This is a greatly expanded and now illustrated second edition of a "Best Reference Book of the Year" (1984) acclaimed by the American Library Association. It provides detailed biographies of the 95 United States major party and significant third-party nominees who were never elected president or vice president in the 53 quadrennial elections from 1788/89 through 1996. New to this fully updated edition are biographies of nominees since 1984 as well as 41 historic third-tier candidates who received at least 2 percent of the popular vote or 5 percent of the electoral votes - and portraits or photographs of every single nominee.
For almost two centuries, Americans have relied upon political conventions to provide the nation with new leadership. The modern convention, a four-day, carefully choreographed, prime-time television event designed to portray the party and its candidate in the most favorable light, continues many of the traditions and rules developed during the first conventions in the mid-19th century. This study analyzes the birth of the convention process in the 1830s and follows its development over 40 years, chronicling each of the presidential elections between 1832 and 1872, the leading candidates, and an analysis of the key issues, and memorable speeches and events on the convention floor. Other topics include back-room deal making, "dark horse" candidacies, meeting halls, parades, rallies, and other accompanying hoopla. This volume reveals the origins of a quintessentially American spectacle and sheds new light on an understudied aspect of the nation's political past.
The process of nominating and electing a president is a spectacle that never fails to engage and excite millions of Americans—and rarely fails to enrage us, as well.Enduring Controversies in Presidential Nominating Politics retraces the more than two hundred-year history of presidential elections in the United States to provide a primer on how the process has evolved from the days of the founders, through the heyday of nominating conventions, to today's overwhelming interest in early primaries.Original essays by the editors introduce, critique, and occasionally even refute a wide variety of historical readings including Alexander Hamilton's defense of election procedures, excerpts of individual states' nominations of candidates in 1824, an overview of the impact television has had on nominating conventions, and calls for a national rotating primary scheme in 2004. As a whole, the collection reveals the common threads that run through the history of the nominating process, and points out that today's litany of complaints is not at all new.
This first full-length biography of Alton Brooks Parker provides an in-depth look into the life, career, and legacy of one of the most important New Yorkers of the Gilded Age. Parker had the courage to challenge Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency in 1904—at the height of Roosevelt’s popularity—and was a transition point between the conservative and the new, progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Based on new archival research, this book contributes to our understanding of how political campaigns were conducted during the Gilded Age/Progressive Era, in comparison to modern campaigns. It also provides insights into the changing Democratic Party as it transformed from the presidency of Grover Cleveland to the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The unknown story of the election that set the tone for today’s fractured politics “A fresh, authoritative analysis of a pivotal election year.”—Kirkus Reviews The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between vice president Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign. Nichter chronicles how the evangelist Billy Graham met with Johnson after the president’s attempt to reenter the race was stymied by his own party, and offered him a deal: Nixon, if elected, would continue Johnson’s Vietnam War policy and also not oppose his Great Society, if Johnson would soften his support for Humphrey. Johnson agreed. Nichter also shows that Johnson was far more active in the campaign than has previously been described; that Humphrey’s resurgence in October had nothing to do with his changing his position on the war; that Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” has been misunderstood, since he hardly even campaigned there; and that Wallace’s appeal went far beyond the South and anticipated today’s Republican populism. This eye-opening account of the political calculations and maneuvering that decided this fiercely fought election reshapes our understanding of a key moment in twentieth-century American history.
The process by which presidents decide whom to nominate to fill Supreme Court vacancies is obviously of far-ranging importance, particularly because the vast majority of nominees are eventually confirmed. But why is one individual selected from among a pool of presumably qualified candidates? In Strategic Selection: Presidential Nomination of Supreme Court Justices from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush, Christine Nemacheck makes heavy use of presidential papers to reconstruct the politics of nominee selection from Herbert Hoover's appointment of Charles Evan Hughes in 1930 through President George W. Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito in 2005. Bringing to light firsthand evidence of selection politics and of the influence of political actors, such as members of Congress and presidential advisors, from the initial stages of formulating a short list through the president's final selection of a nominee, Nemacheck constructs a theoretical framework that allows her to assess the factors impacting a president's selection process. Much work on Supreme Court nominations focuses on struggles over confirmation, or is heavily based on anecdotal material and posits the "idiosyncratic" nature of the selection process; in contrast, Strategic Selection points to systematic patterns in judicial selection. Nemacheck argues that although presidents try to maximize their ideological preferences and minimize uncertainty about nominees' conduct once they are confirmed, institutional factors that change over time, such as divided government and the institutionalism of the presidency, shape and constrain their choices. By revealing the pattern of strategic action, which she argues is visible from the earliest stages of the selection process, Nemacheck takes us a long way toward understanding this critically important part of our political system.
