governor Alfred Smith had no education but did not need it to become the multi-term governor of the Empire State. A fixture of Tammany Hall and a hard drinking Irish Catholic, Smith grew up on the sidewalks of New York and did not hide from the fact. While more closed minded neighborhoods in Kansas and Iowa hardly were taken by Smith, the cigar munching politico was beloved by his fellow urban Catholics. At the Democratic Convention in Houston, Texas, Smith did not face serious opposition. Congressman Cordell Hull and Senator James Reed ran as pro-prohibition Protestants and were both soundly defeated on the first ballot. The great drama that came from the Democratic Convention was that a Roman Catholic was placed at the top of a national ticket from a major party. Smith, who had sought the nomination in 1920 and 1924, took the prize but in the end would prove to be hardly a match for the Republican Roaring Twenties. In the end the boulder donning guv was Hooverized by Main Street.

One of the great myths of the 1928 election is that Smith lost because of his religion. He lost because no Democratic could win in 1928 with a booming Stock Markey and easy credit sustaining the economic bubble known as the Roaring Twenties. However, his religion did not help his cause. Smith’s campaign manager was businessman John J. Raskob, a wet Catholic, and his campaign song was the diddy “The Sidewalks of New York.” These campaign choices only alienated Middle America from the Democratic standard bearer. Smith made it clear that he believed the separation of church and state and Hoover, to his credit, did not directly attack Smith’s religion. In the end, however, he also did not do a great deal to stop the attacks. The Protestant assaults on Smith’s religion add some bigoted suspense to the race but in the end the election was never so close that religion could turn it against either candidate. “Well,” Smith is said to comment after the election was said and done, “The time has not come where a man can say his beads in the White House.”

In the end the 1928 election involved two unique candidates. It is by no means a boring election but compared to other races it does not register as one of the greats. Hoover’s victory was only a matter of time. Democratic attacks on him failed to register. The production of a falsified photo showing Hoover dancing with a black woman in Mississippi did not bring the Solid South or border states back to the Democratic fold. The final election results are unique, no doubt. Hoover carried such Democratic standard states as Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Tennessee. Smith, on the other hand, carried nine out of the top ten most populous American cities. This is a result that matters. In 1932 the South would head back to the Democrats but the GOP has never managed to reclaim the urban environments which clamored to Smith. The Coolidge prosperity is what won the election for Hoover as well as the Great Engineer’s personal popularity. 1928 was an election in which GOP newspapers asked, “Smith or Hoover? Who would you want to run your business?” As happens so often, the interview process was not needed as the job was already safe for one applicant.     

[Rooney]

#47: The Election of 2004

Landing at number forty-seven is the reelection victory of George W. Bush. Following the free-for-all that was the 2000 election the general canvass of 2004 was hardly as exciting. This is not to say that Bush’s reelection lacked suspense and drama but the cast of characters assembled was uninspiring. In the end a seemingly back and forth battle had a straight forward ending that could have been predicated from the start.

After his highly unique election in 2000, President George W. Bush had managed to deficit spend his political capital into two tax cuts and two wars. The genesis of the global “War on Terror” allowed for him to grab unimagined presidential powers. The Patriot Act, National Security Letters, indefinite detainment, extraordinary rendition and billions in overspending were all given the thumbs up by a Congress composed of limited government Republicans. These decisions proved to be, uniquely, popular and polarizing. The haughty left mocked George W. Bush as “chimpy” and questioned his literacy, but as they chortles down their herbal teas a Neoconservative junta in the West Wing set about building up the “Bush Brand” for the 2004 reelection bid. Karl Rove and Andy Card proved highly adept at molding the illegal Iraq War into a worthy struggle. Despite rising casualties, no WMDs and the fact that the new Iraqi “government” was held up by American bayonets, the Mad Men of the RNC were able to sell the war to the American people as just and necessary. Polls in January 2004 showed both Bush and his war polling at 51% of higher in terms of approval. The economy “grew” steadily, with unemployment so low Hubert Humphrey would have called it “full employment”, as the Neoconservative junta built up a persona around Bush that would prove unbeatable in the general election. The “crazy cowboy” image Bush had attained in Europe was effectively spun as a positive. Bush, who fancied himself an international sheriff of sorts, was portrayed the leader of a posse who were going to throw the noose around the neck of terrorist leaders and their supporters in world capitals throughout the Middle East. In the United States of 2004 this image was a hard one to beat. The Democrats needed to produce an unbeatable candidate who could counter this image and show the nation that the U.S. needed to reject the Neoconservative sheriff’s posse. The man they nominated was not the right man for the job.

The election of 2004 is made disappointing because the eventual Democratic nominee was hardly the correct foil for the Bush image. Senator John Forbes Kerry (JFK?) was not a bad nominee by any means. He was a solid Great Society liberal who was hawkish on foreign affairs. He could debate well and, while not a soaring public speaker, had competence on the stump. His wife was loaded with cash and he had been a senator since 1985. His Vietnam War experience and three Purple Hearts technically should have appealed to defense minded swing voters and independents. This leads to the question: “If Kerry was such a solid candidate then why was he not the best man to take on the president?” The answer is that Kerry was far too much like Bush. The 2004 election falls low on the list because there was little to no contrast between the two candidates. They argued about tax cuts but only in the sense of how much money the rich should be given back. They disagreed on the Iraq War but only in terms of how the war should be fought, not whether it should have been fought. Kerry’s vote for the Iraq War Resolution coupled with his selection of pro-Iraq War Senator John Edwards as his running-mate effectively made Iraq a null-and-void issue. The Kerry/Edwards campaign was simply a non-neoconservative Republican campaign. Yes, Kerry gave lip service to liberal standards like health care and the minimum wage but his campaign never really found an issue to run on. In the end Kerry was simply “Not Bush.” That type of a campaign can be effective but it is hardly memorable. Memorable campaigns give people something to vote for, not just against.

