2008 Election

Question: Now that the 2004 presidential election is over, what are your thoughts about the wide-open 2008 election? How unusual is that in U.S. history? Are you predicting who the Democratic and Republican nominees might be?
From: Larry G. of Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: November 23, 2004

Gleaves answers: The 2008 election is going to be interesting. As you note, it will be an open presidential election since President George W. Bush cannot run for re-election, and Vice President Dick Cheney will not run for election.

OPEN ELECTIONS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY

In American history, the wide-open presidential race has become uncommon; it is unusual for neither the sitting president nor vice president to be on the ballot. In fact, it has been more than a half century since the last open race for president. The last open race occurred in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by depressingly low approval ratings because of the Korean War, declined to run for re-election; nor did his vice president, Alban Barkley, run. (Perhaps the most memorable thing Barkley ever said was, "The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated -- and a little drunk.") In 1952 Republicans Dwight Eisenhower and running mate Richard Nixon won.

Open elections used to be more common. During the first half of the twentieth century, there were four (of 14 elections held during that period). The 1928 election was an open presidential contest. Calvin Coolidge did not seek re-election, nor did Charles Dawes. Republicans Herbert Hoover and running mate Charles Curtis succeeded them.

Prior to that, the 1920 election was an open contest. Woodrow Wilson was too sick to run, and Thomas Marshall did not run either. Republicans Warren Harding and running mate Calvin Coolidge succeeded the Democrats.

The 1908 election was another open contest. Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Fairbanks were not on the ballot. Republicans William Howard Taft and James Sherman succeeded that duo.

Note that in each of the four open elections in the twentieth century, the Republican ticket won.

OPEN ELECTIONS IN THE 19th CENTURY

The first presidential race in U.S. history was technically open, but it was a foregone conclusion that George Washington, the hero of the War for Independence and president of the Constitutional Convention, was a shoo-in. So the 1789 election doesn't really count, nor does the 1792 election in which Washington was unanimously re-elected.

Historically, the first open presidential election occurred in 1808, when the Democratic-Republican James Madison was elected to succeed Thomas Jefferson. Madison had served as Jefferson's secretary of state. But even in this instance a qualification is in order, since Jefferson's vice president, George Clinton, was re-elected to serve as Madison's vice president. (It has happened only twice in U.S. history that a new president would be elected when the vice president would be the same. See yesterday's Ask Gleaves answer to find out which other vice president shares this distinction.)

Now, the first election in U.S. history in which both the office of president and vice president were wide open was 1816. That's when Democratic-Republicans James Monroe and Daniel Tompkins were voted into office.

The next time an open election took place was in the bizarre election of 1824, which saw John Quincy Adams win the White House even though initially he received enough votes neither in the Electoral College nor in the popular vote.

Other open elections in the 19th century occurred in the years before and after the Lincoln administration: in 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856; and in 1868, 1876, 1884, and 1896. In the nineteenth-century, all told, there were 11 open presidential elections (out of 25 elections) -- in other words, almost half of all electons during the first century of our nation's existence were wide open.

ASSESSMENT

Wide-open elections for president used to be fairly common. The diminution of a once-strong pattern is striking:
- in the 19th century, 11 of 25 presidential elections were wide open;
- in the first half of the 20th century, 4 of 14 presidential elections were wide open;
- in the second half of the 20 century, 0 of 11 presidential elections were wide open.

Obviously the trend over the past half century has been for the party in office to encourage the president to run again or to groom the vice president to run for the top spot. Gone are the days, it seems, when a Polk (1845-1849) or a Coolidge (1923-1929), having achieved all their major goals, would be content to serve as president only one term.

Another trend emerges when one inquires which party tends to do better in open elections (counting from 1856, when Republicans first appeared on the national scene to compete against Democrats). In sum:
- In the second half of the 19th century, the Republican ticket won three of five open elections.
- In the first half of the 20th century, the Republican ticket won four of four open elections.
- In all, since 1856, Republicans have won seven of nine open presidential contests against Democrats.

Regarding who might run in 2008, I'd humbly submit that it's a bit early to be making predictions -- I am going to stick to history, not prophesy. But watch to see if 2008 will be the first time since 1976 that a person named Bush or Dole will not be on the Republican ticket.

Regarding the Democrats in 2008, see if they don't look south of the Mason-Dixon line for their candidate. As presidential scholar Mark Rozell observes, "In the past 40 years, the Democrats have won the White House only with a Southern Baptist at the head of the ticket.... For 2008, the lesson for the Democrats seems clear: In seeking a party nominee, go south. Even more so, go south to a candidate with credibility and appeal among the region's heavy doses of evangelical and pro-military voters."[1]

Stay tuned.

_______________________________

[1]Mark J. Rozell, "Look to the South for a Nominee," Washington Post, November 11, 2004, p. A8.

One VP serves two presidents

Question: Was there ever a vice president who served two different presidents? It is generally acknowledged Vice President Dick Cheney will not run for president in 2008, but would it be unprecedented for him to stay on as vice president if George W. Bush's successor won?
From: Terry B. of Pittsburgh, PA
Date: November 19, 2004

Gleaves answers: Twice in American history a vice president was elected in two consecutive elections that involved two different president-elects. In 1804, George Clinton was elected to serve as Thomas Jefferson's vice president (in Jefferson's second term); Clinton was re-elected in 1808 to serve as James Madison's vice president.

A generation later, in 1824, John Calhoun was elected to serve as John Quincy Adams's vice president; Calhoun was re-elected in 1828 to serve as Andrew Jackson's vice president.

Curiously, in neither case did the vice president complete his second term. Clinton died (1812); Calhoun resigned (1832).

