Missouri and presidents

Question: Which presidents had ties to the state of Missouri?
From: Victoria M. of St. Louis, MO
Date: February 9, 2005

Gleaves answers: Any proud Missourian could probably think of more than a half dozen presidents with ties to the Show-Me state.[1] You would have to start with Thomas Jefferson. The third president made the Louisiana Purchase possible in 1803, and Missouri would be carved out of Louisiana within two decades. The very name of the state capital, Jefferson City ("Jeff City," as locals call it), is a tribute to the third president. So is the stunning Gateway Arch, located in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Indeed, Missouri has the most significant memorials to Thomas Jefferson outside of Virginia, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

You should also look to our fifth president, James Monroe, since it was during his administration that Missouri's admittance into the Union was fiercely debated; it eventually became a state in 1820, under the terms of the Missouri Compromise.

Our 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant, no doubt had fond memories of a Missouri connection. He married his wife, Julia Boggs Dent, at her home in St. Louis. (Thanks to Web visiter Jack Sauer for this information.)

Democrats held their national conventions in Missouri five times -- on four occasions in St. Louis and once in Kansas City. It proved not to be a fortuitous place for four of the Democratic nominees, as they would go on to lose the following November. Incumbent Grover Cleveland was one of the losers, in 1888. Only once did a Missouri convention launch a successful Democratic candidate, and that was incumbent Woodrow Wilson, in St. Louis, in 1916.

Republicans held their national conventions in Missouri three times, with somewhat more success. In 1896 the Republican National Convention in St. Louis launched William McKinley on his successful bid for the White House. In 1928, the convention in Kansas City sent Herbert Hoover off on his successful race for the White House. However, in 1976, in a particularly dramatic convention (by modern-day standards) that pitted incumbent Gerald R. Ford against Ronald Reagan, Ford came away the wounded victor; he narrowly lost to Jimmy Carter the following November.

That's eight presidents with some tie to the Show-Me state.

Oh -- did I forget to mention Harry S. Truman?
_____________________________________
[1]By the way, the sobriquet "Show-Me state" has political if not exactly presidential origins. The archivist's office in Jefferson City points out that its origins can be found during William McKinley administration, right after Theodore Roosevelt's tenure as assistant secretary of the Navy:
"The slogan is not official, but is common throughout the state and is used on Missouri license plates. The most widely known legend attributes the phrase to Missouri's U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1903. While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, 'I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.' Regardless of whether Vandiver coined the phrase, it is certain that his speech helped to popularize the saying." [Source: http://sos.mo.gov/archives/history/slogan.asp]

Who was a King before he was a President?

Question: Let me ask you a riddle. Who is the only American who was a King before he was a President?
From: A Rotarian in Grand Rapids, MI
Date: December 2, 2004

Answer: That's a riddle that originates in Grand Rapids, Michigan, since the answer has to do with one of its own.

The story starts with a man named Leslie Lynch King, a wool merchant in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1912 he married Dorothy Gardner. It was an unhappy marriage, and Dorothy was physically abused. Despite the miserable relationship, the couple had a son on July 14, 1913, whom they named Leslie Lynch King Jr.

Fed up with her abusive husband, Dorothy escaped from Omaha with her infant son and found refuge in her parents' home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She got a divorce in 1915 and met a kind man who owned a paint store in town. His name was Gerald Rudolf Ford Sr. -- and now you know the rest of the story: Dorothy and Gerald got married in 1916. He adopted her only child and renamed the lad Gerald R. Ford Jr. Fifty-eight years later he would earn the distinction of being the only American who was a King before he was a President.

Assassinations

Question: Today is the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas. How many other presidents have been assassinated in U.S. history?
From: Bill B. of Ft. Worth, Texas
Date: November 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: ASSASSINATIONS

In U.S. history, four presidents have been assassinated, each by a gunman:

1. The first American president to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln, who was shot five weeks into his second term by John Wilkes Booth, in Washington, DC, in a Good Friday performance of a play at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865; he died within hours. As part of the same conspiracy, Secretary of State William Seward was attacked the same evening; he survived the assassination attempt by an accomplice of John Wilkes Booth who was known as Lewis Powell or Lewis Paine.

2. James A. Garfield was shot just months into his term of office by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881, in Washington, DC; he died September 19, 1881, making his administration the second shortest in American history.

3. William McKinley was shot a few months into his second term, in Buffalo, New York, by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901; clinging to life barely a week, he passed away on September 14, 1901.

4. John F. Kennedy was shot three years into his presidency by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Because of number of people believe that Oswald was part of a conspiracy, it has become the most investigated murder mystery in human history.

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS

In addition to the four presidents who have been assassinated, there have been assassination attempts against five presidents:

- Andrew Jackson was an assassin's target in 1835.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt was the intended victim in Miami on February 15, 1932, when he was president elect; the mayor of Chicago, Anton J. Cermak, was between FDR and the gunman Giuseppe Zangara; he paid with his life three weeks later.

- Harry S. Truman escaped injury on November 1, 1950, in Washington, DC, when Puerto Rican nationalists tried to shoot their way into Blair House, where the president was staying as the White House was undergoing renovation. One of the White House Police, Officer Leslie Coffelt, died in the line of duty.

- Gerald R. Ford was targeted for assassination twice in September of 1975 by women in California. The first attempt against his life occurred on September 5, 1975, in Sacramento, when Lynette Alice (Squeaky) Fromme aimed but did not fire a .45-caliber pistol at the president. The second attempt occurred in San Francisco, just a little over two weeks later, on September 22, 1975, when Sara Jane Moore fired one shot from a .38-caliber pistol that was deflected.

- Ronald Reagan was seriously wounded by John W. Hinckley, Jr., on March 30, 1981, as he emerged from a speaking engagement; three other people were also seriously wounded.

There was a serious assassination attempt against one former president, Theodore Roosevelt, who was shot in Milwaukee on October 14, 1912, while attempting to make a comeback for president. When he was shot, TR was on his way to deliver a speech and famously fulfilled his duty before going to the hospital.

In sum, 10 U.S. presidents were the target of assassins:
- four were shot to death;
- five survived assassination attempts (in Ford's case, twice in one month);
- and one ex-president survived an assassination attempt.

Two other politicians with presidential aspirations were assassinated: Louisiana Senator Huey Long (1935) and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1968). Plus there was an assassination attempt against Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, who was left paralyzed from the waist down (1972).

SECRET SERVICE

The U.S. Secret Service is charged with guarding the president. What is not widely know is that the Secret Service was organized in the U.S. Treasury Department in 1865, and remained there until 2003. At the founding their primary mission was to suppress counterfeit currency; during the first decades of its existence, the official responsibility of Secret Service agents did not include protecting U.S. presidents. They began an informal relationship with the White House only in 1894, during Grover Cleveland's second administration; they were with neither Presidents Garfield nor McKinley when they were shot.

It was McKinley's assassination by a terrorist in 1901 that spurred Congress to action, and the relationship between the White House and Secret Service evolved significantly during the next two decades. Already in 1901 Capitol Hill informally asked the Secret Service to provide protection for the president. The next year, with Theodore Roosevelt in the White House, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for protecting the president; two agents were assigned full time to the White House detail. Also about this time, the Secret Service began protecting the president-elect. Before leaving office, TR transferred eight Secret Service agents to the Department of Justice. They formed the nucleus of what is now the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Further changes occurred during Woodrow Wilson's time in office. In 1913, his first year in the White House, Congress authorized permanent protection of the president and president-elect. Four years later the next logical step was made. Congress authorized permanent protection of the president's immediate family. Moreover, anybody who made "threats" against the president committed a federal crime.

The White House Police Force was established in 1922, at Warren Harding's request. Only in 1930, during the Hoover administration, was the White House Police Force brought under the supervision of the U.S. Secret Service.

1951 was an important year for the Secret Service. Because of the attempt on President Truman's life, Congress enacted legislation that permanently authorized Secret Service protection of the president, his immediate family, the president-elect, and the vice president, if he requests it.

In 1962, during the Kennedy administration, Congress passed a law that expanded the charge of the Secret Service to protect the vice president.

One final note: "Congress passed legislation in 1994 stating that presidents elected to office after January 1, 1997, will receive Secret Service protection for 10 years after leaving office. Individuals elected to office prior to January 1, 1997, will continue to receive lifetime protection."[1]

On March 1, 2003, The U.S. Secret Service moved from Treasury to the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security, where it is today.
____________

[1] For the history of the U.S. Secret Service, see the official Website at the U.S. Department of the Treasury at http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml.