The great tragedy of the 2004 election is that in 2003 it looked as if the race was going to be an epic struggle of the neocons versus the doves. Powered by youthful supporters and the internet, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean looked to be the likely opponent to take down King George the Second. I will admit that I was a “Deaniac” in 2003 so this part of the post may seem biased…because it is. Governor Dean was not a perfect candidate. He had the tendency to ramble, get off message and say things that could be easily misconstrued by the media. Dean was also rabidly leftist on issues like war, health care and the economy. The Bush Campaign was well prepared to oppose Dean. The campaign that Rove and Card had worked up to battle Dean was akin to Nixon’s 1972 smear fest against Senator George McGovern: “Acid, amnesty and abortion.” Dean, however, showed he was willing to fight back. An election between Bush and Dean would have been a great contest between two different ideologies. While Dena was a pragmatic centrist as governor, his presidential campaign was a left-wing dovish crusade against the Neocons in the White House.

Would Dean have won? This is doubtful. The Democrats felt the same way. Kerry appeared to be more “electable” in the general election. Dean rubbed people the wrong way, or so it appeared. Kerry was more center-left and did not appear weak on defense. The 2004 Democratic Primaries proved to be anti-climactic. Kerry won Iowa and New Hampshire. While John Edwards and General Wesley Clark won a handful of contests Kerry was never seriously challenged from January 2004 until the start of the general election in July 2004. This is no good for campaign ratings.

It can be argued that the general election of 2004 was exciting because it came down to a few key states. The struggle for Ohio and Pennsylvania are both case studies in voter outreach and campaign organization. Yet in the end Bush won Ohio and Kerry took Pennsylvania, both of which polls generally pointed to in the closing days of the campaign. The Real Clear Politics average of polls in Ohio, for example, showed Bush leading by 2.1%. He ended up winning the state by about that margin. While the campaign’s polls were close the eventual victory of Bush was a sure thing throughout much of October.

The October Surprise that year was the October 29, 2004, release of yet another Osama bin Laden video. The media hyped this up as a main reason Bush was reelected but it was not. By October 29, 2004, Bush led in the national polls despite three weak debate performances.

Kerry Campaign was simply unable to catch fire with the nation’s voters. The main reason why 2004 falls in at forty-seven is that it offered little surprises. In the Democratic Primary Kerry won easily. He was able to revive a dying campaign, that is true, but he took the ball and ran it across the line with ease once his campaign was up and running. The Republicans offered no surprises the whole election. Bush fell below 50% approvals occasionally and Kerry led nationally at different points but in the end the incumbent president won reelection. The closeness of the race is hardly a reason to place it high on the list. Close elections can be as anti-climactic as landslides if the candidates are not interesting. The election between Kerry and Bush was a lot of shouting over very few differences.             

[Rooney]

#46: The Election of 1908

Winding up at number forty-six on the list is the battle of the two Williams. In 1908 the eccentric and enigmatic Theodore Roosevelt sat out the race and allowed his friend and protégé
William “Big Bill” Taft to take the reins as the Republican standard bearer. The Democrats plodded out well-worn candidate William Jennings Bryan. The boy orator was now losing his hair and his prestige. The Great Commoner, the old war horse, stood no chance against Taft, the Secretary of War.

“What is the real difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties?” puzzled Joseph Pulitzer in 1908. The war lover was correct to puzzle until his puzzler was sore because there were precious few differences between Taft and Bryan on most important public policy issues. The trust busting, railway regulating, interventionist government of Teddy Roosevelt was the only issue of the campaign and both Bryan and Taft supported the reforms. “The voters,” declared the conservative Washington Post, “refuse to go into hysteria over the puny little questions that divide the two parties.”

On the Republican side there was precious little struggle. On the night of his great victory in 1904, TR had announced he would not be a candidate in 1908. Roosevelt famously wrote to military advisor Archibald Butt that he would “gladly give a hand” if he could take back those words. Roosevelt loved the presidency and the press loved Roosevelt. His big teeth, oversized mustache, high pitches voice and bombastic energy made for great print copy. Who could take his place? The answer was none but Roosevelt made sure his protégé was given the position. The friendly and magnanimous Secretary of War William Howard Taft was the only serious candidate for the nomination in 1908. It is a unique fact that 1908 was the first election in which statewide presidential primaries came into vogue. However, they made precious little difference in either of the major party’s final nomination. Conservatives in the form of Joe Cannon and Joseph B. Foraker vied against Taft as did another Roosevelt man: Senator Philander Knox. Taft, prodded on by an ambitious wife with an appetite for power to meet Bill’s for food, entered into several state primaries and won most of them. The legal minded Taft won the party’s nomination with over 700 delegate votes on the first ballot at the convention in Chicago. The greatest excitement of the convention was the forty-nine minute demonstration for TR accompanied with the chant of, “For-four-four years more!” Teddy, however, pulled the strings to make sure that Congressman “Sunny Jimmy” Sherman was nominated as Taft’s running-mate mate on the first ballot. As Taft left the convention it was joked that T.A.F.T. stood for “Take advice from Theodore.”

On the Democratic side William Jennings Bryan, the elder statesman of the Party of Jackson, was the only real candidate for the nomination. Bryan was so much the front-runner for the nomination that at the Denver convention his handlers made sure that the demonstration for him lasted exactly one-minute longer than the demonstration Bryan had received for the “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896. “Are we over time yet?” they asked each other as they checked their pocket watches. After being paired with perennial loser John W. Kern as his running-mate, the ticket of perennial losers decided to not campaign for the first few weeks. Bryan instead worked on his newspaper, The Commoner, and Kern went home to Indiana to sew wild oats. “Shall the people rule?” Bryan asked. He declared this question to be the “pivitol issue of the campaign” and in the end the people would not rule in favor of him.

