While every presidential election has a significant impact on the US and on American politics in particular, four played the greatest role in shaping the 20th century, a University of Washington historian argues in a new book. These were the elections of 1912, 1932, 1968, and 1992.
Margaret O’Mara, associate professor of history at the university and author of Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections that Shaped the Twentieth Century, explained that all four of those elections took place at transformational moments in terms of economics and cultural change (farms to factories, prosperity to depression, establishment to counterculture, manufacturing to technology).
The new media outlets and technologies that emerged following those elections, from radio to TV to cable news, also helped to define them, O’Mara said. They also demonstrated the ways in which the core issues and the constituencies of the two major parties changed over the years, according to Futurity.
1912: The first election where charisma mattered
The 1912 election was the first to feature the modern style of campaigning, in which charisma and a candidate’s likeability started to become as important as their views on the issues when it came to winning over the American public. Theodore Roosevelt was the first candidate to have to truly connect with the public in order to win, O’Mara told UW News.
“The proverbial ‘smoke-filled rooms’ where deals got done were still around, but now candidates themselves took a central role in presenting their platform to the voters,” she said. “Personality mattered more. Issues and ideology mattered more. The rise of newspapers as a mass media contributed greatly to this. A candidate needed to be able to drop pithy quotes to reporters and make big speeches on the road that would get written up in local papers that evening.
“Teddy Roosevelt excelled at this candidate-centered campaigning like no other before him. By 1912 the Rough Rider, ex-President, and global adventurer was the biggest celebrity in America,” the author added, noting that this ultimately helped Roosevelt win as a third party candidate. “Today, presidential elections revolve so much around personality and ‘likability.’”
How ad executives helped Nixon, and why Trump is succeeding
Skipping ahead to 1960, once again O’Mara credits media as having played a key role in the outcome of the battle between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Nixon, she said, had a rather “lackluster, sometimes disastrous television presence” which she described as “stern in manner, flat in delivery, and sweaty and combative under the hot lights of live debates.”
When he ran again in 1968, he hired advertising executives to help him better handle this media, using carefully scripted TV appearances, hand-picked questions, along with music, video editing techniques, and voiceovers to present himself as a more polished candidate. Nixon also delivered a message that began building the white, conservative constituency that remains the core of the Republican Party today by addressing those puzzled by ongoing social change.
When asked about Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign, she credited his success to his status as “the classic outsider candidate,” something which “builds upon a suspicion of centralized government power that’s been in place since this country’s founding.” While he’s not the first candidate to present himself as a Washington outsider, O’Mara said, “What’s really interesting this cycle is that a lack of any political experience is now a virtue rather than a liability.
“It’s too early to tell how long Trump will endure,” she added. “He has stuck around longer than many pundits expected (partly, of course, because pundits keep writing about him). It is clear that he has struck a chord with a certain segment of voters who –like the Debs and Roosevelt voters in 1912 and the Wallace voters in 1968 – are angry about how things are changing and want leaders who can deliver some bold solutions.”
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Feature Image: Stuart Seeger/Flickr
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