Election 2004 in perspective -- part I

Question: What lessons can be learned from the 2004 presidential election?
From: The editorial desk of The Detroit News (Detroit, MI)*
Date: November 7, 2004

Gleaves answers: The dust of Election 2004 is starting to settle. The Democrats are everywhere seeing red, which is giving them the blues. At this point it is helpful to take a step back from the fray and try to put the election in historical perspective. When it comes to the presidency:

1. Republicans who run as conservatives (not moderates) win. Conservatives have prevailed in four of the last seven elections. Two-term President George W. Bush calls himself a "compassionate conservative." But an earlier two-term president, Ronald Reagan, was arguably the most conservative president in the 20th century, and he won both the 1980 and 1984 elections in landslides.

Back in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower ran as a staunch conservative during his first campaign, winning by a large margin even while vowing to abolish Social Security. Richard Nixon, who early in his first term reached out to the "silent majority" of Americans in Red states, positioned himself as a conservative, and went on to be re-elected in a landslide in 1972.

Moderate Republicans typically don't do as well. Consider the ill-fated campaigns of Gerald R. Ford in 1976, George H. W. Bush in 1992,[1] and Bob Dole in 1996. Indeed, only once in the last half century -- in 1964, when Barry Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson -- has a self-consciously conservative Republican been rejected at the polls.

2. Democrats who run as liberals (not centrists) lose. The political landscape is filled with the detritus of left-of-center candidates -- George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry -- every one of them defeated at the polls.

In response to Ronald Reagan's stunning electoral success, Democrats formed the Democratic Leadership Council to champion more moderate candidates who could talk like -- well, Republicans. DLC Democrats wanted to cut taxes, reform welfare, and shrink significant sectors of the federal government. Not coincidentally, Bill Clinton, who hitched his ideological wagon to the DLC star, was the Democrats' only two-term president after Franklin Roosevelt.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein commented on the election from a Democratic perspective: "When you look at a presidential election where we lost in every age group except one, I think it's time to do some reassessment. I have noticed," she continued, "that all the gravitas [of our party] has slid to the left. All one has to do is look at the map to know that you can't win a presidential election that way. If we keep going on this way, we'll be a minority party."[2]

3. Religion, morals, and values matter. Hardly any pundits anticipated the shock fact of Election 2004: 22 percent of Americans cited moral values as the primary reason they voted the way they did; not the sluggish economy or the war in Iraq, but moral values; and 80 percent of these voters cast their ballot for Bush. Whoever occupies the office, the president has become a kind of high priest in American life; the people want the person in the Oval Office to reflect their mores.

What went wrong for the Democratic nominee was apparent. On the hustings, Kerry was clearly less comfortable talking about his faith than was Bush. Kerry also had a Senate record that included votes for partial-birth abortions. Because he supported civil unions and was supported by Hollywood liberals, he was damaged goods to evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics, who came out in droves to support Bush, the candidate with whom they could more closely identify.

As reported by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, about a week prior to the election John Kerry received a phone call from former President Bill Clinton, who advised the Democratic candidate to come out firmly against gay marriage. Kerry declined to take the advice and paid the price.

The backlash against liberals was particularly obvious in the 11 states that offered voters the chance to reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage; in all 11 the conservative position prevailed by large margins (indeed, by a 6 to 1 margin in Mississippi and by a 3 to 1 margin in Arkansas and Kentucky). The landslides even occurred in states where Bush lost the popular vote; in Michigan, voters approved constitutional amendments that upheld the traditional definition of marriage and restricted gambling. For some time now, the great cultural and political divide in this nation has been not between Protestants and Catholics -- as in decades past -- but between those who go to worship services at least once a week, and those who hardly go at all.

4. The "mainstream media" continue to get it wrong. Whether it's the anchor desk at CBS or the reporting desk at the New York Times, an unabashed bias is apparent, and Americans in the heartland reject it. It was widely observed, for example, that CNN's Judy Woodruff was visibly distressed Tuesday when Florida went to Bush. Does she know -- does she care -- how silly she looked to folks out in the Red states?

A wise commentator observed that, in Election 2004, it was not the media who were teaching Americans, but Americans who were teaching the media.

5. A final lesson: If many in the media got this election wrong, who got it right? The organization that called it right this time -- as it has in 12 of the last 13 presidential elections -- was the WRC, yes, the same WRC that publishes the Weekly Reader that surveys school kids every election year.

As reported two weeks ago, our youngest citizens predicted that Bush would beat Kerry in a landslide. More to the point, they wanted Bush to beat Kerry in a landslide.

Of course, these kids are America's future.

_________________________________

*A shorter version of this op-ed appeared in the Detroit News on Sunday, November 7, 2004.

[1]George H. W. Bush had a conservative background, gleaned from many of his early political races. When he ran for president in 1988, he also could appeal to conservatives because of his eight years of service as vice president in the Reagan administration. But Bush was abandoned by conservatives over two issues: (1) his decision to raise taxes after the famous "Read my lips -- no new taxes" pledge made at the GOP convention in New Orleans; and his nomination of David Souter to the United States Supreme Court, who proved to be more socially liberal than Main Street as well as the mainstream judiciary.

[2]Dianne Feinstein quoted in Adam Nagourney and Carl Hulse, "For Democrats in Senate, Leader of a Different Stripe: Red State Survivor for Party with the Blues," New York Times, November 14, 2004, p. A22.

Best signs for predicting the winner

Question: Which polling organization has the best track record of predicting who will win the presidency?
From: Tara C. of Grand Rapids, MI
Date: October 24, 2004 [revised November 2, 2004]

Gleaves answers: Eat crow, Gallup. Move over, Zogby International. Eat dirt and die, NBC/Newsweek. You don't even come close to being as good as WRC readers when it comes to predicting who wins presidential races.

As good as who?

The Weekly Reader Corporation (WRC) publishes a newspaper for school kids, and in every presidential election since Dwight Eisenhower's re-election it has invited our youngest citizens to predict who will win the November contest. Since 1956, the WRC poll has correctly dubbed the winner in 11 of 12 contests.

That's saying something, considering some of the close presidential elections in the last half century. In 1960 school kids correctly predicted that Kennedy would come out on top in a breathtakingly close contest with Nixon. Same with the fiercely fought battle in 1976 when incumbent President Gerald Ford was eventually overcome by Jimmy Carter, and the bitter contest in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore that held the nation in suspense for more than a month.

The only election the kids got wrong was 1968, when they thought Robert F. Kennedy would beat out the Republican nominee. However, that survey was gathered in the spring of '68, months before the election and before RFK was assassinated in June.

Whom do school kids think will win in 2004?

The news release available this morning from Weekly Reader opens: "The students who read Weekly Reader’s magazines have made their preference for President known: they want to send President Bush back to the White House.... Hundreds of thousands of students participated, giving the Republican President more than 60% of the votes cast and making him a decisive choice over Democratic Senator John Kerry."[1]

It was almost an electoral sweep at every level. Elementary school kids in every grade voted overwhelming for George W. Bush. Among middle school kids the president also won, but by a narrower margin. Most high schoolers also preferred President Bush; only 10th graders voted in greater numbers for Senator Kerry.[2]

Besides the Weekly Reader poll, other indicators have traditionally presaged who wins in November.

For instance, The stock market's performance in the two months leading up to an election can tell you who will win. There have been 26 elections since 1900. In 16 of those elections, the Dow Jones industrial average trended up in September and October, and in all but one of those 16 elections, the incumbent party candidate won in November. In 10 elections since 1900, the Dow trended down in September and October, and in all but one of those elections, the incumbent party candidate lost in November. What is more, no president running for re-election has ever lost if the Dow in October is up at least 3 percent compared to one year earlier. But no president has been re-elected if the Dow in October is down by 5 percent of more, according to Jeff Hirsch in the Stock Trader's Almanac. [The less than stellar performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in September and most of October would seem to favor Kerry; however, there was a surge of earnings at the end of October, which might have reflected confidence in a Bush victory.]