The reason why the election of 1908 is placed at number forty-six is because it has excellent candidates but they had very little to argue about. “Hit them hard old man!” Roosevelt had advised Taft. Taft only liked to hit hard when he was playing baseball. He knew that Bryan had nothing to offer the nation that Teddy had not already done. In fact, Bryan made one of the main themes of his campaign the fact that he could bust trusts better than Taft. He argued he was the better heir to the Roosevelt legacy. Taft gave some public addresses but he hated them. He told his wife Helen that the idea of giving his acceptance speech in Cincinnati before a crowd of a few hundred people hung before him “like a dark nightmare.” It is unique to mention that Taft and Bryan had their speeches recorded for the phonograph and played around the nation. However, this did not change the outcome.

Taft beat Bryan and beat him badly. Gadflies commented that everytime Bryan was nominated for president he was nominated in a city further and ruther away from the White House. Some wagged that in 1912 he would be nominated in Los Angeles and in 1920 Manila and in 1924 Shanghai. Bryan himself asked his readers to answer “THE RIDDLE OF 1896” and explain to him why he had lost so badly. The fact was that Bryan scared people. He promised to nationalize the railroads if elected president. This turned the railroad magnates against him and towards Taft. Despite the Hepburn Act and its unpopularity with railway men it was far better than nationalization. Businessmen supported Taft and the people loved Teddy. In the end there could be no other alternative to a Taft victory. Bryan joked that he felt much like the drunken man who was thrown from a bar three times. When the drunk came back a fourth time he proclaimed indignantly: “Something tells me you fellows don’t want me around!”                    

[Rooney]

#45: The Election of 1936

Coming in at number forty-five is the election of 1936. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s massive reelection is an incredible victory for the forces of progressive labor in the United States and a catastrophic defeat for the “me-too” branch of Republicanism. The reason why it lands at number forty-five is simply because the election offered few surprises and the Republican Party failed to learn much from the contest. “There is one issue in this campaign,” FDR told Raymond Moley, “It’s myself, and people must be either for me or against me.” In the end the people would be overwhelmingly for the sunny chief executive.

The New Deal, which Roosevelt promised in the far more memorable 1932 canvas, had not created prosperity. Millions of people still wanted for jobs, housing and food in the summer of 1936. Despite millions in government spending and a strange group of Utopian socialists called the “Brain Trust” trying out their weird societal views for the first time, unemployment was still high and the GDP was still abysmal. However, the nation felt like happy days were indeed here again. FDR’s first term in office is one of the turning points in American political and governmental history. It is an era all to itself in not just government programming but propaganda. New Deal sponsored art, photography, radio and drama programs pumped the idea that the depression was ending into the minds of Americans on a daily basis. The propaganda worked and it worked well. In 1936 millions of Americans felt that the government had saved them from the doldrums of the depression and that they were far better off in 1936 than they had ever been during the Republican 1920s. FDR’s New Deal propaganda machine is to be applauded. It made an election that should have been competitive into a walk for the man who pulled the strings from behind the curtain. FDR was indeed the Wizard of Oz and no one throws the wizard from the Emerald City.

The assassination of Huey “Kingfish” Long stole a fascinating component from the 1936 campaign because the candidacy of the wild Louisiana governor would have made the election fall in the top ten. He had threatened that he would run on his socialistic “Share Our Wealth” platform as an independent in 1936. His 1935 assassination ended those plans and cast the idea of a Long 1936 candidacy into the realm of “what-if.” T. Harry Williams, the incredible historian, has written that Long had no intention of running in 1936 but instead running another candidate under the “Share Our Wealth” independent banner. If this is the case the death of Long does not totally ruin the 1936 race but even a 3rd party campaign from a Long surrogate would have made the election more dramatic.

To unseat Roosevelt the Republicans did not have a very deep bench. Former President Herbert Hoover, the only nationally known candidate, was sitting in toxic expulsion at the Waldorf-Astoria. The party’s pathetic Cleveland convention named the moonfaced Kansas Governor Alfred Landon as the party’s nominee. A former Bull Mooser who had introduced New Deal like programs in the Sunflower State, Landon was not a conservative alternative to FDR. No, he was simply a pale pink of the real red. During the campaign Landon himself attacked the New Deal and Roosevelt but failed to answer how he would repeal the New Deal. The GOP slogan in 1936 was “Off the rocks with Landon and Knox.” The two Republicans never managed to even see the rocks; they were sunk far before that.

The general election campaign itself was given some life by Socialist Norman Thomas and Union Party candidate Congressman William Lemke. The anti-New Deal pixie triumvirate of Father Charles Coughlin, Dr. Francis Townsend and the Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith formed the backbone of the Union Party movement. “Liberty Bill” Lemke was simply a good face to put on an odd operation. Critics pointed out that Liberty Bill might also be cracked. Norman Thomas brought his folksy charm to the campaign trial once again. When asked if FDR had carried out the Socialist Platform of 1932 Thomas quipped: “If he has he has carried it out on a stretcher.” The antics of Coughlin and the Hearst papers against Roosevelt also make the election memorable. Who could forget Coughlin’s wonderful nicknames for Roosevelt? I personally like “Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt” the best. That is memorable.

FDR’s class warfare campaign in 1936 is also very memorable, Railing against the “malefactors of great wealth” he told the nation that he “welcomed the hatred” of the Melons, Morgans and Insuls. His government had already targeted Andrew Mellon’s art collection and raised taxes on the rich. He gave fiery speeches in defense of labor and the social security act. His government also targeted those businessmen who donated to the Republican campaign. Roosevelt’s bloody assaults on the wealthy and business would be copied by Democrats for years to come going all the way to Barack Obama’s 2012 successful reelection campaign. The 1936 FDR campaign is important to political history because it shows how effectively candidates can run against wealth in a capitalist nation.

The hilarious results of the 1936 Literary Digest poll, the powerful FDR campaign and the laughably pathetic Republican campaign all create a memorable campaign. The main reason why it is ranked at this place is because the campaign does not stand up that well when compared to the other candidates for the top sports. In the end the screaming of the Radio Priest and the blustery anger of the “malignant rich” could not stop the Roosevelt Express. FDR’s first reelection was a forgone conclusion. Alf Landon himself commented the night before the election on what his odds against Roosevelt were. He commented, “No chance.”