Modern Campaign Origins, Development

Question: When was the first modern political campaign?
From: Megan S. of Allendale, Michigan
Date: June 3, 2004 [updated November 9, 2004

Gleaves answers:

This is the question that Karl Rove, the chief political advisor to President George W. Bush, asked himself when he masterminded the campaign strategy that would help Bush become Texas governor (1994, 1998) and U.S. president (2000, 2004). As you will see below, one campaign in particular fascinated Rove and became a model for the modern campaign.

IN THE BEGINNING, CANDIDATES DID NOT CAMPAIGN

It's hard to imagine nowadays, but there was a time when it was considered poor form for a candidate to campaign openly for the presidency. They did not even attend their own nominating conventions. Historian Alan Brinkley explains how, in the nineteenth century, "The public aloofness of most presidential candidates gave an aura of nonpartisan dignity to the election process and kept alive the vision of the nation's founders of a political world free of parties and factions." Indeed,

As late as 1900, when William McKinley ran for reelection as president, it was possible for a candidate to remain almost entirely out of view during the national campaign and allow other party leaders to do virtually all the work of mobilizing voters. Successful presidential candidates in the nineteenth century accepted election almost as if it were a gift of the people -- a gift that they pretended never to have sought and that they had made no active efforts to accept (although of course they had almost always worked incessantly if quietly to obtain it).[1]

The custom was so powerful that an orator the caliber of Abraham Lincoln adhered to it -- even in 1864, when the nation was at war, and even though the president was driven to serve a second term. As David Herbert Donald explains,

There was little that Lincoln could do openly to promote his renomination and reelection. Custom prohibited him from soliciting support, making public statements, or appearing to campaign for office. But as the nominating season approached, he made a point of hosting numerous social activities at the White House ... which could only boost the president's hopes for a second term.[2]

This custom of imposed restraint affected much American political life. Indeed, one pretext for drawing up articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson was that he "disgraced" Congress by openly, unabashedly campaigning; not for himself, mind you, which was considered beyond the pale even for him -- but for his supporters. After Congress slapped Johnson down, presidential aspirants dared not openly campaign for another three decades.

18TH- AND 19TH-CENTURY BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN CAMPAIGN

Some students of history say that there is nothing new under the sun. Indeed, there are 18th- and 19th-century roots to that quadrennial civic ritual we call the modern presidential campaign, and it is important before proceeding to acknowledge them. In his study on the bitterly fought campaign of 1800 between presidential aspirants John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr, historian John Ferling wrote of the similarities he perceived between that election and present-day elections:

The prevailing sense for some time has been that politics in the eighteenth-century was substantially different from modern politics. Supposedly, public officials were different as well, tending to be more detached and disinterested, more above the fray. That was not what I found.... Politicians then, as now, were driven by personal ambition. They represented interest groups. They used the same tactics as today, sometimes taking the high road, but often traveling the low road, which led them to ridicule and even smear their foes, to search for scandal in the behavior of their adversaries, and to play on raw emotions.[3]

The 1800 contest had one element of modern-day campaigning in spades -- negative attacks. Federalist newspapers, siding with John Adams, waged a no-holds-barred assault on Republican Thomas Jefferson that makes modern journalism look like the model of civility and nonpartisanship. Federalist writers accused Jefferson of being an atheist, pro-slavery, a coward who avoided military service during the Revolutionary War, and a "romantic airhead" who would wrecklessly entangle the young U.S. with revolutionary France; later they circulated the story that he had had sex (and children) with his slave. For their part, Republican newspapers, which were pro Jefferson, accused Adams of being mentally unbalanced and a closet monarchist; they also circulated the rumor that he was having prostitutes shipped over from Britain. If you thought today's campaigns were bad, look no further than to the Founding Fathers; the campaign of 1800 was surely one of the nastiest in U.S. history.

Actually, the contest for president in 1828 was even nastier. Attack dogs for incumbent John Quincy Adams accused Andrew Jackson of being a dictator who was determined to subvert the presidency into a tyranny. Jackson, they claimed, was so ambitious for empire that he would become the American Napoleon. The Adams camp had plenty of ammunition to use against Old Hickory -- the brawls and duels, his execution of deserters in the War of 1812, his declaration of marshal law in New Orleans, his association with Aaron Burr, his invasions of Spanish Florida in 1814 and 1818. Meanest of all, they seized on Andrew's marriage to Rachel, who through no fault of her own was a bigamist when Jackson married her. Adams’s attack dogs charged that neither Andrew nor Rachel Jackson was morally fit to inhabit the White House.

Political historians point to 1828 as a landmark in U.S. history for other reasons as well. Among them, he was the last veteran of the American Revolution to become president; yet he was the first president not considered a Founding Father; and -- to your point -- he was the first president to be popularly endorsed. Jackson did not rely on a small cadre of party leaders and "King Caucus," as the Founding Fathers had. Rather he got the nod from the Tennessee legislature as well as conventions and mass meetings around the nation. Presidential historian Paul Boller observes, "Voters in 1828 regarded the election that year as a momentous event.... A 'great revolution,' both sides agreed, had taken place; henceforth, there was to be more popular participation in American politics."[4]

The 1828 campaign, by the way, was interesting for its political cartoons. Political cartoons have been around since politically-motivated newspapers. But when a cartoonist wanted to poke fun at Andrew Jackson's populism, he depicted Old Hickory as a jackass. Jackson turned the jackass image to his advantage -- he would stubbornly fight for the people --and the donkey stuck as a symbol of Jackson and the Democratic party.

Indeed, by 1832, the Democratic Party would hold its first national convention in a Baltimore saloon. (Perhaps the atmosphere of conventions has not changed much in the past 170 years!)