Moreover, for the last 40 years the road to the White House has gone through the sunbelt; every winner since 1964 has been from the west or the south. Going further back, to 1948, candidates who came from sunnier, warmer states -- a home base to the south or west of their opponent's home base -- tended to win the White House. So:
- 1948: Missouri (Truman) beat New York (Dewey).
- 1952: Kansas (Eisenhower, who was actually born in Texas) beat Illinois (Stevenson).
- 1956: ditto
- 1960 is the clear exception to the rule: Massachusetts (Kennedy) beat Southern California (Nixon).
- 1964 saw two sunbelt contestants, as Texas (Johnson) beat Arizona (Goldwater); in this case, the candidate from the state with both western and southern elements won.
- 1968: Southern California (Nixon) beat Minnesota (Humphrey).
- 1972: Southern California (Nixon) beat South Dakota (McGovern).
- 1976: Georgia (Carter) beat Michigan (Ford).
- 1980 saw two sunbelt contestants, as Southern California (Reagan) beat Georgia (Carter).
- 1984: Southern California (Reagan) beat Minnesota (Mondale).
- 1988: Texas (with more than a touch of New England in George H. W. Bush) beat Massachusetts (Dukakis)
- 1992: Arkansas (the unambiguously southern Clinton) beat Texas (the ambiguously southern Bush who, remember, had New England roots).
- 1996: Arkansas (Clinton) beat Kansas (Dole).
- 2000: Texas (Bush) beat Tennessee (Gore).
- 2004: [The trend favors Bush of Texas over Kerry of Massachusetts.]

But don't count northern states out for their usefulness in determining the winner. Watch, for example, how the state of Ohio leans. Republicans have never won the White House without carrying the Buckeye State. [Bush is leading slightly in Ohio.]

Also, look at the "right track" or presidential approval poll numbers for the incumbent. If the last sizeable, reputable poll before the election shows that more than 50 percent of likely voters believe that the nation is on the right track, or that the president is doing a good job, then that is a common-sense sign that the incumbent will win. [Bush is at or slightly above 50 percent in most polls.]

And -- this one's really curious -- watch how the Redskins football team does in its last home game prior to the election. If the Redskins win, the incumbent's party stays in; if the Redskins lose, the incumbent's party loses too. This uncanny coincidence has prevailed for 17 straight elections -- all the way back to 1936. So:

1936 -- [Boston] Redskins beat the Chicago Cardinals 13-10; Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected.
1940 -- Washington Redskins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 37-10; Roosevelt was re-elected.
1944 -- Redskins beat the Cleveland Rams 14-10; Roosevelt was re-elected.
1948 -- Redskins beat the Boston Yanks 59-21; Democrat Harry S. Truman was elected.
1952 -- Redskins lost to the Pittsburgh 24-23; Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected.
1956 -- Redskins beat the Cleveland Browns 20-9; Eisenhower was re-elected.
1960 -- Redskins lost to the Cleveland Browns 31-10; Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected.
1964 -- Redskins beat the Chicago Bears 27-20; Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson was elected.
1968 -- Redskins lost to the New York Giants 13-10; Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected.
1972 -- Redskins beat the Dallas Cowboys 24-20; Nixon was re-elected.
1976 -- Redskins lost to the Dallas Cowboys 20-7; Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected.
1980 -- Redskins lost to the Minnesota Vikings 39-14; Republican Ronald Reagan was elected.
1984 -- Redskins beat the Atlanta Falcons 27-14; Reagan was re-elected.
1988 -- Redskins beat the New Orleans Saints 27-24; Republican George H. W. Bush was elected.
1992 -- Redskins lost to the New York Giants 24-7; Democrat Bill Clinton was elected.
1996 -- Redskins beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-16; Clinton was re-elected.
2000 -- Redskins lost to the Tennessee Titans 27-21; Republican George W. Bush was elected.
2004 -- Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers 28-14.... [The pattern suggests Kerry will win, eh?]

There are other "signs" that are watched to predict the presidential race -- like the Iowa Electronic Futures; like Nickelodeon viewers' preference (there the kids accurately picked the winner from 1988-2000); like the top sales of Halloween masks of the candidates (sales of Bush masks are selling 10 percent better than Kerry masks this fall), to name just three. These offbeat "polls" are considered by many to be eerily accurate. But because of all the contradictory signals this year, all bets are off. What we know for certain is that some of the traditional "reliable predictors" are going to be wrong. Ultimately, the one poll that counts will be taken on November 2, when the ballots are counted.

_______________________________________________________

[1]http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_vote.asp

[2]http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_results.asp

[3]The pattern holds for the team specifically called the Redskins, whether in Boston (during the 1936 election) or in Washington (since the 1940 election). Interestingly, the Boston team had been called the Braves until 1933, when the name changed to the Redskins. Source: USA Today, November 1, 2004, p. 3C.

Presidential succession

Question: What is the chain of succession should a president die in office? How far down the chain has it gone?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: Succession has never gone further than from a president to a vice president (in all, on nine occasions, when eight incumbents died in office and one incumbent resigned). Prior to 1947, if a president died, become severely disabled, or resigned, succession would have proceeded in this order:
- vice president;
- secretary of state;
- secretary of war (later defense); and
- other cabinet secretaries in the order in which their departments were created.

The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 slightly modified the successors and is operative to this day. The act added two individuals fairly high up in the order of succession:
- president;
- vice president;
- speaker of the House (added because elected -- thus in theory more accountable to citizens);
- president pro tem of the Senate (added for the same reason);
- secretary of state;
- other Cabinet secretaries in the order in which their departments were established, so treasury secretary; defense secretary; and so on down to the homeland security secretary, since he heads up the last department that was created.

To understand the order of succession is to know why one Cabinet secretary is not present at the President's annual State of the Union address. If a catastrophe took out Capitol Hill, the surviving secretary could assume the presidency.

Americans who recall the Reagan presidency might remember one incident that caused equal parts confusion and consternation. When Ronald Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981, Secretary of State Al Haig, meaning well, said he was "in control." Vice President George H. W. Bush was not in Washington, DC, at the time, but Secretary Haig seems to have forgotten that the speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate were in town and, more to the point, ahead of Haig in line of succession because of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. Perhaps Secretary Haig reacted to the stressful situation by automatically reverting to what he had learned in grammar school, when the old order of succession was taught.

There are two surprising historical footnotes to this notion of presidential succession.

Hauenstein Center associate George Nash masterfully tells one of them. The Election of 1916 was closely fought between incumbent Woodrow Wilson and challenger Charles Evans Hughes; the electorate was tense because it was widely believed that the U.S. would be forced into World War I. Woodrow Wilson worried, too, which prompted him to come up with an arresting idea. In those days, prior to ratification of Amendment XXV, four months elapsed between Election Day and Inauguration Day. To Wilson, that was too long a period when the nation was poised on the edge of war. This is the plan Wilson hatched. If he had lost his bid for re-election, he would have his secretary of state, Robert Lansing, resign. With the Senate's cooperation, he would then nominate his Republican opponent, president-elect Charles Evans Hughes, to be the new secretary of state. Then -- here is the interesting twist -- he (Wilson) and Vice President Thomas Riley Marshall would resign, thus paving the way for Hughes to assume the presidency much sooner than the following March. The entire plan depended on the cooperation of the Senate, but was never implemented since Wilson defeated Hughes and was returned to the White House.

For the second footnote, fast forward to 1973-1974, to the tumult surrounding President Richard Nixon once the Watergate break-in came to light. James Cannon tells of a succession plot to end all plots in his biography of President Ford, Time and Chance. In October of 1973, Nixon's first vice president, Spiro Agnew, was forced to resign in disgrace. The Republican Nixon would be nominating a replacement who would have to be confirmed on Capitol Hill. But Congress was led by Democrats. New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug hatched a scheme to thwart Nixon and -- worse -- the plain intent of the Constitution. She and several other Democrats floated the idea that the Senate obstruct Nixon's VP nominee. In other words, they would insure that there would be no vice president. Then, when the president resigned because of public pressure from Watergate, succession would pass to the other party, to the Democratic speaker of the House, Carl Albert (since there would be no VP). When Congresswoman Abzug presented the scheme to Speaker Albert, he refused to go along with the extra-constitutional scheme. Some historians have argued that this is the closest to a coup d'etat the U.S. has ever come.

And most people think presidential succession is a boring topic!

