Elections with Recessions

With every election in history there are major issues to be discussed. Those issues involving war, foreign trade, and economy could be best known as the perfect equation to a recession. With every recession comes a heighten sense of need for change. The efforts of candidates since the first recession of 1797 all the way to the 2008 recession has brought great ideas to the table to bring the economy to stabilize. With 2008 elections going on right now we have a recession involving a barrel of oil being $110, the down turn of the stock market, household mortgages, and a war that has been going on longer than expected. The American people have seen this not just once but multitude of times. The 2008 recession has been discussed of being the top 3 recessions in the United States history. The other recession that has been closely related to the 2008 recession would be the early 1980’s. Where the recession had brought about oil prices that had sky rocketed, inflation caused by post war, unemployment reaching a little over 5%, and the banking crisis that had brought major issues to the table for elections of 1980. Now compared to then there really is not too many issues that are different expect for the time period that the issues were involved around. During the election of Ronald Regan and Jimmy Carter one was the biggest issues Reagan had brought into effect was to address emphasized economic recovery and putting all Americans back to work. He called for fewer government regulations and lower taxes. Now in the 2008 election John McCain has gone about talking about make this economy do a 360 by late 2009 by bring the recession to an end with tax cuts, improvement in unemployment and closing the gap to the end of the war. The recession right now in the United States is difficult to live through but will be changed in the near future with new ideas and polices on the table by whomever becomes the 44th president of the United State of America.

1968 and 2008

1968 and the current election of 2008 have many similarities which lead me to believe it is the most similar election. “Nixon, Humphrey and the Vietnam War”, as titled in our Presidential Campaigns text parallels the ongoing election. The Vietnam War in 1968 was “bitterly dividing the country”, war hawks ‘’supported Johnson’s administration efforts to prevent a North Vietnam takeover of South Vietnam” (Boller 320). The doves protested the war and staged sit-ins and demonstrations. Currently, the Iraq war is playing a significant issue in this election. The democratic nominees, Clinton and Obama are calling for an end to the war and to pull out troops. McCain, on the other hand is against pulling the troops out until the ‘job is done’.

Another similarity between ’68 and ’08 is Nixon and McCain. Nixon made a comeback after being defeated in 1960 by John F. Kennedy and once again in 1964 by Barry Goldwater. In order to gain attention, Nixon tried hard to regain political attention by making speeches, and reaching out to other Republican party officials for friendships (321). McCain ran for nomination in 2000 against Bush and subsequently lost. However since then he has gained momentum, like Nixon, and has shed his “loser’s image” (321).

Another issue that is similar is the ‘tough on crime’ approach that the Conservatives take. Giuliani made many get tough on crime stances during his short-lived campaign and McCain himself takes a tough on terror/crime stance as well. Nixon made use of the law and order issue, he promised to make streets safer and “restore order and respect for law in this country” (324).

In conclusion, the Vietnam and Iraq wars separated the country between doves and hawks and are important backgrounds to the elections.

-Diana Davino

Let No-One Complain of Good Competition

Although this years election so far has been tough, hard fought and down to the nail for the Democrats, let no one utter a word of complaint, but release a breath of relief that Barry Goldwater is not in the election. The election of 1964, Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater, should remind all Americans that a close race between quality candidates is better than a race that includes an extremist who makes a candidacy ending statement each time he opens his mouth. Yes, Hillary had a glitch with the bullets whizzing over head because she was tired, and Obama offended Pennsylvanians in reference to religion and guns, but nothing compares to Barry Goldwater. No other election has seen the use of 'quotemanship' like '64. Goldwater, famous for shooting from the lip, visited areas suffering from depression and attacked legislation which would benefit low employment, he visited St. Petersburg, known for it's aging population, and attacked social security,upon visiting farming towns he attacked farming support, and on Foreign Policy, said he wanted to remove the United States from the United Nations, use "low yield" nuclear weapons against the communists and "lob" one into the Mens room of the Russian Governmental Building. It was no surprise that Johnson took the election in an absolute landslide. So as these Democratic elections draw on, remember that it is only the quality of the candidates that allow it to do so and hopefully it is this close competition that will result in the strongest and most worthy President, not simply one who had less than adequate opposition.