[Rooney]

#44: The Election of 1888

The contest of 1888 lands at number forty-four and one can argue it is one of the most unknown energetic campaigns in American history. The struggle between an incumbent president and a Civil War general would seem to be one of the most memorable races in American history. Additionally, it was an election which was ran and won on one issue: tariff. I cannot think of many one-issue campaigns in American presidential history. 1888 was battled out on one issue and one issue alone: the tariff. This makes the election a fine historical anonymity and a lot of fun.

The Democrats in 1888 had only one candidate. President Stephen Grover Cleveland had called on Congress in December 1887 to lower tariffs. “What’s the good of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?” Cleveland had asked his cabinet. Grover the Good also vetoed a silly Civil War pension act and also created the Federal Trade Commission during his first term in office. The head-on struggle between the Democratic House and the Republican Senate over the tariff reduction galvanized the GOP and lionized the president in his party’s ranks. The Democratic Convention in reliably Democratic St. Louis nominated Cleveland by acclamation. The campaign was not aided by the tagging on of the 75-year old former Ohio Senator Allen G. Thurman as Cleveland’s running-mate. The Democratic Party faithful were not inspired by the Cleveland/Thurman Ticket. Cleveland refused to campaign at all as incumbent president. Cleveland’s refusal to allow cabinet secretaries campaign for him forced the brunt of the campaign on the elderly Thurman’s shoulders. The old man collapsed at one point on the stump. A collapsing old man is the best way to sum up the Democratic campaign. Thankfully, the Republicans were not as pacific.

The great bright spot of the 1888 canvas is the Republican campaign. Following their narrow defeat in 1884, the Republicans were determined to toss “Fat Grover” out of office and retake the reins of government. A raucous and hilarious convention in Chicago attracted an incredible number of simply joyous candidates. The front-runner when the convention opened was the eccentric judge and Treasury Secretary Walter Q. Gresham. The aging sage of Ohio John Sherman, patrician NY Central Railroad President Chauncey Depew, silver mained Senator William Boyd Allison of Iowa and Indiana Senator and General Benjamin “Grandfather’s Hat” Harrison rounded out the interesting array of candidates. The back and forth struggle between Gresham, Sherman and Depew allowed for Harrison to emerge from obscurity in his Indianapolis law office to become the party’s nominee on the eight ballot. The convention was simply the tip of the Republican iceberg. The general election allowed for them to show exactly how vicious an uncaged elephant can be.   

The well-oiled Republican machine makes the campaign worth following. The GOP was backed by big money interests who wanted to see high tariffs. High tariffs, after all, allowed for inferior products to be sold cheaper than far better foreign goods. That is just good, government backed business. Millions of dollars flowed into the Republican war chest, which was managed by the multimillionaire Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker. Harrison ran an epic “front porch” campaign from his home in Indianapolis which would be copied by Bill McKinley in 1896 and Warren Harding in 1920. The stories of the thousnads of men and women around the country who travelled to Indianapolis to see the Republican candidate make for excellent campaign anecdotes, which in the end is one of the hallmarks of a good election.

The dirty tricks of the Republicans are also the thing of electoral legends. They called the incumbent president the “Beast of Buffalo” and accused him of being a drunkard who beat his young wife Francis Folsom Cleveland. Republican women groups even whispered that Francis beat Grover. The First Couple were both accused of being drunks who gambled on Sundays. These attacks alone are rapturous but the underhanded tactics of the Murchison Letter place the Republican campaign into the stuff of underhanded legend. In a campaign where the Republicans made British bashing a past time, they managed to troll the British minister in Washington. Sir Lionel Sackville-West replied to a man named “Charles F. Murchison” who had inquired of him on how to vote in November. Murchison claimed to be an American citizen of English birth who wished to vote for the candidate who would best serve the needs and desires of the British Empire. Murchison praised Cleveland for his devotion to “free trade” and assaulted Harrison as a high-tariff man who was on, “the American side of all questions.” However, Cleveland had stood up the Britain when it came to fishing rights between Canada and Maine. Murchison wanted to know if Cleveland was a man that a Brit could trust. Sackville-West fell for the 19th century Rick-roll and replied that Cleveland was the best choice for the British lion. The Republican ran with the story and portrayed Cleveland as a Red(coat). Cleveland asked the British to recall Sackville-West. In the end, “Murchison” turned out to be Republican dirty trickster Charles Osgoodby and the British diplomat was played by some truly clever tricksters. In my opinion the Murchison Letter is probably the most clever, inventive dirty trick every played in the history of presidential campaigns.

The final results are also intriguing. Cleveland won the popular vote but lost his home state of New York. The excellent Republican campaign in the Empire State, coupled with deep divisions in the Democratic Party of New York, won the state and the election for Harrison, the little general. The Election of 1888 is by no means a “bad” election. I find it to be an exciting one which shows real differences between two candidates and some clever campaign tricks. It is ranked at forty-four simply because there are other elections which had greater contrasts and more clever campaign capers. I take my hat off to Cleveland, Harrison, the tariff and that dastardly Murchison Letter!     

[Rooney]

Great job Rooney!

Thank you very much, windjammer, I appreciate it.

It must be hard for you to do these rankings at this point.

I have a list made out but I have the terrible little habit of changing it at the last minute. I have also been swamped by my work the last few days. I hope to have another one up soon.

[Rooney]

#43: The Election of 1872

Landing at number forty-three on the list is the election of 1872. The campaign of 1872 has great moments of excitement but the fact that it had a widely popular candidate in the running never put the outcome in a doubt. President Ulysses S. Grant, the savior of the Union, was the assured winner from the very beginning. The scandals of his administration made for some limited political hay for his hapless opponents. The best thing to come from the election was a party movement which, had it not been fumbled, could have led to the emergence of a unique Fourth Party system.