The 1840 campaign that catapulted William Henry Harrison to the White House also saw modern flourishes --slogans, songs, and the selling of the candidate. That landmark campaign season saw:

• One of the first catchy campaign slogans in U.S. history: "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!" Whig supporters pasted the slogan (referring to General Harrison's victory over Indians at Tippecanoe, Indiana, and to the vice presidential nominee) on whiskey bottles, cigar tins, sewing boxes, and pennants.
• Image management: "handlers" took the aristocratic Harrison -- who was to the manor born, at Berkeley Plantation on the James River in Virginia -- and with the unwitting assistance of Democratic opponents transformed him into a log-cabin frontiersman in the Indiana wilderness.
• Songs: incorporated both political slogans and snappy music.
• Mass rallies: one of the most spectacular mass rallies in the early decades of the republic occurred when tens of thousands of Harrison's admirers descended on Tippecanoe Battlefield in the Indiana wilderness -- no small feat, considering the rough roads and limited water transport in those days. Another mass rally was held at Fort Meigs, where then-General Harrison fought during the War of 1812.
• Women campaigners: the irony of course is that woman couldn't vote, but they campaigned energetically for their Whig candidate, attending conventions, giving speeches, writing political pamphlets, and parading with brooms to "sweep" Democrats out of office. It got so intense that girls in Tennessee wore sashes demanding, "Whig husbands or none."[5]
• Negative campaigning that sank to new lows: nineteenth-century politics tended to be a lot nastier than what we are treated to today. Harrison supporters went after the sitting president, Martin Van Buren, with a vengeance. Whigs nicknamed him "Martin Van Ruin." Whig glee clubs went around singing, "Van, Van, is a used up man." And Whigs made hay out of the fact that Vice President Richard Johnson had had affairs with African-American women. And you think Bill Clinton had problems?

The 1852 campaign saw a presidential nominee enlist the talent of a national celebrity to help him win office. At Bowdoin College, Franklin Pierce had a famous classmate. His name was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Pierce called on the great novelist to write the campaign biography that would help him get elected.[6]

The 1880 campaign that put James A. Garfield in the White House also took some baby steps toward the full-fledged modern campaign. The Republican candidate had a famous publicist in Horatio Alger, who did not have to resort to fiction to tell Garfield's rags-to-riches story; Garfield, the last of our presidents born in a log cabin, was the "ideal self-made man." Although Garfield adhered to the tradition of presidents lying low during elections, he was one of the greatest orators in the Republican arsenal. It made no sense for him totally to conceal his talent under a bushel basket. So he waged the first "front porch" campaign from his home in Mentor, Ohio. It was a kind of canned press conference for any newspapermen, lobbyists, and citizens who showed up to listen to him discourse on the issues of the day; during the fall of 1880, some 17,000 visitors dropped by to hear his stirring orations.

The 1896 campaign is considered pivotal by many students of American politics. When William McKinley decided to run for president, he enlisted a fellow Ohioan, Mark Hanna, to mastermind his campaign. It was a fortuitous choice: not only would McKinley win the election, but in the process Mark Hanna would create the mold for the modern presidential campaign.

In the first place, Hanna -- himself a successful industrialist -- recognized the importance of outspending the opponent, William Jennings Bryan, a populist Democrat who was criss-crossing the nation giving speeches that blasted East Coast elites. To overcome Bryan's energy and popular appeal, Hanna raised more money than any previous U.S. presidential campaign.

In the second place, Hanna, loaded with money, launched a massive ground campaign. He hired an army of 1,400 campaign workers who feverishly distributed buttons, leaflets, pamphlets, and posters.

Third, an army of speakers stumped for McKinley in strategic electoral areas. Hanna's strategy especially focused the candidate's message on two key cities, New York and Chicago, in states that were rich with electoral college votes.

Fourth, Hanna understood the importance not just of the ground campaign, but of ideas. Elections are about articulating, testing, proving, and vindicating ideas. One man in particular, Kansas newspaperman William Allen White, was in the vanguard of the campaign for ideas. He wrote a powerful editorial called "What's the Matter with Kansas?" in the Emporia Gazette on August 15, 1896 -- a conservative broadside against the Populists and their leader William Jennings Bryan. "The GOP reprinted a million copies of this editorial in pamphlet form, making sure that every middle class voter in the Midwest had a copy."[7]

The strategy worked. McKinley won, and Hannah's methods are studied to this day, as Karl Rove will attest. Mark Hanna is his guru.

It bears repeating: in the nineteenth-century, incumbent presidents did not go out on the stump on their own behalf. Even presidential candidates who were not incumbents rarely courted voters. Many of those who did -- Horace Greeley in 1872, James Blaine in 1884, and William Jennings Bryan in 1896 -- all lost.[8]

The first time an incumbent president tentatively spoke out on his own behalf was exactly one hundred years ago, when Theodore Roosevelt ran for re-election in 1904. Tentative is not a word normally associated with TR. No stranger to energetic campaigning, he had stumped hard as a vice presidential candidate in 1900 on behalf of William McKinley's reelection. But in 1904 he had to cool his heels at Sagamore Hill -- an act of torture, given his ebullient personality. As he wrote to his son Kermit, on the eve of the election, "I have continually wished that I could be on the stump myself.... I have fretted at my inability to hit back, and to take the offensive ... against Parker."[9] Nevertheless, he speechified from his front porch and wrote some pieces defending his record.

TR's restrained behavior in 1904 would go by the wayside within a decade. By the time the 1912 campaign rolled around, both William Howard Taft and TR were competing in public for votes, perhaps because of the personal animous that had developed between the two.

Even after TR and Taft broke the mold, Warren Harding resorted to the hallowed practice of a front porch campaign in 1920 in Marion, Ohio, and Herbert Hoover ventured out the give only seven campaign speeches when he ran for president in 1928.

