The View From Mudsock Heights: Historic election? You want history? Well, here"s some history
By Dennis Powell
Athens NEWS Contributor
March 3, 2008
So. Tomorrow is primary election day and, as usual (and as in my estimation is sensible), Ohio will have a very loud voice in determining who runs for president, at least in one party.
It’s an interesting campaign in terms of the process, if not so much the outcome. In one party, there is someone who has campaigned based on the religious fervor of his followers and an old warhorse who feels through years of service entitled to the nomination. The Republicans have a couple of candidates, too.
Far be it from me to offer an argument in favor of one candidate or another. It is difficult for me to get excited about any candidate who says that all our problems can be solved by government action, and that pretty much eliminates all of the current crop, except for some fringe loonies.
What is worth noting, though, is the mantra that this is a historic election. Of course it is. They all are. Yes, there are some firsts this year – but the last 50 years have seen more firsts and lasts than any other similar period in the country’s history, and looking at those for a minute might lend a smidgeon of perspective.
Five decades ago, the chief executive was Dwight David Eisenhower, the last president (and the first in a long, long time) who never held any other elected office. He had certainly dealt with elected officials, and he had made big decisions, but by some measures he was entirely inexperienced.
He was followed by a young, energetic president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who would be in office only a little more than two and a half years before being killed by an assassin. His personality and vigor are celebrated, though his presidency was too short to have been truly remarkable. It is the assassination that sets him apart.
Lyndon Baines Johnson became the first president to have the country turn against him in time of war. Whether this precedent well serves the country will be a topic of discussion, debate and perhaps even scholarship for generations to come, but it certainly drove him from office.
Johnson was succeeded by the only president ever to resign, Richard Milhous Nixon. Seven years and two presidents later, Ronald Reagan would become the only person to be wounded by and survive an assassin’s bullet while president.
Even very young people will remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Like the only other president who had been impeached, he was acquitted in the Senate and served out his term.
Many of us alive today have witnessed just about all the possibilities. It has been an eventful half-century.
There are some other notable aspects to this election year, beyond the obvious ones. For instance, the Senate is not the stepping stone to the presidency that one might imagine. The last person to go directly from the Senate to the White House was Kennedy. In the time since his election in 1960, five senators have been their party’s nominee. All lost. Meanwhile, four out of five state governors who got nominated also got elected. That trend will almost certainly get busted this year, though. Nor is the vice presidency a sure path to the White House, at least through election. Three vice presidents in the last 50 years have come to occupy the Oval Office, but only one was elected. The other two got there through the departure of the president, and neither later won election. Three others ran, but lost.
Being from Ohio seems to be a definite advantage in presidential politics. Eight presidents have been from here, more than have come into the world in any other state. Nobody from Ohio is running this year (if you discount Hillary Clinton, who sometimes seems to claim to be from wherever she is standing at the moment).
There are some other firsts, of course. There is the possibility of electing the first woman president, the first black president, the first president who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, the first president who has “Hussein” as part of his name, or the first president named Huckabee (who Larry King, in an interview with him, kept pronouncing “Huckleberry”).
It annoys me – I don’t know if it bothers you, because you may not be a news and politics junkie as I am – that in the last half-century, too, one grand and celebrated political tradition has had all the air sucked out of it. I’m speaking of the political convention. Time was, the nation sat in rapt attention as speeches and deals were made and at the end of the week there was a party nominee. Now we have the dreary, endless primary-and-caucus season, and conventions that resemble “American Idol.” Probably the result of the anti-smoking campaign, which may have eliminated rooms filled therewith.
No matter. Tomorrow is primary election day. The little factoids above won’t aid in making a wise choice – but neither will the morning poll numbers.
Editor’s note: Dennis E. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. His column appears on Mondays. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.
Comments
Please log in to post a comment.
