Martin Meenagh blog

  The passage of time often changes the apparent significance of events. This is because events are given meaning from the standpoint of observers, not all of whom share the same perspective. James Carter, for instance, has often attributed the enmity of Senator Edward Kennedy, which undermined his 1980 re-election bid, to Carter’s near forgotten failure to appoint Archibald Cox, a Watergate investigator, to a seat on a federal bench at Kennedy’s suggestion. Similarly, Michael Holt has made a persuasive case that decisions by Franklin Pierce on the construction of his cabinet led to the collapse of the national political parties and were a major secondary cause of the Civil War of 1861-65. The Watergate affair is an unusually rich example of this process. The twists and turns of a story which emerged from a burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate building in a presidential election year took place in a demented and polarised cultural and political atmo...

  The Republican party dominated the period between 1876 and 1912, winning all but two presidential elections and Congressional elections in 1880, 1888, and from 1894 to 1910. The two Democratic administrations of the period, in addition, were one man, Grover Cleveland, who was elected twice non-consecutively, and with only pluralities of the popular vote. Similarly, Democratic dominance between 1932 and 1980 was characterized by every Congress being Democratic with two exceptions between 1932 and 1980, and 8 Democratic victories in presidential elections in the same period. At first glance, dominance can be attributed in both cases to a combination of events and party weakness. Democrats in the late nineteenth century were split between Southern ‘Bourbons’, populists, bimetallists, and over religion, to the point where nominating conventions were frequently deadlocked. Republicans, by contrast, proved capable of developing and applying a locally based infrastructure nationally...

Federalism is a complex term in American history and politics. The first Federalist Party, for instance, which broadly held sway for the first twenty five years after 1787, was based on Hamiltonian ideas of a powerful centre, and of a state funded in part by national debt. This was at odds with Jefferson’s vision of local ‘ward democracies’, populism, and the principle of open elections. Most people who call themselves federalist in the twenty first century would probably identify more with Jefferson than with Hamilton’s party. This is in part because the term federal has become consonant with ‘confederate’. The latter word is unusable, however. This is firstly because of the existence between 1861 and 1865 of the Confederate States of America, and secondly because the Constitution was meant to replace what were perceived as failed ‘Articles of Confederation’. Nevertheless, the word ‘Confederation’ is a better one to sum up what modern federalists seem to want. It implies a we...

Jimmy Carter’s administration has become a modern by-word for incompetence and disappointment. Such an observation is usually buttressed by the way in which, after four turbulent years, Carter was only able to gain 41% of the November 1980 vote, suffering a huge defeat in the Electoral College. This defeat has been taken as a validation of the idea that the nation was determined to pass judgement on Carter and the politics he represented. However, just as it should be remembered that Carter’s position in 1976 was actually quite weak (he was the strongest candidate the Democrats could come up with and yet a change in 9000 votes in Hawaii and Ohio would have seen Ford win), the combination of achievement and contingency which marked his administration should not be forgotten. Carter’s administration was marked by double-digit global inflation, a 12% central lending rate, 18% prime interest rates, and a second oil price shock. It also saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an Isl...

In 1972, the Democratic candidate suffered one of the worst defeats in political history. Richard Nixon’s attempt to solidify a new, post-New Deal republican coalition, which had been evident both in his 1968 ‘Southern Strategy’ and in his 1960 campaign, seemed to have borne fruit. Indeed, if one dates from 1968, a coalition based broadly on the Plains States plus the Old South, which constituted a republican base that could command a basic 106 electoral votes and 66 more if the rest of the South was counted, seems to have been established and fairly solid in 5 out of the subsequent 7 presidential elections. This made life tremendously easy for GOP candidates who could unite their base, since the addition of Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Ohio, and either a great lakes state or two western states would make them president. It follows that Jimmy Carter’s narrow victory in 1976, in defiance of this logic, was either demonstrative of the faded but not gone power of the Democracy in th...