One important innovation came about in 1928 that would impact the 1932 race between Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Democrats, tired of being shut out of the White House during the Roaring Twenties, hired a full-time attack dog and put him in an office in Washington, D.C. Charles M had a background in journalism; his job was to churn out press releases and op-eds that would magnify every mistake Herbert Hoover made as president. The stock market crash of 1929, and spreading depression, made the task of tearing down the so-called Great Engineer all the more delectible. It helped tee up the Democrats to nominate a candidate, FDR, who would crush Hoover in the 1932 contest.

20TH-CENTURY CAMPAIGNS HARNESS NEW TECHNOLOGIES

But change was afoot. Take the impact of the transportation revolution on campaigns. As the era of the horse-and-buggy passed, energetic candidates harnessed trains, automobiles, and airplanes to set themselves on the road to the White House. One of the most dramatic campaign-transportation firsts occurred in 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt flew from Albany, New York, to the convention in Chicago, Illinois, to accept his part's nomination for president. This act marked a break with tradition. Prior to 1932, most nominees stayed home during conventions and received a delegation called a "notification ceremony," informing them that they were the party's nominee for president. Of course, they already knew that fact, but the formal ceremony was part of American custom until 1932. After '32 it was dispensed with.

Changed was also ushered in by the development of electronic media. Edison's phonograph in the late 1800s, radio and motion-picture newsreels in the 1920s, television in the 1940s and '50s -- all revolutionized presidential campaigns. Think about it: all through the nineteenth century, candidates had relied on a print culture -- newspapers and broadsides, almanacs and political biographies -- to reach a mass audience; there was little difference in communication the message of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and, say, Grover Cleveland in 1888. But with the invention of a host of new electronic media -- phonographic recordings, radio, motion-picture newsreels, TV -- suddenly the nation became a giant town hall without walls. Millions of American citizens could experience what no previous generation had: they could listen first-hand to candidates speak and express their views. Increasingly, emphasis would be on the way a candidate projected his personality, and on the quality of his voice and looks. Were candidates physically fit? Did they sound and look like presidential material?

There are several media milestones worth mentioning; each shaped the modern campaign. The 1924 election saw candidates use the new medium of radio to broadcast their message. Prior to '24, candidates had been using phonographs to disseminate their voice to a mass audience.

Another media milestone occurred in the 1936 election, when Franklin Roosevelt and challenger Alf Landon saw the heavy use of radio combined with a reliance on the new science of polling, which would increasingly utilize another spreading technology, the telephone.

Other media milestones occurred in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower became the first presidential candidate to appear in a television campaign commercial. That same year saw Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon deliver his famous "Checker's speech" on live TV and give such a credible performance that a flood of supportive letters deluged the campaign and Nixon salvaged his candidacy. Also in 1952, the CBS television network broadcast that year's national conventions. As Walter Chronkite observed in his biography, A Reporter's Life, it was the first -- and for a long time the last -- time that TV cameras caught mostly unrehearsed political behavior at a major convention. After 1952, a new professional type -- the media handler --would increasingly influence what presidential candidates would say and do under the klieg lights. Political campaigns became choreographed presentations, like a Madison Avenue advertisement or Hollywood production. One new technology that fed this development was A. C. Nielsen's audimeter and film cartridge, which registered what TV viewers were staying tuned in to.

In 1960 the debates between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy ushered in the era of live televised performances. "The four debates," notes the Smithsonian Institution, "established new standards and expectations for candidate preparation, performance, and appearance." There was no doubt about TV's impact on the election. "When asked at a press conference the day after the election whether his victory would have been possible without the help of television, Kennedy replied, 'I don't think so.'"[10]

Campaign TV commercials have also become a staple of the modern campaign. The 1964 presidential contest saw a masterful if cynical attempt to manipulate the public when the Johnson campaigned aired -- just once -- the infamous television commercial of the little girl picking daisy petals, which dissolved into a mushroom cloud.

The 1968 campaign saw the sophisticated packaging of a candidate reach new heights. For the team of media advisors who managed the Nixon campaign and masterfully manipulated the media in the process, see Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President. Henceforth, a skeptical press corps would often filter campaign events for viewers.

Partly in reaction to the public's sense of over-reporting and biased editing, C-Span developed a format that brought the sound and images of campaigns straight to viewers, without intermediaries. Watching such programs as "Road to the White House," viewers were left free to take in the sights, sounds, and substance of a campaign, and to form their own judgments.

The development of the Internet in the 1990s brought yet new dimensions to modern campaigning, as people could form virtual communities around candidates, and campaigns could tap into vast new populations in order to fundraise and disseminate their message.

The transportation and media revolutions -- as well as the steady erosion of the custom of restraint --dramatically changed the way candidates campaign. Combined, these factors made campaigns increasingly fast-paced and dynamic. As a result, even the verbs we use to speak of campaigns has changed. In an earlier day, when candidates stayed home, they "stood" for election. By the mid 20th-century, they "ran" for election.[11]

---

[1]Alan Brinkley, Introduction, Campaigns: A Century of Presidential Races (London: DK, 2001), p. 7.
[2]David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 475.
[3]John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. xviii.
[4]Paul F. Boller, Jr., Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 42.
[5]Ibid., p. 74.
[6]Philip McFarland, Hawthorne in Concord (New York: Grove Press, 2004), pp. 157-58.
[7]William Allen White, "What's the Matter with Kansas," online at http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/internet/kansas.html.
[8]Boller, Presidential Campaigns, p. 197.
[9]Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, October 26, 1904; cited in "The Election of 1904," exhibit at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site (Wilcox Mansion), Buffalo, New York.
[10]Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, "The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden," exhibit label in Communicating the Presidency.
[11]George Nash, phone interview by Gleaves Whitney, August 31, 2004.