1972 and 2008

The 1972 election was waged on the issue of the Vietnam War, and radicalism. The 2008 election is based on the Iraq War, economy, and social issues. There are many correlations to these two elections even though there is a thirty six year difference between the two. To start out, both elections had many candidates who all had an equal shot in the beginning but dropped out due to failure. Although some of the candidates in 08’ didn’t drop out for reasons such as vehicular manslaughter or for the sake of being shot such as some of the 72’ electorates, they all did burn out in the end. A major correlation in this election is the Iraq War to the Vietnam War. The democratic candidate McGovern was a radicalist who wanted to bring the troops home and was very anti-war. Now although Barrack or Hillary cannot put themselves that far at the end of the spectrum to try to bring in as many moderates, they are still against the war and campaign that they want to bring the troops home and end the Iraq war. McCain was obviously not president in the past election as Nixon was yet, Nixon took on a very easy campaign somewhat as McCain seems to be doing. Since the mudslinging and scandals have been many public on the news with the two democratic candidates, even though the Republican party has looked horrific under Bush, the democrats never cease to show failure and prove that they can always make the other candidate look better. Clinton was found lieing about her trip to Bosnia ad being in a “war zone,” and Barrack’s mentor has found to be anti-American and racist; thus making Senator McCain look very good right now. Although I don’t predict a blowout with McCain winning as Nixon did, I do see McCain splitting Hilary’s votes with Barrack gaining less support because of his race and Muslim roots just as Nixon split the democrats and “McGovernities” votes in 72’.

Justin O'Connor

'92 vs. '08

The elections of 1992 and 2008 have a lot in common with each other when it comes to several different subjects. The first of which is like in 1992, this election year is one in which the Republicans have been in office for a good while and just like in the election of ’92, the economy is once again in the crapper. As we all know when the economy bombs, so does Presidential approval ratings, even though the President doesn’t have much to do with the situation anyway. In 1992 President George H.W. Bush couldn’t say Operation Desert Storm enough to drown out the troubled economy and it seems as if the economy could lead to the Republican Party’s loss again this year.
Americans rank the economy as a more important issue than the “war” in Iraq by a significant margin (30% as stated in one of my previous posts). This is what caused a shift in support in 1992 from Republican to Democrats and may be the cause of the same type of shift in support today. It may be that with problems here at home people forget more about the war as a social issue and focus more on the failing markets here at home. With less focus on the war people feel less threatened, and the more threatened people feel the more conservative people will vote. Being distracted from those “threats” by the economy’s shortcomings could cause people to vote less conservative.
With this in mind it seems as if this year’s main issue during the general election will be the economy. As Bill Clinton said in 1992 “it’s the economy stupid...” could be used as a campaign slogan this year in 2008. It seems as if this year Americans are more concerned with the burst of the housing market bubble and the downfall of our financial markets than they are with the war dragging on in Iraq. Also, the signs of the economy are directly affecting more Americans than the social issues are affecting them. People continue to see the gas prices rise and the markets struggle and the candidates talk about the issue more and more. Like 1992, in 2008, if the war is out of sight, it’s out of mind.
Some other similarities between the elections include the large number of Democratic candidates that ran for the nomination. However, the process for this year’s nomination was much more drawn out than it was in 1992. It will be interesting to see how the general election will play out especially with the economy being such a big issue this year. Also, it will be interesting to see how the war will come into play later on as well.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/02/issue.poll/index.html