This second edition of Attack Politics updates Emmett Buell and Lee Sigelman's highly regarded study of negativity in presidential campaigns since 1960 with a substantial new chapter on the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. That campaign, the authors contend, proved to be the least negative in the last half century and reinforces their central argument that these campaigns have actually not grown "dirtier" and more negative since the election of JFK. In this new edition, Buell and Sigelman address the same questions that guided their research in the original book. Who attacked whom? How frequently? On what issues? In what ways? And at what point in the race? They also update their analysis of whether presidential campaigns have gotten more negative since 1960, whether opposing sides addressed the same issues or avoided subjects "owned" by the other side, and whether trailing candidates wage more negative campaigns than leading candidates. The authors expand their analysis well beyond their original research base-17,000 campaign statements extracted from nearly 11,000 news items in the New York Times—focusing on both presidential and vice-presidential nominees as sources and targets of attacks and examining the actions of surrogate campaigners. They also compare their findings with previously published accounts of these campaigns—including firsthand accounts by candidates and their confidants. Each chapter features "echoes from the campaign trail" that reflect the invective exchanged by rival campaigns. Their new chapter shows that, rather than neatly resembling either of their typology's extremes ("runaways" or "dead heats"), the 2008 race began as a "dead heat" in late summer but began to take on all the characteristics of a "somewhat competitive" affair by the end of September. Campaign discourse that began with an anticipated focus on the Iraq War and other national security issues came to be dominated by concerns about the economic meltdown. As the campaign headed toward the home stretch, anxiety about the economy seemed to eclipse national security, health care, immigration, and other concerns. This shift of emphasis, they argue, doomed whatever chance McCain had of winning. Like the first edition, this update of Attack Politics systematically analyzes negative campaigning, pinning down much that has previously been speculated on but left unsubstantiated. It offers the best overview yet of modern presidential races and remains must reading for anyone interested in the vagaries of those campaigns.
In 1789, George Washington took office as the first American president — just as the French Revolution was about to erupt. In 1794, he sent James Monroe to serve as the first international ambassador to Paris, which was still reeling from the Reign of Terror. Monroe was resourceful in getting his bearings in the shifting social and political sands. He had major accomplishments, including protecting U.S. trade from French attacks and achieving the release of patriot Thomas Paine and Adrienne de Lafayette, the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette, from French jails. But the French Revolution led to war between Britain and France in 1793, and after Monroe arrived in France the U.S. and Great Britain concluded the Jay Treaty. The treaty outraged the French because it appeared to favor Britain. Monroe had not been fully briefed on the treaty but he was tasked with repairing the rift it caused. Indeed, he achieved some success in what was probably an impossible task. Washington recalled Monroe from his post in November 1796 and he returned to the United States. Monroe’s letters provide our best window into his thinking and that of his correspondents, the prevailing atmosphere in that turbulent era, and the efforts he made to perform his duty in good faith.
In a fascinating blend of biography and history, Joseph Tartakovsky tells the epic and unexpected story of our Constitution through the eyes of ten extraordinary individuals—some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Tartakovsky brings to life their struggles over our supreme law from its origins in revolutionary America to the era of Obama and Trump. Sweeping from settings as diverse as Gold Rush California to the halls of Congress, and crowded with a vivid Dickensian cast, Tartakovsky shows how America’s unique constitutional culture grapples with questions like democracy, racial and sexual equality, free speech, economic liberty, and the role of government. Joining the ranks of other great American storytellers, Tartakovsky chronicles how Daniel Webster sought to avert the Civil War; how Alexis de Tocqueville misunderstood America; how Robert Jackson balanced liberty and order in the battle against Nazism and Communism; and how Antonin Scalia died warning Americans about the ever-growing reach of the Supreme Court. From the 1787 Philadelphia Convention to the clash over gay marriage, this is a grand tour through two centuries of constitutional history as never told before, and an education in the principles that sustain America in the most astonishing experiment in government ever undertaken.