Reaganomics

Question: What is Reaganomics, and did it outlive the Reagan administration?
From: Bob S. of Minneapolis, MN
Date: October 9, 2004

Gleaves answers: Reaganomics -- the economic program named after President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) -- has been one of the most controversial programs in American politics, much mentioned but little understood since first bolting onto the scene in the early 1980s. Reagan's long-time friend and advisor Edwin Meese III observed that Reaganomics "was the most consistently attacked and most ardently defended of all the president's initiatives."[1] Another Reagan domestic and economic policy advisor, Martin Anderson, tried to explain one source of popular misunderstanding: "There is a great deal at stake in the writing of the history of the Reagan presidency. For the past 25 years most of the men and women on the political Right ... have focused their energies on creating new policies, forging political coalitions, electing presidents, and fomenting peaceful worldwide revolution. They have been successful far beyond their wildest fantasies. But while many of us have been basking in warm contentment and self-satisfaction, those who were beaten have been busily writing our history."[2]

DEFINITIONS, PERCEPTIONS

Reaganomics was the name given to the economic program of our 40th president, who championed fiscal restraint and smaller government, tax cuts for individuals and less red tape for businesses. Reaganomics is based on "supply-side economics," a counter-intuitive set of policies that aims to increase revenues by decreasing taxes. Here is how it supposedly works: Significant tax cuts can lead to greater economic activity, since people have more money to spend and invest, which in turn can lead to greater tax revenues for the government.

To middle class Americans, Reaganomics was sold primarily as a tax cut that would let families keep more of their money, impose limits on big government, and increase consumer spending, savings, and investment. It was an idea that had broad appeal to many moderate and fiscally conservative voters when it was introduced in the early 1980s. To die-hard supporters, Reaganomics was more than an economic program. It was an idea inspired by nothing less than the American founding. In an era of creeping statism, it was a moral crusade to limit government power and restore individual freedom.

To critics, by contrast, Reaganomics was not based on sound economic policy at all, premised as it was on the "trickle down" theory of how wealth spreads. Critics liked to point out that it led to high budget deficits and provided the political cover to cut taxes for the rich -- invariably "on the backs of the poor." It is telling that George H. W. Bush, when he was competing with Reagan for the Republican nomination in 1980, referred to Reagan's economic plan as "voodoo economics." By whatever name, according to critics, Reaganomics was shorthand for bogus economic policies and the greed of the 1980s.

However viewed, Reaganomics was the centerpiece of the 40th president's domestic policy, forcefully articulated by Ronald Reagan during the 1980 campaign and persistently pursued during his first years in office. As the economists who formulated it explained, Reaganomics meant:
- slowing the rate of growth in federal spending (as opposed to shrinking the size of government),
- trimming personal income tax rates,
- reducing the regulatory burden on business, and
- cooperating with the Federal Reserve System's monetary policy to encourage a stable currency and robust financial markets.[3]

Meese notes that "The economic program was the first matter the administration tackled, and it dominated discussion of domestic policy for years."[4]

ROOTS OF REAGANOMICS

There are many sources of Reaganomics, most of them drawn from the experiences of Ronald Reagan himself. In the first place, at Eureka College he had majored in economics.

Second, as his movie career took off, Reagan became increasingly dismayed by the taxes he paid to Sacramento and especially to Washington.

Third, Reagan had to stay atop economic policy throughout his eight years as California's governor. As Meese points out, "When Reagan ran for president, one of his most obvious and impressive credentials was that he had been chief executive of the largest state in the Union. It would be hard to imagine a better training ground for the managerial job at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With over 20 million people [in the late 1960s], California was larger than 90 percent of the countries on earth; had it been a separate nation, its gross national product would have been the seventh largest in the world."[5]

A few years later, when he ran for president, Reagan assembled an estimable team of advisors, some 460 policy experts who advised the candidate on everything from atom bombs to welfare reform; 74 of these experts were detailed to 6 economic task forces focusing on the federal budget, tax policy, spending control, regulatory reform, inflation, and international monetary policy. Some of the advisors are now familiar names: Alan Greenspan, Milton Freedman, William Simon, Jack Kemp, and George Schultz, who was chairman of the campaign's Economic Policy Coordinating Committee. These advisors formed the brain trust that gave Reaganomics its shape.

The economic malaise that arose on President Carter’s watch was the ostensible bogeyman that Reaganomics set out to slay. But Reagan also set his sights on a more formidable foe -- a three-headed hydra that was part Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, part Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, and part Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. From the 1930s to the 1960s, these three Democrats pushed the size and scope of the federal government beyond anything the Founders intended, according to Reagan. The California governor set out on a quest to slow down the advance of Leviathan, realizing that it would probably only be a rear-guard action.

Reagan, it should be said, was also trying to distance himself from a previous Republican president, also from California. Richard Nixon (1969-1974) turned out to be as progressive on the domestic front as Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) had been. For example, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed the Family Assistance Program to guarantee a minimum income for the poor, unveiled the start of national health insurance, and imposed wage and price controls to battle inflation. Nixon's was government on offense. As presidential historian Robert Dallek observes, "Everyone mistakenly assumed Nixon would scale back the Great Society, but he actually took up many traditional liberal causes."[6] Reagan believed that the Republican party needed to be the nation's conservative party, rather than a pale shadow of the nation's other party, the home of progressive Democrats.

OPPORTUNITY

Reagan's entry onto the national political stage occurred when he spoke on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign; from that point forward he was seen as a spokesman for the conservative (as opposed to Eastern Establishment) wing of the GOP. Reagan himself made a modest run for president in 1968, and launched a much more serious effort in 1976, when he challenged the Republican incumbent, Gerald R. Ford, and won a number of primaries. Both times he was turned back -- the time for his ideas was not ripe.

But the economic stresses that beset the United States during the 1970s made the public receptive to a change. After Jimmy Carter had been in the White House for four years (1977-1981), the economy "was in the midst of its worst crisis since the Great Depression. In January 1981 the unemployment rate stood at 7.4 percent, on its way up to 10 percent. Persistent double-digit inflation had pushed interest rates to an unbelievable 21 percent. Real pre-tax income of the average American family had been dropping since 1976, and -- thanks to bracket creep -- after tax income was falling even faster. The supply of oil and other raw materials seemed precarious. The outgoing president warned of a bleak economic future."[7]

It was these stresses -- and Carter's inability to manage them effectively -- that gave Reagan the opportunity to mount a serious challenge during the 1980 campaign. The movie star beat the incumbent Democrat in a landslide.

Reagan wasted no time trying to enact his economic program, the centerpiece of which was a 25 percent tax cut over three years. As I've written in another Ask Gleaves answer, although Reagan had campaigned lower taxes and leaner government, in 1981 he had to deal with a Democratic majority in the House. (In the '81 election Republicans gained control of the Senate.) True, an incoming president traditionally enjoys a honeymoon period of a hundred days or so, but in his first couple of months in office, Reagan was encountering stiff resistance among House Democrats. After Reagan proposed his Economic Recovery Plan, Speaker Tip O'Neill said, "We're not going to let them [the Republicans] tear asunder programs we've built over the years."[8]

The mood changed dramatically after John Hinckley fired his way into history. The would-be assassin shot Reagan on March 30, 1981, barely two months after the 40th president's inauguration. The president's grace and courage during the ordeal raised the esteem in which the American people held him. In such an atmosphere it was difficult for congressional Democrats to criticize the recovering president. Edmund Morris wrote of this critical period in Reagan's presidency:

"By April 24, [Reagan] was well enough to walk to the West Wing and chair a full Cabinet meeting. And four days later, live on prime time, he made the most dramatic presidential appearance in Congress since Franklin Roosevelt's return from Yalta.

"The millions watching saw a large and splendid man, literally death-defying, appear at the threshold of the House as the doorkeeper roared the traditional 'The President of the United States!' All members rose as required, but their respect on this occasion verged on reverence -- and also signaled a near-helpless capitulation to the message they knew he was bringing.

"'I walked in to an unbelievable ovation that went on for several minutes,' he wrote afterward. His speech -- a call for one hundred percent support for his Program for Economic Recovery -- was interrupted by fourteen bursts of applause and three standing ovations. 'In the 3rd of these suddenly about 40 Democrats stood and applauded. Maybe we are going to make it. It took a lot of courage for them to do that, and it sent a tingle down my spine.'

"Not forty but sixty-three Democrats subsequently joined the solid Republican minority, sending Reagan's budget to the Senate with a vote of 253-176. If not quite the total support he had dreamed of, it was a huge victory, and the first official register of his legislative power. As Speaker Tip O'Neill philosophically reminded reporters, Congress was ultimately responsible to the American people, 'and the will of the people is to go along with the President.'"[9]

All through the spring and summer of 1981, Reagan lobbied Congress to cut welfare, the food stamp program, school meals, and Medicare and Medicaid. Congress went along with most of the president's plan, passing the Economic Recovery Tax Act on July 29, 1981. Reagan signed the legislation the next month at his ranch in California, outside the house on the now-famous tax-cut table. The legislation cut taxes by $750 billion over five years, making it the largest tax cut in American history.