1976 and 2008

In an earlier post, I wrote about the tit-for-tat primary season for the Republican party in the 1976 presidential race and how it is similar to the Democratic nomination process this time around. Also, in another post, I wrote about the effect religion had in the 1976 race and the 2008 race. To refresh everyone's memories, the tit-for-tat primary race in 1976 meant that Reagan and Ford would both win primaries, and that neither could gain momentum in the nomination process. When Ford would get a big win, Reagan would come right back and get a big win of his own. This is somewhat similar to the 2008 race, with neither candidate, Obama or Clinton, able to get a long standing momentum lasting more than a month or so. While Obama got some momentum by winning 12 straight contests in a row after Super-Tuesday, he could not carry that momentum into Texas and Ohio, as Clinton won big there. As for the religion aspect, I earlier wrote that the whole hoop-la surrounding Jeremiah Wright and how it negatively affected Obama is similar to the 1976 race in that Jimmy Carter had some issues with religion. For instance, he talked about faith in an article published in Playboy Magazine. Carter said that it was a sin to even think of coveting another woman other than his wife, and that by that logic, he has sinned. Another aspect of religion that played a role in 1976 was that it was found out that Carter's Baptist church in Georgia had denied entry of a black person into it. They said they had no problem allowing a black person in there, but that was because there were no black people that went to that church and they figured entry would not be an issue. But when a black person tried to enter, they locked the doors. Carter defended his church and said he would not stop going there. As a result, Carter's 33% advantage over Ford dwindled and had a real race on his hands when the general election came closer.

One other similarity I noticed between these two elections is the South. Carter was the last Democrat that was able to win Southern states as a result of being a governor from Georgia. Obama, in the primaries, has won the South convincingly, (excluding Florida), and some predict that Obama could bring some Southern states, like Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe even South Carolina and Mississippi into play as a result of all those states heavy African American populations. If this is the case, then the media would be saying that this is the first time a Democrat has won Southern states like this since Carter in 1976.

While I think that this election is most similar to 1976, I feel that one cannot use the 1976 election as a catalyst for the outcome of this race. There are may different issues today that were not big issues 32 years ago. The outcome of the race this year will be determined on how well each party can get their voters out. Assuming that Obama wins the nomination, as it so likely seems now, and Obama versus McCain race will be an exciting one and possible a realigning race. The one thing that 1976 tells us about today's race, is that many things will be thrown at each candidate from the other side, yet both seemed in 1976 to whether it till the general election when the winner was not really known. All I know is that when I cast my ballot in November and am nervously watching election results come in on the networks to see how my guy is doing, I will expect to hear some of the better commentators mention 1976 a few times, whether it be for the fact that Obama may have won some Southern states that have not been won by a Democrat since 1976, or for the fact that a personal religious issue and a tit-for-tat primary season negatively affected one of the candidates.

Sticking by my guns with the Election of 1912

It's not over until the fat lady sings seems to be the motto for Hillary Clinton as she continues to stay in a race that is all but won by Barack Obama. Still with the hope that she can some how pull out a win Clinton continues to look more and more like William Taft.

In 1912, the first year with a large amount of political primaries, former president Teddy Roosevelt won a majority of the primaries and seemed like the for sure. However, when it came down to the convention the party decided on William Taft as the nominee. Teddy is so upset he leaves the party and creates the Bull Moose Party to run in the election. Splitting the party vote, Woodrow Wilson is able to skate through the national election to winning the president.

Seeing as the 2008 primary season is yet to conclude, it would be premature to say which historic national election best mirrors the 2008 election. With this in mind, the current situation best mirrors that of 1912, which I discribed above. Obama has won 29 of the primaries to date, compared to Clintons 18, and he has won 1,846 delegates to her 1,685. It is hard to say that Clinton has much of a case for the nomination, but still she hangs in the race. Her only real chance is if the superdelegates vote against the general electorate. The real question is, what if the superdelegates do the unthinkable and elect Hillary Clinton? It's hard to believe that Obama would branch off and form his own political party, but it could be enough for a large portion of the democratic to stay home on election day and thus give the election to John McCain. The Democratic party leaders can only hope that the damage has not been done already

Andrew Stoltzfus