Elections with 3 viable candidates

Question: Has there ever been an election with three viable candidates?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: Several elections in U.S. history had more than two strong candidates. One of them occurred in 1912, when any one of three contenders could have won the White House: Woodrow Wilson (who received 42 percent of the vote), Theodore Roosevelt (27 percent), and William Howard Taft (23 percent) all made a respectable showing. Well, in Taft's case it was not exactly respectable; Taft's last place finish is the only time in American history that the incumbent came in third on Election Day.

Another trio had a shot in the contentious Election of 1800. Two Democratic-Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, came in tied with 73 Electoral votes apiece, while incumbent president John Adams, the Federalist candidate, had a respectable 65 votes. The problem arose because Burr had agreed to be Jefferson's vice president, but Burr thought better of it when he did surprisingly well in the College. When Burr refused to step aside, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. Anything could have happened, but 36 ballots later, Hamilton's deal-making swung the election to Jefferson.

Now, there have been elections in which third and fourth candidates, while not themselves viable, had a huge impact on the outcome nevertheless. Take the election of 1824. John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay were all competing for the prize. Counting just the popular votes, Jackson should have won handily; he received 42 percent of the vote; next was Adams with 32 percent; Crawford and Clay each came in with 13 percent. But because none of the four candidates received a majority in the Electoral College, the contest was thrown into the House of Representatives. There, following the provisions of the 12th Amendment, the House considered only the top three candidates who received the most Electoral College votes. That rule eliminated Clay from the running (who had come in fourth in the Electoral College). The Great Compromiser threw his support to Adams. That had a huge impact. For the 12th Amendment stipulates that each state -- no matter how many representatives in its delegation -- will vote as a single unit; a simple majority determines which candidate gets that's state's single vote. So little Rhode Island's single vote counts as much as mighty New York's. Clay's support gave Adams several states (i.e., several votes), and the Massachusetts scion won by 5 votes, receiving the support of 13 states in the House, to Jackson's 7. The outcome was totally at variance with what had happened in the popular vote.

Electoral College sweep

Question: Is it true that George Washington is the only president to win every vote in the Electoral College?
From: Chris F, from Honolulu, HA
Date: August 16, 2004

Gleaves answers: That's right -- George Washington is the only man who became president with a unanimous vote in the Electoral College. The hero of the American Revolution accomplished that feat not once, but twice. In 1789 he received all 69 votes, and in 1792 all 132. He was without peer.

Few American realize that a later candidate came close to replicating Washington's total domination of the Electoral College. In 1820, during the Era of Good Feelings, incumbent James Monroe ran unopposed for president. He received all but one vote in the Electoral College, which was still quite a feat considering there were many more votes (231) cast that year than either of the years Washington was elected.

But -- since Monroe ran unopposed, how is it that he failed to sweep the College? There are two versions to this story, and both involve New Hampshire Governor William Plumer, who cast the singular vote against Monroe. One story -- the more romantic -- is that Plumer voted against Monroe to preserve Washington's record as the only man to enjoy a unanimous vote in the Electoral College. The other, more likely story is that Plumer genuinely disliked Monroe, and cast his ballot for a fellow New Englander, John Quincy Adams.

Before Modern Conventions

Question: I've heard that presidential candidates were not always nominated in national conventions. How were they originally nominated? And when did conventions take over the process?
From: Craig H. of San Jose, California
Submitted: July 23, 2004

Gleaves answers:
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about how presidential candidates are to be nominated. There is not a word about political parties, caucuses, primaries, or conventions. The process has changed considerably over time and has become part of the nation's "unwritten constitution."

GEORGE WASHINGTON

To understand how the quirky process evolved, you have to go back to the beginning, to George Washington, the colossus of the new nation; the man who was "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." We all know how widespread that sentiment was, but rarely do we think through what it meant. What it meant, politically, was that Washington had no opponent when he was asked to become the nation's first president. So there was no need for political parties to nominate candidates so long as he was willing to serve as president. Both in 1789 and in 1793, the gentleman-planter from Mount Vernon was unanimously chosen by the Electoral College to be president of the United States.

EARLY PARTIES AND KING CAUCUS

Washington admonished the new republic to be unified; it should not be torn asunder by factions (parties). During his years in office, Washington was able to keep a fairly tight rein on his contentious cabinet. Still, by the second term, deep divisions were apparent, and the nation's first political parties were starting to form -- Federalists around Hamilton and Adams, and Democratic-Republicans around Jefferson and Madison. As a result, when Washington retired and there was no consensus on who should succeed him, the newly emerging political parties rushed into the vacuum. The Constitution being silent on the question of how to select candidates for high office, party leaders had to make up the rules as they went along. Beginning with the election of 1796, leaders in Congress divided into two camps -- a Federalist caucus and a Democratic-Republican caucus. The two caucuses nominated their presidential and vice presidential candidates. Rank-and-file Congressmen had little say in the process. Ordinary Americans had no say in the process. A small club determined who could run for president, and "King Caucus" lorded over presidential politics.

The early caucus system survived for almost three decades because the Founders were not keen on democracy; from their reading of ancient Greek and Roman authors, they believed that democracies were susceptible to mob rule. Representative republics were a superior form of governance. So our nation's Founders did not mind that an elite group of powerful men essentially hand-picked presidential candidates.

CRISIS POINT: 1824

Despite the wisdom of the Founders, problems with the caucus system were not long in coming. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the Federalist party grew increasingly bankrupt of ideas and energy -- it got so bad that Federalists didn't even nominate a candidate for the 1820 election. This meant that whomever the Democratic-Republican caucus nominated would be handed the presidency on a platter. Without citizen input. Without public debate. Without competition. In 1820 James Monroe ran for re-election virtually unopposed, and to put the best face on the fact, his presidential years were dubbed the "Era of Good Feelings."

