Gould’s Four Hats in the Ring about the 1912 presidential election has been an interesting read. One thing point that Gould makes that is that in 1912, Americans were unconcerned with war in Europe or revolution in Mexico (pg. 30). Initially this seem strange to me. Most of the elections I have been alive for have had some foreign policy component to them. People have been concerned about immigration, border control, war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and unrest in Latin America. The fact that American’s were unconcerned shows how amazingly isolationist America used to be. It also shows how presidential qualifications have changed. People argued against both Obama and Bush’s candidacy because of their lack of foreign policy experience. Clearly, in the globalized world in which we now live, American’s have become more aware of the need to take foreign policy into account when selecting a president.
Moving back to the actual election, it becomes clear that all three major Republican candidates were incredibly short sighted with their goals. Their universal problem was that they made everything too personal. Roosevelt felt personally betrayed by Taft because of Taft’s deviation from Roosevelt’s policies. Taft felt betrayed by Roosevelt’s lack of support after he helped him become president in the first place. Lafollette was only motivated by his personal desire to be president, and because of this, was unwilling to compromise.
Clearly, hindsight is twenty-twenty. However, it is impossible to see how these three candidates could not see that they were handing the election to the Democrats. In creating such deep “cults of personally” around themselves, they deeply divided their party. These divides were so deep that Roosevelt ran as a third party candidate, which sealed defeat for the republicans. I personally made connections to the 2008 Democrat primary between Obama and Clinton. Neither refused to cede to the other and deep divisions were created in the party. However, when Clinton lost, she did not bolt and create a third party. She supported Obama openly and helped to seal the election for the democrats. It seems to me that she was able to do this by compromising and not making things personal. She disagreed openly with Obama. However, she was smart enough to know that no matter how much she and Obama disagreed, the alternative could lead to a Republican victory.
Again moving back to the 1912 election, there were two important first that have shaped modern politics for the rest of the century. First, Taft campaigned for the nomination of his party. According to Gould, this was a break in the custom that incumbent presidents did not campaign for the nomination of their party. In modern elections, first term presidents begin campaigning for reelection as the incumbent almost as soon as they are elected. Unfortunately, many of the decisions made during their first term are made with the thought, “How is this going to effect my reelection hopes?”. Although I don’t agree with him, I must give Obama credit for campaigning for such controversial health care reform in his first term in office. Perhaps reelection is not the first thought on his mind, as the health care issue has cost him popularity with conservatives and liberals alike.
The other tradition, which was broken, was that of the candidates not appearing at the party convention until the official nomination was delivered. Roosevelt chose to arrive at the convention early and do everything in his power to gain supporters for his cause. He actually still had a chance of swaying delegates and getting others disqualified. There was a very real chance that he could walk away with the election. Looking at modern elections, the party convention has become a mere formality. I hypothesize that modern forms of instant communication have made this the case, however, I will investigate this further in later posts.
I hope to finish Four Hats in the Ring sometime this week and then move on to a more modern look at how the nightly news influences elections by reading The Nightly News Nightmare by Stephen Farnsworth and Robert Lichter. Comments and thoughts are always appreciated. Until next time…
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