Monday, July 6, 2015

Slouching towards Washington





Edward J. Larson.  A magnificent catastrophe: The tumultuous election of 1800, America’s first presidential campaign.  New York: Free Press.  2007.

Any presidential race elicits groans that the current crowd can’t compare with the Founding Fathers.  Warren Harding’s speeches “leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea,” said Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law, William McAdoo.  “Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork.”  

Larson reminds us that the Saints of ’76 were not above a few choice slings of mud.  When an aged general of the Revolutionary War, Horatio Gates, ran for the New York Assembly at the turn of the century, a rival newspaper recalled his defeat at Camden.  “If the General runs as well at the election, he cannot fail of success.”

Despite vintage vitriol, the presidential election of 1800 may have been the first not to resemble, as today’s do, a popularity contest.  George Washington, the indispensable man, had dominated the elections of 1789 and 1792; despite a few virulent newspapers, no one could touch him.  In 1796 John Adams rode into office on Washington’s Federalist coattails.  Now Adams, the begrudged leader of the Federalists, faced Thomas Jefferson, the vice president and the undisputed head of the Democrat-Republicans. 

In modern political theory, a two-candidate race is determined by the median voter, who separates the leftist half of the electorate from the rightist.  The liberal candidate can only gain by moving to the right, since he will retain liberal voters.  Similarly, the conservative contender can pick up votes by sliding to the left.  Eventually Tweedle-Dee will confront Tweedle-Dum.  Personal popularity, or luck, will determine the race.

In contrast, the 1800 election hinged on issues.  Adams’ camp, rooted in New England, favored relations with Britain as well as a strong federal government and an aristocratic elite in charge of it.  Jefferson’s camp, strong in the South, sought relations with revolutionary France, states’ rights, and power in the hands of the common man (presumably a small farmer, although Jefferson himself was anything but). 

Why didn’t both candidates move towards the center?  Perhaps they didn’t realize the harvest of votes that this strategy could achieve.  After all, transport and communications were slow and expensive, and campaigning in person lacked dignity.  Or perhaps the handful of state legislators who determined the presidential vote in most states did not follow a smooth bell-shaped distribution of preferences over issues as well as the populace did. 

In any event, the candidates survived or died by the issues.  Adams’ late decision to seek peace with the French cost him Federalist support without attracting Republican voters.  Consequently, although the incumbent, His Rotundity was not a serious contender.  

The race that went down to the wire was between Jefferson and his superior as a politician, the Republican Aaron Burr.  That race, to be decided by the House of Representatives, hinged on personalities: Jefferson, to all appearances, was the lesser rogue.  Burr was “a profligate without character and without property – a bankrupt in both,” declared the Speaker of the House, Theodore Sedgwick.  Federalist musings that Burr may consequently prove pliable, were to no avail.  Two weeks before the inauguration, Congress elected Jefferson, who was none the worse for wear for the nation’s first, and possibly hottest, presidential campaign.   Leon Taylor tayloralmaty@gmail.com

Good reading

William E. Leuchtenburg.  The perils of prosperity, 1914-1932.  University of Chicago Press.
Second edition.  1993. The source of the McAdoo quote. 

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