Dissatisfaction with King Caucus erupted in 1824. By that point, the caucus system had aroused trenchant criticism, even among some Democratic-Republicans who were in the catbird seat. In 1824, several men were popular enough to have a shot at the presidency, above all, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. But do you think King Caucus dubbed either of these two men? No. The caucus instead chose Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford to run. The subsequent election was one of the more colorful in U.S. history, to be sure, but it made little sense to most Americans. Jackson received the most popular votes; he also received a plurality of votes in the Electoral College. But he could not become president outright because he failed to win a majority of electoral votes. That's because Old Hickory was competing not only against Adams and Crawford, but also against Henry Clay, who had thrown his hat into the ring. As not one of these four men had a clear majority in the Electoral College, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which selected John Quincy Adams to be the nation's sixth president. So much for King Caucus, which had dubbed Crawford. (Remember him?)

Few Americans were happy with the process. So upset was Jackson that he called for abolishing the Electoral College, and while reformers were at it, the caucus system as well.

FIRST POLITICAL CONVENTIONS: 1831-1832

From the tumult of these early years, King Caucus was allowed to die. It was replaced by the convention system that in theory (and eventually in practice) would give more people the chance to influence the nominating process. Andrew Jackson's candidacy was supported by mass meetings and state conventions as early as 1828. But the first national convention was held in 1831, when the Anti-Masonic party met in a Baltimore saloon. Jackson's Democratic supporters liked the idea so much that they met one year later in that same saloon. The events that unfolded in Baltimore in 1832 look modern in outline: delegates attended from the states; they nominated a presidential candidate (Jackson) and his running mate (Martin Van Buren); they drew up a party platform.

Many people of that day reckoned that open, public conventions would give more citizens a voice in the nominating process. Alas, the best laid plans....

It turned out that the new method of selecting candidates was not really open to ordinary Americans. Yes, there were delegates who got to vote. But conventions were under the control of small but powerful cliques of state and local party leaders who had screened and handpicked most delegates. Dramatic moments were frequent, however, as competing candidates for the party's nomination showed up. They had to go behind the scenes to make deals to secure enough delegate votes to win the nomination. This was the era of the proverbial smoke-filled room. The nominating process was ruled by party bosses who brokered conventions.

CONVENTIONS REFORMED

Smoke-filled rooms, party bosses, political machines, brokered conventions -- was this the best the greatest democracy in the world could do? Toward the end of the 19th century, there was growing dissatisfaction with a nominating process that was in the hands of so few men. The Progressive movement arose in the first decades of the 20th century to confront a host of challenges -- economic and social as well as electoral. Indeed, some of the Progressive-era reforms passed almost a century ago influence party conventions to this day. For example, states passed laws that allowed voters to select candidates in primaries. This method gave ordinary citizens the chance to voice their preference. The results in most cases were binding. By 1916, almost half the states had adoped the primary system.

Despite reforms, presidential nominations were still the domain of party bosses and hand-picked delegates to national conventions. Rank-and-file voters were not yet in the driver's seat. Most conventions were brokered by factional party leaders committed to favorite sons. Two example illustrate. In 1952, the Democratic National Convention chose Adlai Stevenson to be the party's nominee, even though Estes Kefauver had won more than three-fifths of the votes in the primaries. In 1968, the infamous Democratic National Convention in Chicago gave the nod to Hubert Humphrey even though he had not actively run in the primaries.

Conventions in the 1960s could be fairly raucus, reflecting the temper of the decade. Already noted were the Democrats in Chicago, who were anything but neatly packaged as they tried to deal with urban violence, protesting youth, the Vietnam War, and the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Delegates were overshadowed by riots, and outnumbered by 11,900 Chicago police; 7,500 Army troops; 7,500 Illinois National Guardsmen; and 1,000 Secret Service agents.[1]

Four years earlier, in 1964, the GOP had its share of tumult when meeting in San Francisco's Cow Palace. Their convention saw moderate Nelson Rockefeller booed and heckled, and conservative nominee Barry Goldwater assert that extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.[2]

Since 1972, a new wave of change has given conventions the look they have today. One change has been the decline of party machines. Another has been the rise of campaign finance rules that sidestepped organized parties. A third has occurred as more states adopted the primary election system to choose delegates and sort out candidates. As William Safire points out, "By 1972, the proliferation of primaries ... made brokerage more difficult, though not impossible."[3]

RECENT POLITICAL CONVENTIONS

Major party conventions today lack the drama of those in years past, no doubt about it. Conventions nowadays are about speeches, about marketing a candidate and selling a party; they are usually not the venue in which momentous decisions are made.

The last truly exciting conventions occurred in 1980 at both party convocations. Democratic delegates, meeting in New York City, were divided between Senator Edward Kennedy and incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Although Carter won on the first ballot, Kennedy gave one of the most memorable speeches in Democratic convention history.

Also in 1980 the Republican convention meeting in Detroit provided excitement because, at the beginning of the convention, no one -- not even Ronald Reagan -- was sure who the vice presidential running mate would be. In Detroit there was a tense all-nighter in which Reagan tried to persuade former President Gerald Ford to be his running mate. The idea was that Reagan and Ford would be "co-presidents." Speculation ran rampant through the night, Americans tuned in, and several politicians went on national TV to proclaim that Ford had accepted the offer. Not so. In the wee hours it was learned that George H. W. Bush and Reagan came to an agreement.

