Martin Meenagh blog

  This is rather a longer post than usual, because I watched this campaign from afar when I was 15, and felt from the beginning, with the arrogance of youth, that I were watching a slow motion car crash. It was not the first political disappointment I experienced by any means, but it was a memorable one.   Both the Democratic and the Republican Party laboured under difficulties in the period leading up to the 1988 presidential nominations. On the Republican side, vice-president Bush had been closely associated with the Iran-Contra scandal which had damaged the presidency of Ronald Reagan in his second term. A split had also opened between the evangelical supporters of the Republican Party, who had largely supported the religious leader Pat Robertson in the early primaries, Bob Dole, who was a leader with substantial midwestern and conservative support, and George Bush. Though Bush had powered through to win the Republican nomination, he was, for someone so qualified—he had...

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...