john's thoughts

My early efforts convinced me that I could not do both my comparison of older and newer ways of picking Presidential candidates and my study of older and newer movies in one blog. In fact, it may take several–depends on how wordy I get. I will try not to be unduly prolific as I wish to avoid boring both you and me. What follows is going to sound a bit like a history book, one of the more interesting ones you have read, I hope. It may be slightly repetitive, a fault I intend to hold to a minimum. I will focus on the choosing of party candidates almost, but not quite, to the exclusion of other American political issues. My main concern will be with the 20th century and its changes, and what those new changes and the new century may portend. I shall begin, however, with a brief review of US political history, particularly the role of political parties.

Party politics was not something that most of the Founding Fathers favored much. George Washington was the most prominent of many men in the new country who disliked “factions” and hoped the new nation could and would do without then. Vain wish! There have been few societies in recorded history which have not developed at the very least what we would think of interest groups, in which like-minded people tried to influence public policy. This seems to be true to some extent even in tight-fisted dictatorships where such groups are likely to be limited in their success and possibly dangerous to be a part of. In most societies, particularly those which we are likely to call Liberal Democracies or at least Free Societies, these groups are likely to exist, perhaps even inevitable.

This became obvious in the US in the 1790’s when powerful Congressional politicians tended to belong to the “particular friends” of Mr Hamilton or Mr Jefferson. At this point, American politics had begun, at least semi-officially as well as practically.

The US has really had only 5 significant parties which were important for at least a couple of decades, usually much more. The first of these was the Federalists of Hamilton and John Marshall and(and later and somewhat reluctantly, Washington).Their opposition, organized at about the same time, was Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans. The former group, of course, constituted the conservative party of the time, the latter the liberal or what we would called liberal today in contrast to the Federlists. But it would be well to keep in mind that assigning contemporary names to groups and individuals of more than 2 centuries ago is a dicey business. Sometimes the names mean the same in both eras but sometimes not as I think we shall see.

In any event, these were the first two American “political parties” if we may, in at least a loose sense, assign them that name. The Federalists dominated at first and they served the new country mostly well for a decade or so. But they began to ossify in the later ’90’s and particularly after the death of Alexander Hamilton in the(in)famous duel with Aaron Burr. this process proceeded apace. The Federalists eventually died out, largely because of lack of any principles other than obstructing the future. The Democratic Republicans, , left as the only really functional party in the country, quickly split into different factions, which might have been new parties but in the long run were not, at least not permanently. Eventually, most of them more or less morphed into The Democrats, this at the time of the Andrew Jackson Presidency. Jackson is often considered the founder of the Democratic Party and a fairly good case can be made for this assertion, though it is hard to imagine him at a gathering ot today’s “Progressive” Democrats.

The Whigs arose at about the same time, taking the name of the anti-monarchical party in Britain because of their opposition to “King Andrew” Jackson. They were the conservatives of the time, the inheritors of the Federalists. They had a short run, roughly a quarter of a century. They disappeared in the 1850’s or at least by the early 1860’s, mainly because of their inability to deal with the slavery issue and the fratricidal civil war it engendered. The Republicans followed the Whigs, organizing in the middle-1850’s, and indeed many of their leaders were one-time Whigs. They are still with us as are Jackson’s Democrats, although the lines of descent from, say, Stephen Douglas to Joe Biden or Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump, are, to put it mildly, indistinct. Neither side today is easily recognizable through the prism of the 19th century.

How the parties chose their Presidential candidates was not determined for a long time. For some decades it was catch-as-catch can choosing. But my concern is with what happened later on. By the mid-19th century, both parties had developed a system that included a national convention which chose the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. It is hardly necessary to say that the men who attended these gatherings were people of influence and, usually, wealth in their states, and that the choices could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered “democratic” or representative of “the people.” In other words, the choosing was done, for good or not, by the party bosses.

While not necessarily as corrupt as it may sound, this system clearly had some lackings, both apparent and substantial. This was particularly true as time, industrialization and immigration changed the US and people began more and more to expect their political system to reflect the people and their needs. There was, however, a way(partially)out of this. This was the primary system which gave the members of both parties some say in who got nominated for office.

The primaries were mostly an outcome of the Progressive Movement which dominated or at least seriously affected American politics for a generation or so, about 1890-1920. Mainly a middle class movement, and found in both parties and almost all states of the union, it led to a number of reforms which were designed to reduce the power of the very wealthy and the party bosses(who were often the same people)and “restore”(or establish) power in the hands of the middle class. The Presidential primaries essentially created another Presidential voting choice within the party and within each participating state. This meant that NY Republicans got to vote on whom their state’s delegation would support at the national convention. VA Democrats would do the same.

At the beginning, the fairly small number of primaries and their lack of effectiveness much of the time limited their influence and left the bosses largely in charge. But the bosses power was being affected. It was true that at first the primaries were almost entirely advisory and had little influence on nominations. But as time went on and the media paid more attention to them, the primaries importance increased. Now candidates had to both secure the backings of a number of boss-types and persuade a large number of the rank and file members of their party to vote for them in the primaries. By the 1970’s they had become the most important element in getting the Democratic or Republican nomination and shortly they would be almost totally dominant.

This is not to say that the parties are not still run in many ways by political professionals, It is more or less impossible for that not to be the case, and a candidate who irritated and offended all of the people at the top might still find it difficult to get the nomination. But there is no doubt now that, beginning with the Iowa caucuses and going on into the spring and even summer, the primaries constitute the most most important element in chasing the nomination. It is now more or less an accepted fact that with respect to both parties, a candidate who can’t succeed within this system has no chance of getting the nomination.