The Liberal Republican movement was a unique amalgamation of elitist New England Republicans, “political reformers” from the Midwest and old Southern Whigs. Angered by “Grantism”- a newly coined verb meaning corruption- and the fact that Ulysses Grant did not have an Ivy League law degree, Charles Sumner and Charles Francis Adams decided to bolt the Republican Party. Grant, the great hero of the Union who had aptly led the ship of state since 1869, would not be thrown from the Republican presidential nomination by the perennially unlikable and smug Sumner or Adams. The Democrats were still rebuilding themselves from the 1866, 1868 and 1870 elections. They stood no chance at ousting Grant. Thus, the Liberal Republican movement was born.

Led by the defeated 1848 communist revolutionary, Union General and Missouri Senator Carl Schurz, “reform minded citizens” met in Cincinnati in May 1st, an appropriate date for Schurz and his strange fellows. After putting together a progressive, pro-civil service reform, anti-corruption platform, the real fun of the convention began. The eccentric publisher of the New York Tribune and former Congressman Horace Greeley emerged as the party’s presidential standard bearer over Adams, Senator Lyman Trumbull and Chief Justice Salmon Chase. With his big head, cherubic face, flashy blue eyes and outrageous facial hair Greeley seemed as if he had stepped from the pages of a Dickens novel. The anti-Grant cabal was overwhelmed in grief. The Nation commented that Greeley’s nomination was the greatest national disappointment since the news of the first Battle of Bull Run. The New York Times, a good Republican publication, commented that Greeley’s nomination was a “joke” and added insult to injury “If any one man could send a great nation to the dogs, that man would be Mr. Greeley.” Greeley was a lover of odd causes for the 1870s. He supported vegetarianism, communal living, free love and free thinking. A strong supporter of civil rights he had also called for Lincoln to work out a negotiated peace with the Confederacy and had donated money to bail Jefferson Davis out of prison. The 1872 campaign was given a mixed blessing by Greeley. The enigmatic printer turned politician campaigned across the nation on his behalf, the first candidate to do so since Stephen Douglas in 1860.

The failure of the Democrats to nominate their own candidate detracts from the election. Greeley won the nomination of the party he had long accused of being the right arm of Lucifer. A joke was spread around the nation that when Dr. Livingstone returned from five years in African isolation he was told a few things by Henry M. Stanley, his rescuer. Stanley told Livingstone of the Austrian-Prussian War, the execution of the Mexican Emperor Maximillian and the defeat of Louis Napoleon at the hands of Bismarck and the Prussians. Finally he mentioned that Greeley had been nominated for president by the Democratic Party. “Hold on,” Livingston told Stanley, “You have told me stupendous things and confiding with simplicity I was swallowing them down; but there is a limit to all things, and when you tell me that Horace Greeley is become the Democratic candidate I will be hanged if I believe it!”

The general campaign of 1872 was a great deal of fun. The Liberal Republicans ran against Grant with a vengeance. They called the president an “ape”, “barbarian”, “dime store Caesar” and “king of corruption.” Greeley, realizing that the fight was in vain, fought his very best. He attacked the gold cornering scheme of Fisk and Gould, the Credit Mobiler scandal, the corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and spoke in favor of civil service reform. “While there are doubts as to my fitness for president,” Greeley said at a campaign stop, “Nobody seems to deny I would make a capital beaten candidate!” Thomas Nast, the partisan Republican political cartoonist who would end his odd days as Ambassador to Ecuador, agreed to make Greeley a “capital beaten candidate.” His cartoons were called a “shower of mud” by the New York Sun. Nast drew Greeley as a near-sighted, pumpkin-headed buffoon in baggy pants with strange novels and tracts falling from his overstuffed pockets. Nast famously drew Greeley grasping hands “across the bloody chasm” with the KKK, John Wilkes Booth and Jeff Davis over the grave of Abraham Lincoln. Greeley replied by making lofty, statesman-like speeches which even impressed his long-time rival Henry Raymond at the New York Times. “The voice of a statesman,” Raymond was forced to concede in October 1872 after hearing Dr. Greeley speak for himself.

In many ways the campaign of 1872 was the Vanderbilt Election. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, master of the New York Central Railroad, was closely tied to almost all of the major and minor candidates for president in 1872. Vanderbilt and his son-in-law William Allen gave freely to the Grant campaign chest. The president himself wrote a thank you letter to Vanderbilt for the money he gave to the cause. Vanderbilt had given financial support to Greeley on more than one occasion. Charles O’Connor, the Roman Catholic Bourbon Democratic presidential nominee, was Vanderbilt’s corporate counsel for years. Even the gadfly candidacy of Victoria Woodhull was tied to the Commodore. Woodhull, an apparent stockbroker and attorney who would do time behind bars for mail fraud, was nominated by the hopeless People’s Party. Woodhull adds a lot of color to the campaign even though her ticket took very few votes. Woodhull had exposed the pious Henry Ward Beecher as a philanderer, been divorced, lived by the dictates of free love and had attended the First International. She met Cornelius Vanderbilt during her work as a spiritual medium. Yes, Vanderbilt even had his hands in the pockets of the Woodhull candidacy. 1872 was the Commodore’s election.

Election Day 1872 was even an exciting day. Susan B. Anthony was famously arrested for trying to vote and fined $100. The Judge would famously declare the fee already paid and let the case drop. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the unwilling running-mate of Woodhull, also served as a New York elector for Ulysses Grant. The election results themselves are worth noting. President Grant won a massive victory which showed the people were behind him and his administration. He became the second Republican to be reelected president joined the (at that time) small club of reelected presidents. Electors from Arkansas and Louisiana were rejected. Then, the funny yet faithful Greeley died November 29, 1872, leaving his negligible electoral votes to be fought for by many neophytes.

