Martin Meenagh blog

  Presidential election flaws before 2000. The Constitution of the United States prescribes that the president will be elected by a combination of popular vote and elite ‘filtering,’ normally though the electoral college, but in exceptional cases through the Congress. In 1788, The Federalist Papers (No 68) which was written to try to persuade and reassure New Yorkers of the sense of the Constitution, said that this process would ‘afford little opportunity to tumult and disorder’ and that it was a practical obstacle to ‘cabal, intrigue, and corruption.’ This model did not even hold for the first presidential election, as Alexander Hamilton intrigued behind the scenes to humiliate John Adams, who was nevertheless elected vice-president. Processes on paper run alongside regimes, the acceptable and perceived ways of doing things, in the minds and activities of the individuals and communities involved. This is especially true when processes are set out in a document as simple and ...

My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

  Gary Hart was George McGovern’s campaign manager. A young Democrat in 1974, he ousted a serving Senator in Colorado, and embodied the new Democratic Party which had begun to emerge in the transparent, environmentally conscious technology- and policy-driven culture of the late nineteen seventies and early eighties. He served on one of the most consequential committees in modern congressional history—the Church Committee—which investigated and contributed to the abortive reform of America’s Intelligence agencies. An ‘Atari Democrat’ who promoted the semiconductor industry, Hart merged new politics with a grasp of the primary process, and came very close to snatching the Democratic nomination from a former vice-president anointed by the party’s establishment. Hart was one of a number of Democrats elected in the wake of the oil price shocks and Watergate who formed a bridge to the neoliberal Democratic leadership Council without completely breaking with the past. Instead, politic...

  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...

  President Woodrow Wilson famously went to bed on the night of the 1916 presidential vote believing that he had lost, as did the New York Times , which had declared the race for his opponent, Charles Evans Hughes. The newspaper did this in part because, on early returns, Wilson had lost the entire North bar New Hampshire and Ohio. A (prematurely identified) tide was seen to be running against re-election. For two days, until Southern, Western, and Midwestern votes were declared, it still seemed likely that the next president would be Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. State and local elections also suggested, as Thomas Knock has noted, that the Socialist vote was reasonably strong, which, given the reunification of the Republican party after the split between Roosevelt and Taft in 1912, suggested that Wilson could lose states such as California and North Dakota. It is in fact reasonably well established that Wilson was not suffering from an excess of false humilit...