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF REAGANOMICS

Defenders of Reaganomics like to talk about how the bleak '70s gave way to the sunny '80s. "From 1982 to 1990 the United States experienced 96 straight months of economic growth, the longest peacetime expansion in its history [at that point]. Almost 20 million brand-new jobs, most of them high-paying jobs, were created. Inflation fell dramatically to low levels and stayed there as the American dollar once again became sound. Interest rates also fell dramatically and stayed down. The stock market soared, nearly tripling in value. Government revenues -- at the federal, state, and local levels -- nearly doubled, making possible the largest increase in social welfare spending in history. And, almost incidentally, we financed an enormous buildup in America's military power, checkmating the evil intentions of the old Soviet Empire, and ultimately causing the disintegration of Communism throughout the world."[10]

IMPACT ON THE NATION'S CLIMATE OF OPINION

Economists continue to debate the degree to which Reaganomics delivered economic recovery and prosperity. Whatever its contribution to the nation's economic recovery, there is no question of its impact on public discourse and policy. No sooner did Reagan leave office in 1989 than many of the nation's governors -- Republican and Democratic -- picked up the gauntlet and adopted the lower taxes/smaller government mantra.

Indeed, Reaganomics informed the economic thinking of the fiscally conservative New Democrats, of whom Bill Clinton was a leader. During Clinton's eight years as president, he never seriously entertained taking the nation back to the marginal tax rates of the Carter administration. In one of his State of the Union addresses, he disarmingly proclaimed, "The era of big government is over." It was because of Reaganomics.

Most recently, in the second presidential debate of the 2004 campaign, John Kerry was pressured into saying, in no uncertain terms, "I will not raise taxes" on the middle class. It was because of Reaganomics.

There is no question that economic and social debate at the state and federal level are different because of the credibility Reaganomics gained in the 1980s. "In retrospect, the initial Reagan economic program was the most ambitious attempt to change the direction of federal economic policy of any administration since the New Deal.... In the end, for various reasons, there was no 'Reagan Revolution' -- but considerable evolution occurred in economic policy during the Reagan presidency."[11]
___________________________

[1]Edwin Meese III, With Reagan: The Inside Story (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1992), p. 148.

[2]Martin Anderson, "When the Losers Write the History," National Review, August 31, 1992.

[3]Willaim Niskanen, William Poole, and Murray Weidenbaum, Introduction to the Reagan Economic Reports, in Two Revolutions in Economic Policy: The First Economic Reports of Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, ed. James Tobin and Murray Weidenbaum (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), p. 280.

[4]Meese, With Reagan, p. 148.

[5]Meese, With Reagan, p. 27.

[6]Robert Dallek, To Lead a Nation: The Presidency in the Twentieth Century (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004), p. 75.

[7]Ed Rubenstein, Introduction to "The Real Reagan Record," National Review, August 31, 1992.

[8]Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p. 203.

[9]Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Modern Library, 1999), pp. 438-39.

[10]Martin Anderson, "When the Losers Write the History," National Review, August 31, 1992.

[11]Niskanen, Poole, and Weidenbaum, Introduction to the Reagan Economic Reports, in Two Revolutions, p. 289.

Presidents and jobs

Question: As a follow-up to my previous question, which recent presidents have had the best record of job growth?
From: Sherry J., Phoenix, AZ
Date: September 15, 2004

Gleaves answers: This answer is going to surprise many people, especially if they are partisan and have a dog in the fight. Going back to 1929 and the Hoover administration, following are the presidents who presided over the most job growth (expressed as a percentage).
1. Bill Clinton -- 11.6 percent increase in jobs during his first term (1993-1996).
2. Bill Clinton -- 11.4 percent increase in jobs during his second term (1997-2000).
3. Ronald Reagan -- 10.8 percent increase in jobs during his second term (1985-1988).
4. Jimmy Carter -- 10.5 percent increase in jobs while in office (1977-1980).
5. Lyndon Johnson -- 9.8 percent increase in jobs during his one full term (1965-1968).
6. Franklin Roosevelt -- 7.7 percent increase in jobs during his third term ((1941-1944).

The winner, in five of the top six instances, was a Democrat.

Going back to 1929 and the Hoover administration, following are the presidents who presided over the least job growth (expressed as a percentage):
1. Herbert Hoover -- 6.4 percent decrease in jobs while in office (1929-1932).
2. George W. Bush -- 1.2 percent decrease in jobs during his first 3 and 1/2 years in office.
3. Dwight Eisenhower -- 0.8 percent increase during his second term (1957-1960).
4. George H. W. Bush -- 2.5 percent increase while in office (1989-1992).
5. Dwight Eisenhower -- 2.8 percent increase during his first term (1953-1956).

The least impressive performances, in all five cases, were those of Republicans.

The other presidents -- Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford -- occupied the Oval Office when the Help Wanted ads expanded between 3 and 6 percent.

ECONOMIC STEWARDSHIP

Technically presidents don't create jobs; what they really do is help create the conditions in which jobs are added to or subtracted from the economy. That's why one of a president's chief tasks is economic stewardship. Presidential stewardship of the economy has a storied past, going back to the beginning of our nation, when George Washington hired Alexander Hamilton to be Treasury secretary. Hamilton wrote a series of perceptive reports and proved to be a brilliant architect of economic growth that has influenced presidents and policymakers to this day.

How do presidents carry out the task of economic stewardship? First, foremost, and hopefully by doing no harm. Presidents have to watch what they say because their words can make the stock market rise or fall. They have to think through their fiscal policy since it usually involves changes in tax policy, the regulatory burden, a budget surplus or deficit, and the national debt. Whether they sign or veto the legislation sent to their desk from Capitol Hill can similarly have an impact, as can the trade agreements they negotiate. And since the president is the commander in chief, do not forget the impact of war, which usually has an enormous impact on the economy.

Presidents have historically taken quite different tacks to influence the economy. Those in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt spoke of "stimulus packages" -- i.e., government programs -- to pump money into the economy to try to create jobs. Those in the tradition of Ronald Reagan have spoken of tax and regulatory cuts to stimulate the economy. Whatever their economic approach, by word and deed modern presidents can have an impact on trade, outsourcing, income, savings, investment, the gross domestic product, consumer confidence, home ownership, business expansion, and job growth.

Now, since presidents are constrained by the Constitution, Congress, Supreme Court, the bureaucracy, public opinion, election year politics, term limits, and custom, there are limits to their power over the economy. Moreover, they exercise economic leverage through fiscal policy, not monetary policy, which is the province of the Federal Reserve Board.

How is the economic stewardship of any given administration measured? One measure is the percentage change in jobs, which your question seeks to plumb. Two other common measures are the unemployment rate and inflation rate. These two can be added up to reckon the Misery Index, devised by Jimmy Carter's campaign in 1976 to criticize President Gerald R. Ford's economic performance. Four years later, Ronald Reagan turned the Misery Index against its creator to discredit Jimmy Carter's economic stewardship.

This answer started with some surprise facts. But over the past several decades, polls have consistently shown that voters regard Republican presidents as better economic stewards than Democratic presidents. Republicans tend to run as fiscal conservatives. Most voters and a good many economists believe that fiscal conservatism -- lower tax rates, a balanced budget, fewer regulations -- leads to better conditions for job growth than the alternative -- higher taxes, budget deficits, and more regulations. However they are measured, virtually all modern presidents want to be remembered as good stewards of the nation's economy.

Presidential greatness

Question: What makes a president great?
From: Karrie J. of East Lansing, MI
Date: September 10, 2004

Gleaves answers: Your question goes to the heart of leadership. It is one of the cornerstone questions we ask at the Hauenstein Center.

One of the leading presidential historians of our day, Robert Dallek, believes that America's greatest presidents possess six qualities:

1. Vision: great presidents capture the public imagination by vividly showing people where they are headed. Listen to how the presidents use words to explain where they want to take the nation – words like “freedom,” “opportunity,” “justice for all,” “peace through strength.”

2. Command of practical politics: our best presidents have knowledge and experience when it comes to the political process -- they know how to get things done. Lyndon Johnson was a master of practical politics, and his Great Society was comprised of almost a thousand bills.