Poor Greeley died having lost everything. His wife passed way in October 1872, he lost the election by a landslide, was defrauded out of millions by conman Phillip Arnold and Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, took over the New York Tribune in a hostile takeover. Mark Twain, an admirer and sometime friend of Greeley, referred to Reid as “Outlaw Reid” due to the takeover. Greeley descended into madness. A few days before his death he confronted Reid at the swanky Delmonico’s Restaurant, yelling in his face, “You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper!” The 1872 campaign was greatly aided by the eccentric Greeley. Sam Grant, always too shy to campaign on his own behalf, was quiet but his opponent was a good sport. The 1872 campaign is an exciting one in which the ending was known from the beginning. Greeley did not let the election become a boring campaign. He fought hard. Perhaps Greeley put it best himself when he wrote: “Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.” His life may have fallen apart in 1872 but Greeley could leave knowing that his campaign was not one of “living oblivion.”

[Rooney]

I think this one probably should be lower. Unpopular Democrat dies before he could even lose properly? Compare 1888, which was stolen, but from the Democrats by the Democrats.

Tell me, which one is more interesting?

1872 has the far more interesting cast of characters. 1888 had it's good moments, no doubt, but I stand by my choice. 

[Rooney]

#42: The Election of 1832

Ranking at number forty-two is Andrew Jackson’s landslide reelection. This election has an incredible premise and involves the first political conventions in American history. Additionally, it hosts the first third party challenge in American political history. The battle between Old Hickory, the Great Compromiser as a firm anti-Mason is a strong campaign with an expected outcome. Jackson, the people’s hero, was an easy winner but the campaign was a hard fought campaign.

The election of 1832 began as early as 1830. President Andrew Jackson had declared the Second Bank of the United States an enemy of the common man. The Democratic Party aimed at dismantling the bank by taking away its charter to do business. Henry Clay, leader of the National Republican opposition to Jackson, decided to make the bank a campaign issue in 1832. Believing the bank to be overwhelmingly popular with the nation’s voters, the clever Clay maneuvered to put Mr. Biddle’s Bank’s up for re-charter in July 1832. As the Kentuckian expected Jackson vetoed the re-charter of the bank in 1832. This led to Nicholas Biddle withholding money from the U.S. and brining about a small recession that summer and early fall. The Jackson campaign was able to spin the “stingy banker Biddle” against Clay. Jackson was no fan of “rag, tag banks” but he especially disliked massive corporate banks backed by federal money. Jackson’s assault on the “Monster Bank” and his brilliant veto message were just the class warfare that was needed for him to win reelection by a landslide. “The veto works well,” Jackson assured his friend John H. Eaton, “instead of crushing me as was expected and intended, it will crush the Bank.” The fact that the Bank War falls into the campaign of 1832 earns it excellent marks in terms of historical importance and drama.  

King Caucus was dead by 1832. The controversial congressional caucus system which selected Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and William H. Crawford was relegated to the ash heap of history by the Ant-Masonic Party. In September 1831, this third party nominated former Attorney General William Wirt at a peaceful gathering of delegates. This nominating convention inspired the National Republicans and Jackson’s Democratic Party to hold their own conventions. The Democratic Convention in Baltimore is especially important because it adapted a rule which would make the 1912, 1920 and 1924 Democratic convention magnificent catastrophes: the two-thirds rule. At the 1832 convention the Democrats made the rule that the presidential nominee needed to win two-thirds support from all delegates to be nominated for the presidency. This wonderful little rule worked well when Old Hickory was the nominee but it would give elections lovers the world over limitless amounts of joy in the years to come.

The general election of 1832 was a great deal of fun. Nicholas Biddle made a strange bedfellow for Henry Clay. Biddle was the son of a long-line of Philadelphia gentry. Educated at home and abroad, Biddle had worked in the printing business and had emerged as a leading banker with the help of his brother Thomas. Biddle did not swear, drink or gamble. He was considered a boring, straight laced bank executive. The Jackson people attacked Clay as a drinker, womanizer, gambler and duelist. Clay was all four and he knew it. Biddle believed that Jackson appealed to the “Great Unwashed” and declared the Bank veto message a “manifesto of anarchy.” Biddle printed over 3,000 copies of the president’s veto message with condescending annotations. His printing company sent these out to voters in the Middle and Western states to show them how barbaric Jackson was. This backfired as people seemed to like Jackson’s dedication to hard currency and opposition to corporations and “rag money.”

“The Jackson cause is the cause of democracy and the people against a corrupt and abandoned aristocracy,” the Jackson press wrote time and time again. The Clay and Biddle campaign had no idea the can of worms they had opened when the made the Mammoth Bank an issue in 1832. “Prince Hal” was outfoxed by the earthy Jackson at every turn in the 1832 campaign. Jackson’s surrogates declared the campaign as a struggle between “The People’s Champion” and “Czar Nick” Biddle.  Clay’s National Republicans struck back by declaring it was Jackson who was the real tyrant. Daniel Webster declared that through the bank veto Jackson had become Louis XIV and proclaimed, “I am the state!” Screamed one anti-Jackson campaign line: “THE KING UPON THE THRONE: THE PEOPLE IN THE DUST!!!” Clay’s Bankites made great usage of political cartoons. These drawings portrayed Jackson as a corn poe king being crowned by a devilish Martin van Buren, his running-mate. They portrayed Jackson as a doddering Don Quixote tilting toward the marble pillars of the bank. Most ludicrous, one cartoon portrays Jackson and Clay in a horserace with Clay leading by half and length. That was, as Jackson well knew, a delusion.

Wonderful viciousness punctuates the 1832 race. Jackson was attacked as being seriously ill or near death. Francis P. Blair, a Democratic newspaper publisher, released a hilarious story painting Clay as a philandering gambling drunkard. Writing in the Washington Globe, Blair wrote that once Clay got into a drunken brawl in Lexington, Kentucky, and was taken in by a friend and his lovely young bride. “He was taken to a kind friend’s house. He was treated with the utmost courtesy and tenderness by that friend’s wife and family.” While enjoying that great care, Blair concluded, Clay repaid the courtesy by sleeping with the man’s wife and “winning the money of his kind host.” Clay almost got into a fist fight with Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri when Clay made a speech declaring that Benton had stated that Jackson was a lawless man. Benton, who had brawled with Jackson in 1813, declared Clay a liar. Benton nearly punched Clay but two senators restrained the massive Missouri lawmaker. “I apologize to the Senate!” Benton declared, “but not to the Senator from Kentucky.” The brutal campaign was felt amongst the common voters. Late one night in Kentucky, it is said, a farmer split a dressed pig into halves and left it outside his home to be taken to market for sale the next morning. When he woke up he found half the hog was gone. “I have been robbed by a Clay man!” the farmer told the local sheriff. “How do you know it’s a Clay man who has done it?” the sheriff asked. The farmer laughed and replied: “Because a Jackson man would have gone the whole hog!” Yes, it was a wonderfully brutal campaign of mud and muck.