Reagan, by the way, provided drama at an earlier convention that involved Gerald Ford. In the 1976 GOP convention in Kansas City, the former California governor made a serious run at incumbent Ford. After Ford narrowly won nomination at the convention, Reagan's numerous delegates chanted for Reagan to return to the floor and make a speech. Reagan answered the call -- and overshadowed the nominee -- with a rousing extemporaneous speech about leadership. The crowd went wild, and Reagan and the nation knew he'd be back in 1980.

2004

Columbia University presidential historian Alan Brinkley observes that "political conventions have not been decision-making forums for half a century." But that may change in 2004. The Democratic convention in Boston and Republican convention in New York are "the first in more than 30 years to coincide with the combination of war, crisis, and bitter political division."[4]

---

[1]2004 Democratic National Convention Official Site, "Past Conventions," at http://www.dems2004.org/site/apps/lk/content2.asp?c=luI2LaPYG&b=118243
[2]Alan Brinkley, "Is Democracy Still Welcome in the Hall?" New York Times, July 25, 2004, section 15 ("Boston"), p. 3.
[3]William Safire, Safire's New Political Dictionary (Random House: New York, 1993), s.v. "brokered convention," p. 86.
[4]Brinkley, "Is Democracy," p. 3.

Presidential Libraries

Question: How many presidential libraries are there? When was the first one established?
From: Molly R. of Grand Rapids, Michigan
Submitted: July 21, 2004

Gleaves answers:
People interested in the presidency ask, "What character or personality traits are common to our presidents?" There are more than a dozen traits that most presidents possessed (discussed in another query to Ask Gleaves). One of them is how much they loved books; many of our chief executives collected thousands of books in their lifetime -- even those who lived before mass trade books were available at an affordable price. Presidents and books and libraries -- they are a natural together.

But to nail down the first presidential library that was not just an interesting private collection but was also publicly significant -- that is not so easy. Following George Washington's precedent, most of our early presidents simply took their personal papers, files, and books home with them when they left office. All such material was considered the private property of the president -- there was no systematic approach to preserving the public record of an administration. Presidential historian Michael Nelson offers:

"Over the years, their [the presidents'] descendants usually ended up selling or donating the papers to the Library of Congress, but not before doing them a great deal of damage through carelessness, greed, or bowdlerization. As Don W. Wilson, a former archivist of the United States, records, 'presidential papers were systematically purged, mutilated by autograph collectors and souvenir hunters, wasted by widows, burned in barns ans barrels, and carried off by marauding troops.'"[1]

What changed? When were presidential papers and files regarded as a part of the public record of the United States? When was it considered important for there to be access to a president's documents and books? Would the institution that housed an administration's record be a research library that restricted access to scholars ... or a comprehensive library-archive-museum that reached out to the public and gathered as much material about the president and his associates as possible. However the answers to these questions evolved, presidential libraries signified a new type of institution, one considered crucial to a self-governing republic.

1815. Some scholars argue that Thomas Jefferson possessed the first publicly significant presidential library in our nation's history. After 1770, when he lost his personal library in a fire, Jefferson amassed perhaps the largest personal collection of books in the U.S. In 1814 the British burned much of Washington, DC, and Congress's library with it. One year later Jefferson sold his collection of 6,487 books to the Library of Congress for $23,950. The books, however, did not revolve around his experience as the nation's third president, but around his intellectual interests. Although another fire on Christmas Eve 1851 destroyed nearly two thirds of the Jefferson volumes Congress had purchased, the Jefferson precedent remained significant to the idea of making a president's books accessible to the public.

1850s. President Millard Fillmore and First Lady Abigail Fillmore can also claim a first. Before the Fillmore administration (1850-53), there were books but no permanent library in the White House. At his wife's urging, the 13th president prevailed upon Congress to fund the purchase of enough books to start a significant White House library for future presidents and their families and staff to enjoy. It is on the ground floor. To be sure, this is a different presidential library than that which usually comes to mind; it serves as the setting for numerous White House social gatherings and can be toured by the public.

1870. Other scholars would give the descendents of John Adams credit for establishing the first presidential library, per se. The collection that was started by John Adams was added to by his son, John Quincy Adams, and built up by two more generations of Adamses. To house this impressive collection, the family had the Stone Library, in Quincy, Massachusetts, built in 1870, adjacent to the Adams estate called Peacefield. Perhaps it was the fate of the Jefferson collection (the majority of which was destroyed by fire in 1851) that prompted the Adamses to build their library away from the kitchen or any other source of fire in the main house. The Stone Library contains 14,000 volumes that revolve not around the administrations of John and John Quincy Adams, but around their intellectual pursuits. It is maintained by the National Park Service.

1885. Still other historians maintain that James Garfield's wife should get the credit for establishing the first presidential library. In 1885, four years after her husband's assassination, Lucretia ("Crete") Garfield added the Memorial Library to the family home (Lawnfield) in Mentor, Ohio. The library housed the books that were used and treasured by the 20th president, as well as a fire-proof vault that stored valuable papers and letters. This library set the precedent for a president having a library built in his honor. It is administered by the National Park Service.

1916. Along come friends and descendents of Rutherford B. Hayes to claim they established the first true presidential library on the grounds of the Hayes estate, Spiegel Grove, in Fremont, Ohio. The stately edifice houses 70,000 books, including Hayes's 12,000-volume personal library. Included is considerable archival material from his military and political career, with a focus on his presidency (1877-1881). The Hayes library is not run by the federal government but is administered by the Hayes Presidential Center and State of Ohio.

1941. Franklin Delano Roosevelt can make the most credible claim for establishing the presidential library system as a federally-run network. Early in his presidency he had been mulling over where to leave his papers and considered the Library of Congress. By 1937 his administration -- more activist and generating more documents than any previous administration in U.S. history -- decided on a new approach that would revolutionize the way presidential history is preserved and interpreted. After consulting with the Archivist of the United States and Congressional leaders, he decided to seek private donations to build a library on his family estate, Springwood, in the Hudson River Valley near the village of Hyde Park. He would then donate the library to the federal government, to be run by the relatively new National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and maintained by the National Park Service. That is precisely what happened when the library opened in 1941.