3. Character: a strong leader is someone who shows courage, who inspires trust, who is temperate and persistent and disciplined and not afraid of hard work.

4. Presidential personality: leaders by definition need followers, and persuasive leaders have the charisma to make people feel attracted to them.

5. Consensus builders: effective leaders can work with diverse interest groups, the Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and ultimately citizens to build support for their programs. This has presented challenges to the military men who have become presidents. Michael Korda observes that Truman "would remark of Eisenhower that he would never know what hit him when he reached his desk in the White House -- as a general, when he gave an order it would be obeyed instantly, but in the White House he would give an order and nothing would happen. The same phenomenon hit Grant almost immediately. He too, like Ike, was accustomed to instant obedience, not to the political process of building up support for a policy in Congress, or appealing for support to the public, or wooing newspapermen to obtain it. He expected at the very least the backing of his own party, without realizing that everything in politics has to be negotiated -- at a price."[1]

6. Luck: highly-ranked presidents need to have circumstances go their way -- they're just lucky. FDR’s New Deal floundered in his second term; his reputation as a leader was probably saved by Tojo, Hitler, and the hostile regimes that forced America into World War II.

Lots of books have been written about effective leadership; no doubt there will be many more. Hauenstein Center associate Marc Jordan, personally and professionally curious about the elements of presidential leadership, earned a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He and I recently talked about the insights he derived from classes and conversations with David Gergen, Roger Porter, Richard Neustadt, and other Harvard faculty. Great and near-great presidents need certain abilities, skills, and attributes to get to the White House, stay there with any success, and leave a worthy legacy. They need (in no particular order):

1. Intellectual curiosity from an early age: leaders have active minds and are driven to know how things work. They have the capacity to teach themselves. Many of our presidents, in fact, did. Abraham Lincoln hungered for knowledge and could become absorbed in all manner of things. During the Civil War, for instance, he became intensely curious about weapons and gun powder. No question escaped his roving, curious mind.

2. Ability to speak, write, and communicate effectively with staff, other political leaders, and the public. Among recent presidents the Great Communicator, by all accounts, was Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was also extremely effective connecting with audiences.

3. Ambition, with a willingness to accept increasing responsibility at every stage of their career

4. Ability to focus on three to four things that can be accomplished.

5. Management skills that include the ability to delegate, thus succeeding with growing responsibility

6. Character, a moral compass

7. Strong mentors or role models

8. Sociable, a team player – not a lone wolf or overly introspective

9. Good at self-promotion and managing a public image: Ike used Reeves in ’52 – an ad genius.

10. Sound judgment

11. Ability to assemble a championship team: great presidents are good judges of character. They have an ability to read people and know how to motivate them to be loyal and hard-working members of an administration. One great example is George Washington's decision to bring into his cabinet the two most brilliant men of the founding generation: Alexander Hamilton (secretary of the Treasury) and Thomas Jefferson (secretary of State). Another good example is when President William McKinley asked Elihu Root to join the administration. Peter Drucker and other management gurus have pointed to this as one of the greatest management decisions of all time [Stuart Crainer]. Gerald R. Ford also assembled one of the most talented staffs in the post-war presidency.

12. Capacity to deal with the cacophony of voices and views in Congress

13. Ability to multi-task

14. Vision … a clear sense of what the mission is: George Washington knew that he had to do everything in his power to establish a republic and set good executive precedents. Abraham Lincoln knew that he had to do everything in his power to save the Union. Franklin Roosevelt had to defeat economic depression and warring tyrants. Ronald Reagan confronted an evil empire and set his sights on winning the Cold War. George W. Bush has to fight and win a war on terror.

15. Adaptability to new circumstances: Thomas Jefferson was a strict constructionist when it came to interpreting the U.S. Constitution. That document says nothing about acquiring or purchasing new territory, only about how to form states from the nation's existing land. When the opportunity presented itself to purchase Louisiana, Jefferson found a way, even though it conflicted with his earlier, rigid stance on interpreting the basic law of the land.

16. Continuous learning, combined with an ability to accept new challenges

17. Strong faith: virtually all our great presidents believed that they had to recharge their battery by being connected to a higher moral power.

18. Ability to make tough decisions. Gerald R. Ford made an extremely unpopular decision when he pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon. But he thought it was the right thing to do because the nation faced so many problems and had to move on.

___________________________
[1]Michael Korda, Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 118-19.

No veep

Question: On the occasions when we have not had a vice president -- in the administrations of John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt (first term), Calvin Coolidge (first term), Harry Truman (first term), and even LBJ (first term) -- who presided over the Senate and performed any other vice presidential duties?
From: Dave M. from Rockford, Michigan
Date: August 26, 2004

Gleaves answers: Here is a fact that surprises most Americans: during one in every six years of U.S. history, there has been no vice president. For the equivalent of 38 years of our nation's existence -- 17 percent of our history -- no VP. This is because of three situations that arose between our nation's founding and passage of the 25th Amendment in 1967, which finally addressed the vacuum:
- eight presidents died in office, necessitating the vice president to move into the presidency; that left the nation without a VP for 287 months of our history;
- six vice presidents died in office -- eerily, four of them during the third week of November; worse, James Madison had two VPs die on him; this situation left the nation without a VP for 140 months; and
- two vice presidents -- John Calhoun and Spiro Agnew -- resigned from the office, leaving the U.S. without a VP for some 4 months.

Add the numbers up, and you'll see that there were 431 months in which the U.S. had no VP: 38 years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT WHO DUELED

The nation came close to experiencing an additional period without a VP -- and under less than savory circumstances. Early on July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton and sitting Vice President Aaron Burr met to defend their honor on a dueling ground in Weehawken, New Jersey. Historians are not sure who fired first. But that morning Burr was more accurate with the hair-triggered .54-caliber pistol, and his shot felled Hamilton, who died the next day in New York City. The event caused such an uproar that Burr was indicted for murder in New York and feared that a mob would break into his house to do him harm. To keep passions from escalating, Burr left New York, sought refuge for two months on an island off the Georgia coast, and then returned to the capital to serve out his remaining six months as vice president under Thomas Jefferson. How different our nation's history might have been had Hamilton killed Burr.

RUNNING DEBATE FROM 1841-1967

Remarkably, when the first president died in office back in 1841, Americans were not quite sure what to do. William Henry Harrison expired after only 30 days in office. Debate ensued over whether Vice President John Tyler was merely acting president or was really, truly, constitutionally president. Tyler, ambitious and possessing a strong personality, asserted that he was not merely a place-holder (i.e., not merely acting president); he asserted that he was constitutionally authorized to be president for the 47 remaining months of his term. Following Tyler's example, it became customary for the vice president to assume the presidency without ambiguity, and this turn of events came about on seven subsequent occasions -- upon the deaths of Presidents Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, and Kennedy.

Nevertheless, our nation had a running debate from 1841 to 1967 about how to turn the custom into law. In 1967 the debate was settled with the ratification of the 25th Amendment, and now there is a clear constitutional procedure to nominate a new vice president, should the previous vice president die, become disabled, or resign. Spiro Agnew's resignation in October of 1973, then Gerald R. Ford's nomination later that fall, triggered the 25th Amendment for the first time; it had been ratified only six years earlier.

APPENDIX A: DEATH

It's amazing to think that, just due to presidents' deaths, our nation lacked a sitting vice president for the equivalent of 24 years of our history. John Tyler served for 47 months without a VP; Millard Fillmore for 32 months; Andrew Johnson for 47 months; Chester Arthur for 41 months; Theodore Roosevelt for 42 months; Calvin Coolidge for 19 months; Harry S. Truman for 45 months; and Lyndon B. Johnson for 14 months. That's a total of 287 months -- almost 24 years -- 11 percent of our nation's history -- without a vice president.

It could have been worse. In addition to the four presidents who were assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), and the four who died of natural causes while in office (W. H. Harrison, Taylor, Harding, FDR), six presidents were the victims of assassination attempts (Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan). Others suffered such severe health problems (notably Washington, Wilson, and Eisenhower) that they easily could have died. Add these folks up, and you're looking at the nation losing or almost losing more than one-third of its presidents. It's a high-risk job.

The historical record brings us to one of the glaring oversights of the Founders who met in Philadelphia in 1787. The Constitution they drafted did not adequately answer the question of vice presidential succession. Not until the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967 did this gap in governance get solved.