Another excellent factoid in this race is the South Carolina nullification struggle in 1832. Jackson’s strong stance for tariff reform as opposed to nullification led to his own vice-president resigning and the South Carolina Democratic Party turning on him. The Nullifier Democrats in South Carolina cast their electoral votes for Virginia Congressman John Floyd. This small rebellion, however, proved to be unimportant because the voters of the Palmetto State did not matter in the end.  

The election of 1832 was a lot of fun and drama but falls at number forty-two because the end was never in doubt. Jackson told his friend and Kitchen Cabinet member Isaac Hill, “It’ll be a walk. If our fellows didn’t raise a finger from now on the thing would be just as well done.” The huge landslide he and Van Buren won was a testament to that logic. Mile long Jackson parades in New York City and a massive rally for Old Hickory in Clay’s hometown of Lexington turned out to be an accurate reflection of the will of the people. The election of 1832 was a campaign that Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have been proud of. The “General Will” of the people was heard loud and clear. The Banksters under Biddle and Clay spent freely but lost badly. Clay was so shocked by his massive beating that he declared he was :shocked and alarmed” by the election. William Wirt, the Anti-Masonic candidate, knew it all too well: “My opinion is that [Jackson] may be president for life if he chooses.”

[Rooney]

About how much research did you put into this?

I wrote for over an hour. I looked at a few different books and tracts. Hope you enjoyed it.

I also thank everyone for their kind remarks. Another election will be up tonight!

[Rooney]

#41: The Election of 1944

Taking the spot of number forty-one is FDR’s wartime mandate. The election of 1944 offered a highly dramatic and suspenseful vice-presidential battle which would decide far more than an election. The outcome of those heated days in Chicago would change the history of the post-World War II world.

The first wartime presidential election since 1864, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared he would run for a fourth term. “The first twelve years are the hardest,” Roosevelt clipped as he entered the race. The United States was embroiled in World War II. Over a million men were stationed all over the globe battling the Axis Powers. Roosevelt (Dr. Win the War) had been as controversial as commander-in-chef as he had been as the New Deal chief executive. Japanese internment, price controls, a national draft, million dollar armament deals and a very cozy relation with the murderous Joseph Stalin were all controversial aspects of Roosevelt’s war time stewardship. However, by July 1944 the war had turned around in Europe and the Pacific. Some wondered if the imperialistic FDR would hold an election at all with the war waging. “All these people here haven’t read the Constitution,” Roosevelt joked with the press when they asked him about canceling the election, “Unfortunately, I have.” FDR had no reason to cancel the 1944 contest because he knew he would win it and win it by a wide margin.

The Republican primary campaign is a little disappointing. There was an incredible number of interesting characters in the campaign. The front-runner, and eventual nominee, for the party’s presidential nomination was the suave, urbane New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. A fearless District Attorney who put Lucky Luciano behind bars (before FDR got him out in 1942), Dewey was targeted by Dutch Schultz’s notorious Murder, Inc., before being elected governor in 1942. A trained opera singer turned attorney, Dewey’s deep baritone voice and charismatic debating style made him an effective governor and candidate. He was challenged by the right from Ohio Governor John W. Bricker and from the left by Wendell Wilkie, the 1940 GOP nominee who had transformed into Eleanor Roosevelt’s BFF. Following a thrashing of Wilkie in the Wisconsin Primary the “Stop Dewey” movement focused on General Douglas MacArthur. “Old Brass Hat” MacArthur stayed out of the race in order to complete the conquest of the Pacific. That was probably an easier task than taking on FDR. Dewey won the nomination on the first ballot with only one delegate from Wisconsin voting for MacArthur. The reason: “I am a man, not a jellyfish.” Dewey wanted the progressive Governor of California Earl Warren as his running-mate but the big Swede did not want anything to do with the hopeless Dewey cause. Instead Dewey tapped Bricker and came up with one of the most catchy slogans in American political history: “Win the war quicker with Dewey and Bricker!” The 1944 Republican Chicago Convention is a real let down. Dewey and Bricker were easily nominated. The 1944 campaign is not saved by anything the Republicans pulled. No, when the Democrats were blown into Chicago that is when the campaign fireworks began.

Henry Agard Wallace was simply a strange cookie. A utopian socialist working as vice-president, Wallace admired Siberia and regularly wrote a mystic shaman for political advice. The 1944 election is made exciting because Wallace is a great character and his struggle to stay on the ticket is a wonderful political cloak and dagger story. FDR did not personally dislike Wallace. In fact FDR wanted to keep Wallace on the ticket. Roosevelt did not seem to care who his running-mate was as he was reshaping the post-war world in his own image. While Roosevelt didn’t care the political bigwigs of the Democratic Party certainly did. They knew FDR was a dying man and that they were picking not one but two presidents at the Chicago convention. On July 20, 1944, the Democratic Convention nominated FDR for a fourth term overwhelmingly. Wallace delivered a solid New Deal speech leading delegates to cheer for over half and hour, “We want Wallace! We want Wallace!” Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan did not want Wallace. FDR, who said he “liked” and “respected” Wallace, was not willing to make a fight over the second place spot. FDR personally liked “assistant president” Jimmy Byrnes as vice-president but Sidney Hillman of the AFL/CIO could not stand the anti-labor Byrnes. Party leaders sat around in their hotel rooms, smoking heavily and thinking about who would work bes to beat Wallace. Hannegan, a Missouri man, decided that Senator Harry S Truman (the “Senator from Pendergast”) would be a fine choice for second place. Truman rejected the idea at first but Hannegan refused to let him run. FDR himself interceded. When Truman was cornered in Hannegan’s hotel room the president called him up. “Have you got that fellow lined up yet?” FDR asked in a rehearsed phone call. “No,” said Hannegan, “he is the contrariest damned Missouri Mule I’ve ever dealt with.” “Well,” FDR replied with drama dripping from his every word, “you tell him, if he wants to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of the war, that’s his responsibility.” Truman had heard the whole thing because FDR spoke so loudly. “If that’s the situation I’ll have to say yes,” a bewildered Truman responded, “but why the hell didn’t he tell me in the first place?” Wallace’s support from labor and the big cities kept him in the lead on the first ballot. However, his failure to win on the first ballot allowed for Hannegan to rally enough large Northern, Midwestern, and Southern states to the Truman banner to win Give em’ Hell Harry a victory on the second ballot. One humorist called Truman the “Missouri Compromise.”

