Photo courtesy of sites.google.com.
While at first glance it may seem like social media has indelibly changed the way campaigning works in today’s day and age, some things never change. While 2016 has turned into one of the most dramatic presidential elections this country has ever seen, it’s not the first time that what can only be described as drama has wedged its way into the election.
There are some striking similarities between this election and the election of 1912, in which William H. Taft (Republican), Woodrow Wilson (Democrat), Teddy Roosevelt (Republican/Populist), and Eugene Debs (Socialist) ran for the office of President of the United States.
Background:
The article “Remembering the 1912 Presidential Election” gives a clear picture of what happened with the hullaballoo that was the election of 1912. The entire election was hardly a typical one. Teddy Roosevelt, who was in office from 1901-1908 as a Republican, went on an extended hunting trip to Africa, leaving Taft as his Republican replacement. However, Roosevelt changed his mind when he realized that he didn’t agree with how Taft was running the country, so he returned and tried to get his place back for the 1912 election.
Despite the fact that up until that point most people refrained from “campaigning” as we know it today, Roosevelt launched himself into his goal. However, this was not enough to secure the Republican nomination for that year’s election, which went to Taft.
So Roosevelt did his own thing and helped create the Populist, or Bull Moose Party (the name coming from Roosevelt’s assertion that he felt “fit as a bull moose”). Of course, this didn’t sit well with Taft. It’s interesting that the presence of Roosevelt as a third-party candidate led to him and Socialist candidate getting more of the popular vote than any third-party candidate up to that time.
Anyways, the end of the story is that Woodrow Wilson won the election of 1912.
Analysis:
So, what do the two elections—1912 and 2016—have in common? To me, this election was about the candidates themselves, not the parties. The Republican party was divided over their candidate, allowing the Democratic Wilson to take office. This shares striking similarities to today, with the heavy campaigning complete with name-calling. Taft and Roosevelt engaged in sparring and verbal attacks that rival Clinton and Trump’s, Roosevelt calling Taft a “fathead” and Taft calling Roosevelt’s followers “neurotics”.
It seems to me like that the party lines weren’t as important in the election of 1912 as they were in other elections, just like today. We’ve seen people divide over Sanders and Clinton on the Democratic side, and Trump doesn’t have the support of the entire Republican Party. Roosevelt had supporters that followed him to the Populist party and even helped him create it in the first place. They weren’t so concerned, it seems, with staying within the bounds of their party. They’d rather follow the individual.
That can be seen today in the fact that there are numerous potential swing states that have hardly ever been swing states before, including my own state of Georgia. Georgia has been very Republican for a long time, yet with this election there’s talk of Georgia going blue. From the coverage that I’ve listened to, it appears that the way people will vote may very well be influenced by the candidate themselves—Trump or Clinton—than the party. The candidates this year are very polarizing, garnering either people’s love or hatred. And I can’t see how this won’t be a major factor impacting the way the election turns out.
As far as third-parties such as The Green Party and the Libertarian Party, it’s impossible to say how this more personal election is going to affect the respective candidates of these parties. But the divisions within both parties definitely provide the grounds for the third-party candidates to get more popular support than they usually do.
And a last observation: something that I found interesting was how hard the candidates of both elections campaigned, and the fact that in both cases name-calling seems to be par for the course!