Vice presidents have quipped that their job is the most useless on earth. (Some veeps have certainly lived down to that perception.) Franklin Roosevelt's first VP, John Nance Garner, summarized it this way: "The vice presidency? It's not worth a pitcher of warm spit."

As stipulated by the U.S. Constitution, the vice president is the only U.S. official who is a member of two branches of government. One of the duties of the vice president is to preside over the Senate. More specifically, the veep is the tiebreaker -- he can only vote to break a deadlock in the Senate (Article I, Section 3). As constitutional writer Linda Monk has pointed out, "The vice president's power to cast a vote in a divided Senate is one of the checks and balances that the executive branch has over the legislative branch, and it has been used several times in U.S. history to help the president win passage of controversial laws."1

When there is no vice president in the Senate -- for whatever reason -- there is no constitutional crisis. The top dog is the president of the Senate pro tempore (in daily parlance, the president pro tem). He is selected by the majority party caucus. Next down the food chain are the presiding officers of the Senate, who are appointed by the president pro tem to chair the Senate as it conducts its business. The glory of being one of these presiding officers is fleeting, usually lasting only an hour at a time, as the position continually rotates among senators in the majority party.

Prior to 1967, when there was no vice president, his tasks were picked up by cabinet members, other administration officials, and the president himself.

APPENDIX B

In the list below, note the number of instances in which there has been no vice president:

George Washington (1789-1797)
- John Adams (1789-1797)

John Adams (1797-1801)
- Thomas Jefferson (1797-1801)

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)
- Aaron Burr (1801-1805)
- George Clinton (1805-1809)

James Madison (1809-1817)
- George Clinton (1809-1812)
- VP office vacant (1812-1813)
- Elbridge Gerry (1813-1814)
- VP office vacant (1814-1817)

James Monroe (1817-1825)
- Daniel D. Tompkins (1817-1825)

John Quincy Adams (1825-1829)
- John C. Calhoun (1825-1829)

Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
- John C. Calhoun (1829-1832)
- VP office vacant (1832-1833)
- Martin Van Buren (1833-1837)

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)
- Richard M. Johnson (1837-1841)

William Henry Harrison (1841)
- John Tyler (1841)

John Tyler (1841-1845)
- VP office vacant (1841-1845)

James K. Polk (1845-1849)
- George M. Dallas (1845-1849)

Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
- Millard Fillmore (1849-1850)

Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)
- VP office vacant (1850-1853)

Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)
- William King (1853)
- VP office vacant (1853-1857)

James Buchanan (1857-1861)
- John C. Breckinridge (1857-1861)

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)
- Hannibal Hamlin (1861-1865)
- Andrew Johnson (1865)

Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)
- VP office vacant (1865-1869)

Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
- Schuyler Colfax (1869-1873)
- Henry Wilson (1873-1875)
- VP office vacant (1875-1877)

Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
- William Wheeler (1877-1881)

James A. Garfield (1881)
- Chester Arthur (1881)

Chester Arthur (1881-1885)
- VP office vacant (1881-1885)

Grover Cleveland (1885-1889)
- Thomas Hendricks (1885)
- VP office vacant (1885-1889)

Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
- Levi P. Morton (1889-1893)

Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
- Adlai E. Stevenson (1893-1897)

William McKinley (1897-1901)
- Garret Hobart (1897-1901)
- Theodore Roosevelt (1901)

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
- VP office vacant (1901-1905)
- Charles Fairbanks (1905-1909)

William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
- James S. Sherman (1909-1912)
- VP office vacant (1912-1913)

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
- Thomas R. Marshall (1913-1921)

Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
- Calvin Coolidge (1921-1923)

Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
- VP office vacant (1923-1925)
- Charles Dawes (1925-1929)

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
- Charles Curtis (1929-1933)

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)
- John Nance Garner (1933-1941)
- Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945)
- Harry S Truman (1945)

Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
- VP office vacant (1945-1949)
- Alben Barkley (1949-1953)

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
- Richard Nixon (1953-1961)

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
- Lyndon B. Johnson (1961-1963)

Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)
- VP office vacant (1963-1965)
- Hubert H. Humphrey (1965-1969)

Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
- Spiro Agnew (1969-1973)
- VP office vacant (1973)
- Gerald R. Ford (1973-1974)

Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)
- office vacant (1974)
- Nelson Rockefeller (1974-1977)

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
- Walter Mondale (1977-1981)

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
- George Bush (1981-1989)

George Bush (1989-1993)
- Dan Quayle (1989-1993)

Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
- Al Gore (1993-2001)

George W. Bush (2001- )
- Dick Cheney (2001- )

_______________________

1. Linda R. Monk, The Words We Live By (New York: Hyperion, 2003), pp. 36-37.

1000 Days

Question: [Editor's note: In a recent newspaper article, Gleaves Whitney was quoted as saying that Gerald R. Ford's administration accomplished more than John F. Kennedy's administration. That quotation prompted the following question.] Do you really think Gerald Ford accomplished more in his time as president than JFK? I had never heard this stated before so it caught my eye.
From: Pat S. of Grand Rapids, Michigan
Submitted: August 10, 2004

Gleaves answers:

Both John F. Kennedy and Gerald R. Ford served as president for about 1,000 days. Which chief executive accomplished more? Let's look at the context as well as the record of each man's presidency.

KENNEDY 1961

In 1961 the world had its share of trouble spots, and the nuclear arms race was escalating. (So what else is new?) But Kennedy inherited a nation that was in relatively good shape economically, militarily, culturally, and internationally. Economically the U.S. was emerging from the recession of 1958-1960, and on its way to unprecedented growth in the post-war boom. Militarily the U.S. was still the stronger superpower compared to the Soviet Union. Culturally the nation was not yet experiencing the burst of bitter divisions -- race riots, student unrest, Vietnam War protests, and assassinations -- that would mark the latter 1960s. And in foreign relations, the U.S. was still regarded as a moral superpower, beloved by allies in Europe, Asia, and throughout the Free World. The youthful president was wise to take advantage of the strong nation left by his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In this relatively sunny environment, there is no question that Kennedy inspired fellow citizens and people around the world with sparkling rhetoric and contagious idealism. At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, he challenged Americans to be pioneers on the New Frontier, where there were "uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus." To pull off such soaring rhetoric was a significant achievement in itself.

It was also an achievement to debate and defeat a tough opponent in sitting Vice President Richard Nixon. It was certainly an achievement to be the youngest man elected president (he was 43). It was an achievement to be the first Roman Catholic elected president. But when one actually looks at the record following Election Day, it is not particularly distinguished. And don't just take my word for it. At a Hauenstein Center event last October, historian Robert Dallek, who is sympathetic to Kennedy, made the point that JFK's domestic achievements were thin. They were especially thin compared to, say, the achievements of his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Even though weighed down by Vietnam, LBJ got much more done domestically, not least of which were major tax cuts and the 1,000-bill Great Society. Also Johnson acted decisively on civil rights, whereas Kennedy was at first hesitant because he was afraid of alienating Southern Democrats.

Kennedy's record in foreign affairs was not the best, either. Most Americans are familiar with JFK's egregious error in judgment concerning the Bay of Pigs. Columnist George Will rightly calls the Bay of Pigs the most irresponsible use of White House power in the last 50 years. Nor did Kennedy's 1961 Vienna summit with Krushchev go swimmingly for the U.S. State Department notes indicate that Kennedy could not adequately assert the moral, political, and economic superiority of the Western way over the Communist way.¹ Indeed, Kremlin leaders came away from Vienna believing that Kennedy was weak -- or at least not strong enough to oppose East Germans erecting the Berlin Wall or Soviets putting nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in the end, was Kennedy getting himself out of the mess he himself helped create.

This is not to say that Kennedy's presidency was an utter failure, not at all. His personal elan made the office sparkle. Over the course of 1,036 days in office, his idealism, his sense of America's mission gave rise to the Peace Corps and steeled our resolve to stand by West Berlin. His Food for Peace program streamlined the delivery of American aid to developing nations. He set an ambitious but realizable goal for the fledgling space program (which had originated with Eisenhower). JFK advanced the notion of the rhetorical presidency, showing media savvy in the process. He projected his presidential persona extremely well, especially on the expanding medium of television. He gave the first live televised news conference, and went on to hold 64 in all -- on average, 1 every 16 days he was in office -- and charmed American viewers with his performance and wit.