The dramatic battle between Truman and Wallace is only added to by the presence of Red Sydney Hillman. New York Times columnist Arthur Krock reported that FDR had told Hannegan in regards to the Vice-Presidential pick: “Go down and nominate Truman before there’s any more trouble. And clear everything with Sidney.” Red Sidney Hillman was the head of the Afl/CIO PAC and close friends with communist Earl Browder. The Republicans jumped on the red baiting issue with gusto. “Everything in your government will be cleared with the radical Sydney Hillman and his communist friend Earl Browder,” Governor Bricker warned voters, “if Roosevelt and Truman win election this November.” One Republican poet even Waxed eloquent against the communists:

Clear it with Sidney, you Yanks
Then offer Joe Stalin your thanks,
You’ll bow to Sid’s rule
No matter how cruel
For that’s the directive of Frank’s

Red baiting was a new tool in the Republican box of dirty tricks. It was played to the hilt in the 1944 campaign. Dewey accused Roosevelt of cozying up with the Soviet Union and allowing Stalin to murder and imprison millions of innocent Eastern Europeans. The young and dynamic Dewey assaulted the “tired old men” in the Roosevelt government who had been allowed to “grow old in office.” Herbert Brownell, Dewey’s campaign manager, urged Dewey to attack Roosevelt over his poor health. In July 1944 Roosevelt suffered a collapse in San Diego. The ebullient FDR referred to his ailment as “the collywobbles” and laughed as reporters asked if he felt he could survive another four years at the helm. Had Dewey chosen to run against Roosevelt’s health that would have made for an interesting campaign dynamic. In the end Dewey proved too magnanimous to go into the mud over Roosevelt’s health. This would not be the only time Dewey pulled his punches.

Continued on next post.        

[Rooney]

The Pearl Harbor issue adds some excellent drama to the 1944 campaign. Republicans began to question how much Roosevelt knew about the Japanese surprise attack. Dewey himself spoke about the issue. General George C. Marshall sent intelligence officer Carter C. Clarke to speak one-on-one with Dewey. Dewey told Clarke that military cryptographers had cracked “certain Japanese codes before Pearl Harbor” and that FDR “knew what was happening before Pearl Harbor.” “Instead of being reelected he ought to be impeached,” Dewey said to Clarke. Clarke demanded that Dewey drop the Pearl Harbor issue but Dewey, who had stood up to mobsters with tommy guns, refused to be intimidated by the little intelligence officer. General Marshall, who was afraid that the investigation of Pearl Harbor might reflect dimly on him, refused to back off on the issue. Marshall met with Dewey himself and browbeat him by declaring that the U.S. government had no prior knowledge of Japanese codes before the Pearl Harbor attack. Marshall accused Dewey of aiding the enemy by bringing Pearl Harbor into the debate. No one knows what else Marshall said or threatened in the meeting but we do know that in the end Dewey relented to stop the political questions about Pearl Harbor. It is now known that Japanese codes had been cracked by the MAGIC decoding machine and that Marshall was not entirely truthful with Dewey. However, Dewey dropped the issue and in doing so gave up a second effective issue that could have been used in the 1944 general election against FDR.

The general election of 1944 is a good one but by no means great. Organized labor came out in force for Roosevelt. The United Steel Workers released a fairly hilarious cartoon called “Hellbent for Election” in which they compared the Republicans to Hitler. The AFL/CIO sent campaign workers door to door in order to ask people, “Where were you in 1932?” Dewey’s attacks on the “tired old men in Washington” was successfully countered by Senator Robert Kerr’s keynote address at the DNC. He named the “tired old men” of the Roosevelt government. “Shall we discard as a ‘tired old man’ 59-year old Admiral Nimitz…62-year-old Admiral Halsey…64-year-old General MacArthur…66-year old Admiral King…64-year-old General Marshall? No, Mr. Dewey, we know we are winning the war with these ‘tired old men’ including the 62-year old Roosevelt as their commander-in-chief.” The Republicans more or less swallowed their tongues on the age issue following this brilliant rebuff.

The 1944 campaign was a good one in many ways. The final results are interesting themselves. Dewy won an impressive 46% of the vote against the popular war time leader. Roosevelt remembered the 1944 contest as the “meanest of my life” but his big win was hardly unimpressive. Republicans even went after Fala, FDR’s little dog. They claimed that FDR had sent a destroyer to pick up Fala who had been left at a Pacific island. Roosevelt joked that while his family did not despise the attacks “Fala does.” Roosevelt’s massive win was a sweet victory over the Republicans and it would be the last time he would be able to do it. He would be dead by April 1945 and the Missouri Compromise would be in the president’s chair. Dewey, to his credit or disgrace, refused to concede the race at first. It was not until 3:16 a.m. the morning after the election that Dewey admitted Roosevelt beat him. “I still think he is a son of a bitch,” Roosevelt bitterly told a friend. Dewey would be back in four years and would surrender as much ground as he had in 1944. However, that would happen in a much more exciting race. 

[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.