That is how FDR could claim that he opened the first presidential library. He even had a working office in the library, located on his family estate in Hyde Park in the Hudson River valley, where he spent time as president; that was indeed a first -- no other sitting president had an office in a library open to the public. We know, for example, that FDR delivered three fireside chats on the radio from the study. The library-museum-archive, housed in a Dutch colonial style building, contains 17 million pages of documents and 45,000 books, 15,000 of which were in FDR's private collection of books and pamphlets.

Michael Nelson tells of the next step: "A 1955 law, the Presidential Libraries Act, extended Roosevelt's arrangement to all living ex-presidents and future presidents. During the next 15 years they each took the deal. Libraries, with accompanying museums, sprang up wherever the former presidents wanted them."

Any drawbacks to this arrangement? Nelson writes: "Presidential libraries have been lambasted for their cost and extravagance, for dispersing important documents to inconvenient locations, and for reifying a president-centered approach to American history. Although none of these criticisms lack merit, we -- scholars and the public alike -- are better off having presidential libraries than not."[2]

In any case, while friends of Hayes created the way the presidential library-museum-archive looks to the public, FDR created the federal structure that governs most of the others. By most counts, there are at least ten such institutions under the NARA umbrella. They are dedicated to Herbert Hoover (West Branch, IA), Harry S. Truman (Independence, MO), Dwight D. Eisenhower (Abilene, KS), John F. Kennedy (Columbia Point in Boston), Lyndon B. Johnson (on the University of Texas campus in Austin), Gerald R. Ford (library on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor; museum in Grand Rapids), Jimmy Carter (Atlanta), Ronald Reagan (Simi Valley, CA), George H. W. Bush (on the Texas A&M campus in College Station), and William Jefferson Clinton (Little Rock, AK). All of these libraries-museums are administered by NARA.

Note that Herbert Hoover was the only president prior to FDR who had what became a NARA library. Therein lies a tale. As the two men had run against each other in 1932, there was an intense rivalry between them. While president, Hoover had dedicated the National Archives. FDR couldn't match that august event, but he could create a new institution -- the NARA presidential library system -- and start by building his own. Not to be left behind, Hoover used the same process that launched the FDR Library to build one of his own.

One other library-museum-archive that must be mentioned is dedicated to the public career of Richard M. Nixon (Yorba Linda, CA). It is an outstanding institution that is privately run, and not administered by NARA. Yet even the Nixon provides an interesting chapter to the story. As Nelson observes:

"A problem arose when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974. Unless the law was changed, Nixon's presidential papers -- including all of his White House tapes -- would belong to him, to do with as he saw fit. Congress stepped quickly into the breach, declaring that the records of Nixon's presidency were public property.

"In 1978 Congress followed up by passing the Presidential Records Act, extending the principles of public ownership to the papers of all future presidents. Starting with Ronald Reagan, the first president to be covered, the bulk of each president's official records would have to be made available for public scrutiny five years after the president left office. The extent of public access -- whether personal or political -- would still be up to the president, who also could restrict access for 12 years to certain categories of official papers, such as those relating to appointments and national security."[3]

The Clinton Library that opened on November 18, 2004, is sprawling -- 150,000 square feet that house the archives, museum, foundation, and University of Arkansas's Clinton School. Among its unusual design features is a full-scale replica of the Oval Office that is illuminated by natural light.

One can assume that George W. Bush will also have a library-museum-archive dedicated to his public life and presidency, probably in or near Dallas, Texas, where First Lady Laura Bush went to college (Southern Methodist University) and where he owned the Texas Rangers baseball team.

____________________________

[1]Michael Nelson, "Presidential Libraries Are Valuable Reflections of Their Eras," Chronicle of Higher Education 51 (November 12, 2004), B15.

[2]Nelson, "Presidential Libraries," B15.

[3]Nelson, "Presidential Libraries," B16.

Presidents and our Founding Documents

Question: With the Fourth of July almost upon us, I would like to know how many future presidents signed the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.
From: Russell C. of Lee's Summit, Missouri
Submitted: July 01, 2004

Gleaves answers:
Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, only two would become president: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. (They and one other, Elbridge Gerry, would serve as vice president.) Of the 39 signers of the Constitution of the United States, only two would become president: George Washington and James Madison.

You may be surprised that only four Founding Fathers went on to become president after their good work in the Pennsylvania State House. But remember, it took time for people to accept the new Constitution; the ratification process dragged on from 1787 (when Delaware ratified) to 1790 (when Rhode Island did). It took time before enough states ratified the Constitution so there could be a presidential election. The clock was ticking, and the sad fact is, those who had signed the Declaration more than a decade earlier suffered greatly during the War for Independence. Many had either died, lost their fortunes, or retired from public life after the war.

Moreover, George Washington, by unanimous consent, was a two-term president. Thus other Founding Brothers with ambitions for high office had to wait eight years for The Indispensible Man to retire. Then Adams, Jefferson, and Madison -- in that order -- filled the top post for the next twenty years. The last Founders to be elected president were James Monroe (in 1816 and 1820) and John Quincy Adams (1824), neither of whom were signatories to the two great charters of the American experiment.

What was lacking in quantity was made up in quality. The Second Continental Congress that produced the Declaration of Independence saw both Adams and Jefferson serve on the committee that drafted and edited the document. As for the Constitutional Convention, Washington was its unanimously chosen president; and Madison was called the "Father of the Constitution."

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison -- not a bad line of presidents, that.