Let us begin, then, by looking at the first few elections of the 20th century, those before the US entrance into World War I. In 1900 the GOP renominated the incumbent President, William McKinley with a new running mate, NY Governor Theodore Roosevelt whom the party bosses hoped to kick upstairs into the Vice-Presidency and out of their hair. The Democrats re-nominated their previous election candidate too, William Jennings Bryan. McKinley was a basically competent if unspectacular man who had once been a very effective Republican leader in the House of Representatives. He is remembered today mostly as a weak and vacillating President, but that was mainly due to his attitudes and behavior regarding Cuba and the Spanish-American War. Getting involved in this war was his biggest mistake and largely ruined what might have been otherwise considered a moderately successful presidency.

William Jennings Bryan was almost a legend in his own time, one of the dominant figures of American public life in the 19th-early 20th century. H L Mencken once wrote of him, “He was born with a roaring voice and it had the trick of inflaming dolts.” This is not exactly an out and out lie, since you could argue there is some truth in it. But it ignores a lot in that WJB was more than just a rabble rouser. He genuinely sympathized with the poor and near-poor, pious people of the rural south and mid west who were his main constituency and it can at least be said that he had good intentions which is more than can be said for some.. He was not a great intellect and his rather simple-minded approach to economics and later diplomacy did not distinguish him. One excepton–during his brief run as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State he told the President that during wartime money is the worst contraband of all “because it controls everything else.” This appears to be a a piece of genuine if fairly obvious wisdom which he apparently thought had not occurred to WW.. Mostly, he was a decent but unsophisticated man who would likely not have been up to being President. He did, however, accurately reflect the views of about half of the Democratic Party, the rural/small town southern and midwestern half. In the cities one would have to say, well, not so much.

In 1904 President Teddy Roosevelt(McKinley was assasinated in 1901) had become the most popular man in the country and was easily re-nominated without an argument. The Democrats chose Judge Alton B Parker of NY. Parker appears to have been a sober and honest man with very good understanding of the law and very little of practical politics and the daily life of the people. Another good man who was a poor choice. TR easily defeated him in a landslide. He(TR) went on to be one of the most popular Presidents in history and perhaps the strongest personality ever in the White House.

TR largely chose his successor, his friend and cohort, William Howard Taft. WHT was a lawyer with a good record in non-elective political offices, but no history of being elected to anything. The Democrats, apparently entirely out of imagination or energy again nominated WJB for his third run. Though not a great man at charisma WHT easily defeated WJB who was now likely beginning to sound like a song you’ve heard too many times at one dance. In office Taft was a good administrator and an honest and decent man . But he lacked the popular touch and instinctive political sense of TR. His policies, thought similar to TR’s were not accepted by many, nor was he. Another good man who shouldn’t have been President. Thanks to the generosity of his fellow Buckeye, Warren G Harding, Taft would spend his last decade as Chief Justice of the US, a post he handled with dignity if not brilliance and for which he was much better suited.

1912 was one of the most notable of Presidential elections. The old friends Taft and TR were now quarreling and TR took advantage of the now rising primary system to try to wrest the nomination from the President. But whatever his lackings, Taft had his hands on the Republican levers of power and despite an impressive string of primary victories for TR, WHT got the nomination. TR became the “Bull Moose” candidate and ran the most impressive third party race in history. The Democrats, after a lot of thought and contention chose the progressive Governor of NJ, Woodrow Wilson. Compared to bouncing Teddy WW was sober but he was, like TR, an intellectual, a published writer and, somewhat surprisingly,. sometimes capable of attracting public enthusiasm.

Taft realized he had no chance against these two and didn’t try very hard. TR became the only 3rd party candidate in history to beat a Democrat or Republican and he beat the President in both the popular vote and the electoral vote(By the way, if you add together the votes for TR and WHT you get a total popular vote about the same as WW received. This would have been a close election if there had been only one Republican in it). Wilson finished first in the popular vote, though well short of a majority. He won by a landslide in the Electoral College.

In 1916 Wilson was an apparently successful progressive president. He had gotten a new tariff, the Federal Reserve Act and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act through congress. Unfortunately, WWI had broken out in Europe and was a distraction to everyone in politics. Wilson’s re-nomination was never seriously questioned. On the Republican side, the party regulars and the Bull Moose Republicans more or less made up, with with some lingering resentments. There was, at least a tenuous sort of party unity in opposing the Democrats.

On choosing a candidate for President the Republicans were split all over the place with several potential possibilities. One of them was Charles Evans Hughes, a Justice of the US Supreme Court and still the only one ever to have run for President while on the court. He won only two of about 20 primaries, so clearly the primaries were not controlling here. This issue is muddied somewhat in that no one really showed strength in the primaries and so the convention had to sort it out. Hughes got the nomination, at least in part because of his high reputation for personal integrity. He turned out, however, to be a stiff and rather uninspiring candidate and furthermore he offended some of the wrong people including California’s Progressive Governor, Hiram Johnson. In the end it was a close race and President Wilson squeaked through because he won–California! Evans returned to the court and later became Chief Justice.

This seems to me as good a place as any to pause. We will next take up the middle period of this era, the 1920’s which saw the decline and fall of the Republican Party through the 1980’s which saw its(partial)resurgence.