Stylistic points aside, there were relatively few substantive achievements to which Kennedy apologists can point. Even the JFK Library and Museum in Boston subtly acknowledges the fact. One of the first panels that visitors read upon entering the museum downplays the expectations we should have of Camelot, asserting merely that the 35th president "laid the groundwork for advances in civil rights, education, and health care" [emphasis added].

FORD 1974

Barely a decade separated the end of JFK's presidency from the beginning of Gerald R. Ford's presidency -- but how our nation had changed during those brief years.

Ford didn't have the luxury of a swaggering, self-confident nation when he was sworn into office on August 9, 1974. He inherited an America that was under a black cloud. Because of Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation, the nation was backing its way into a constitutional crisis. Dishonor had befallen the very office of the presidency. Energy shocks were making our economy reel. Vietnam had severely wounded the nation's honor. Anti-Americanism was running high around the globe. And at home there was anger at Washington, at government, at anyone associated with Nixon and the presidency. Indeed, within his first weeks in office, Ford survived two assassination attempts.

In the face of these crises, Ford immediately set out to put the shame of Nixon and Watergate behind him -- and the country. Like Lincoln, he endeavored to bind up the nation's wounds. By sheer force of his character, he was the credible person to lead the effort. Because of his integrity, he was able to restore dignity to the office of the presidency. Because of his honesty, he was able to rebuild trust in America's word both at home and abroad. He possessed unshakable calm and kept the nation together at our darkest time since Pearl Harbor and Fort Sumter. He led the economy out of a stubborn recession. He held the Soviets' feet to the fire at Helsinki in view of their appalling human rights record. And he consistently displayed executive leadership and the courage of his convictions, not just in his "full, free, and absolute" pardon of Nixon and his limited offer of amnesty to Vietnam War draft dodgers, but in vetoing more bills than any other president in a comparable period of time (66 vetoes in 18 months, 54 of which prevailed after going back to Capitol Hill). He knew that many of his actions would not improve his chances of re-election in 1976.

Nor would the mistakes he made help re-election chances. During his 895 days in office, Ford alienated the conservative wing of the Republican party by selecting Nelson Rockefeller to be his VP and by proposing a temporary tax hike. His campaign to Whip Inflation Now was ridiculed as a PR stunt. The evacuation of Saigon in April of 1975 was ugly, as was the attempt to rescue the SS Mayaguez in international waters.

Nevertheless, constitutionally, politically, and morally, Ford led our nation out of a storm and into stability. As Henry Kissinger put it, "he saved the country. In fact, he saved it in such a matter-of-fact way that he isn't given any credit for it." Biographer James Cannon remarked, "He was the right man for this country at the right time in the most extraordinary crisis in the constitutional system since the Civil War."²

I told the reporter whose article you read that if you compare the two Cold War commanders in chief who served a thousand days, Ford in the end was the more heroic. The 38th president had a much tougher road to travel, and he did it with dignity and courage. He managed to accomplish much, despite the bad domestic and international hand he was dealt. It is no wonder that the JFK Library Foundation gave Gerald R. Ford its prestigious Profile in Courage award three years ago. As Senator Edward Kennedy remarked on the occasion, "I was one of those who spoke out against his actions then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us."³

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1. Peggy Noonan, "John Fitzgerald Kennedy," Presidential Leadership, ed. by James Taranto and Leonard Leo (New York: Wall Street Journal Books, 2004), p. 171.

2. Henry Kissinger and James M. Cannon are quoted in the new PBS documenary about the 38th president, Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History, produced by Mike Grass (Grand Rapids: WGVU Productions, 2004).

3. Kennedy quoted in Time and Chance; the Profile in Courage award was given to President Ford on May 21, 2001.

The Nixon Pardon

Question: I recently became an American citizen and have been reading about how difficult it was for the nation when Nixon resigned and Ford became president 30 years ago. How was it a constitutional crisis, though?
From: Diep N. of Tustin, California
Submitted: August 09, 2004

Gleaves answers:
First, congratulations on becoming an American citizen. Sometimes it is new Americans who have the most probing questions about our country's history.

Richard M. Nixon resigned 30 years ago today. He was the only president in U.S. history to do so. Two other presidents, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were impeached in the House of Representatives, but neither was convicted in the Senate and so not forced out of office. Since the Constitution explicitly provides for presidential succession, you are right to ask how the unravelling of the Nixon presidency entailed a constitutional crisis.

To answer, I should first point out that the United States of America has, in practice, two constitutions. (1) Our nation has the written document as amended, which you no doubt became familiar with on the road to citizenship; the U.S. Constitution is the fundamental law of the land. (2) Our nation also has what is called an "unwritten constitution" that involves the political customs by which we have agreed to live. Take, for example, the existence of political parties. Our fundamental law says nothing about parties, yet it is impossible to imagine how we'd constructively channel political differences without them. We live as though the Democratic and Republican establishments were engraved in stone. Maddening as our two-party system can be, it has effectively organized Americans' disputes around the most basic political question of all: How shall we live together?

If you accept the notion that the U.S. has both a written and unwritten constitution, then it becomes easier to see the ways in which 1974 was the most severe constitutional test to our nation since the Civil War. The test unfolded on many civic battlefields, and in a single essay I cannot possibly do your question justice. But in essence the battles involved Democrats duking it out with Republicans, and the executive branch of government resisting the legislative and judicial branches.

1. To get at the constitutional crisis, you have to understand the broader sense of crisis in the early 1970s. Americans were deeply divided over Vietnam. The nation was being dragged down by a war that was disastrous to American morale. Because of Vietnam, 1972 was shaping up to be an especially tense election year. Nixon was seeking re-election and was ahead in the polls, which frustrated the Democrats who despised him. Zealots in both parties engaged in illegal tactics to weaken the opposition. Daniel Ellsberg leaked Pentagon papers to the media to discredit the Nixon administration's handling of the war. Nixon aides authorized breaking into Democratic party offices in the Watergate Hotel in June 1972 to gather unflattering information of their own. While both Democrats and Republicans broke the law to get the upper hand in an election year, it was the Republican president who exacerbated the situation by participating in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in. By participating in the cover-up, Nixon opened himself to potential impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives. When news of the break-in and cover-up tumbled into public view, a battle between two branches of government was triggered.

2. It gets worse. After Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace in October 1973, several elected Democrats on Capitol Hill, led by New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug, hatched a plan to circumvent the Twenty-fifth Amendment. They intended to block Nixon's nomination of a new vice president. By blocking the Republican nominee, they hoped to force Nixon to nominate the Democrats' choice of VP, so that when Nixon later resigned or was impeached, a Democrat would become president. To House Speaker Carl Albert's eternal credit, he refused to go along with the blantantly unconstitutional scheme. This is the closest to a coup d'etat that the country has ever come.¹

3. Nixon's choice of House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford to replace Spiro Agnew was itself cynical. According to Tom DeFrank, a journalist who covered the White House, Nixon viewed Ford as "impeachment insurance." I.e., the 37th president did not think the Congress would see Ford as presidential material, and thus would never press to impeach Nixon.²

4. Nixon fought the judiciary tooth and nail over releasing Oval Office tapes. He made a credible case for executive privilege and indicated through a press secretary that he might refuse to turn the tapes over, regardless of how the U.S. Supreme Court ruled. Had Nixon refused to obey the Supreme Court, the nation would have descended quickly into a constitutional crisis. Despite the shadow boxing, Nixon did comply with the Court's order to turn over the tapes. The conversations on them damaged the president's credibility further, and within weeks he was out of office.

5. How strange was it when, upon Nixon's resignation, a successor was sworn in who had never been elected either vice president or president? Had the Founders ever anticipated that happening in our constitutional republic? Not at all -- it's the stuff of which riddles are made.

6. Within 30 days of becoming president, Ford granted former President Nixon a full pardon, giving rise to speculation (proven untrue) that Nixon and Ford had agreed to the Mother of All Plea Bargains: Nixon would resign if Ford would pardon him. The pardon dismayed many Americans, and cast severe doubt on the moral legitimacy of the American presidency. There were two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford in the weeks following the pardon.

All of these events and others brought the nation to the brink of a constitutional crisis in the early 1970s. There was enough blame to go around both Republican and Democratic camps. In retrospect, however, most historians and even many prominent Democrats give President Ford credit for shepherding the nation through the "long national nightmare."

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1. For an overview of this startling episode, see the new PBS documentary, Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History, produced by Mike Grass (Grand Rapids: WGVU productions, 2004).

2. Tom DeFrank quoted in Time and Chance.

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]

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[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.