1828 - ALLS WELL THAT ENDS

 

I have read that the election of 1828 that it was the first million dollar campaign for President in American history, and the first campaign in which the jackass was used as the symbol of the Democratic Party (above, “Jackass Jackson”). But thanks to the elimination of many limits on male suffrage, it was also the first time the public (or half of it) became an active participant in the selection of their chief executive. Voter turn out in 1824 had been about 357,000. In 1828 it would nearly triple that,  to over one million (being still fewer than 6 in 10 eligible voters). 

And this growth spurt was adroitly exploited by Jackson's campaign manager, Martin Van Buren. Eight years hence, in 1836, when Van Buren ran for President himself, it would be “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” who would popularized the use of “OK” in English (“Old Kinderhook”). So it should come as no surprise Van Buren also played a part in naming the mass of average voters he manipulated in 1828.

Many historians have noted the way Van Buren created the impression of inevitability of Jackson’s election, using newspapers, parades and rallies. He also insisted on the universal repetition of the word “reform”, in speeches, handbills and even campaign songs - without specifying what it meant. In this “morality play” Jackson (above) was of course the hero. He was just an average Joe, like the average voter, with a few holes in his education, and a little quick to get angry with the mendacity of petty government bureaucrats. And the villain of this performance was equally obvious - John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy (above) defined himself to his long suffering wife, “I am certainly not intentionally repulsive in my manners and deportment.” But intentional or not he was a stuck up prig, more proficient in the stilted world of 18^th century diplomacy, than speaking in public in his own high shrill voice. The nicest thing you could say about John Q. was that he meant well. But even in a world without mass media, in the generation before even photography, the public recognized his reserve, even in his reprinted speeches, and in the language friends and enemies used to describe him. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Adams took his tea with “sulfuric acid”. Van Buren did not invent Adam's acidic image, but he did build on it. In personal correspondence Jackson derisively called his opponent “Johnny Q”. And Van Buren ensured that Jackson's supporters copied him, through broad sheets, hand bills, newspapers and “stump speeches” for the three long years of the campaign.

So it was in the election of 1828 that the average voter received his moniker – John Q. Public. The snide inside joke about one snobbish politician became, by familiarity, by repetition and loss of context, the name for a mass of persons. By using the phrase the speaker or writer acknowledges with a smirk that there is really no such thing as an average person, even while referring to them.  John Q. Public came into existence with John Q. Adams, but out lived him by almost two hundred years. Only when broadcasting (newspapers and books) morphed into narrow-casting (Internet), did the inside joke finally fade away.

I wish the campaign of 1828 had ended as melodramatically as the 2012 campaign, with Karl Rove's meltdown on FOX News - “I think this is premature.” Instead, the campaign described by Niles Weekly newspaper as the “the most rude and ruthless political contest that ever took place in the United States”, dripped to a close like a leaking facet, in a string of  24 separate drips. Of the 12 million Americans in 1828, there were 4 million John Q. Publics who were qualified to vote, meaning they were exclusively male, almost exclusively white, almost entirely Protestant and still largely property owners. It seemed that most Americans, the most powerful in particular, just didn't trust John Q. Public to govern.

The system left behind by the founding fathers in 1789 was designed to function in a narrow homogeneous environment. When Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing...” he was speaking of the 1,200 farmers in central Massachusetts who took part in Shay's Rebellion. But that stunted uprising was not about over turning the social order. It was male Protestant property owners protesting high taxes, just as their fathers had. That was the kind of rebellion Jefferson had in mind. And for all the talk about the revolutionizing effect of the frontier in America, in 1828 the population center was still south of the Mason/Dixon line, and well within 200 miles of the Atlantic ocean. The social structure of America was shifting, but slowly.

Ten states in 1828 allowed universal white male suffrage, eight states limited voting to tax payers, and five still imposed a property qualification. In several states Adams supporters tried to require voters to display an ability to read. But Jackson supporters were able to nullify that restriction by adding the stipulation that if your grandfather could read, then you would be accepted as qualified. This accepted the vote of uneducated whites while blocking otherwise literate qualified free born African Americans. And thus was born the idea of a current conditions being “grandfathered in” under new regulations. The outrider remained little  Delaware, which still denied the vote to the poor, the middle class, Catholics and Jews. Even the concept of “the popular vote” was new in 1828 – the phrase had first been used by Representative George McDuffie from South Carolina just two years earlier. And the secret ballot was unheard of, as yet. Like minded voters often marched to the polls en mass, where they publicly declared their choice (above). And that led to some very unpleasant situations.

A visitor to a Tennessee village on the evening of November 14^th, 1828, the last day for voting, found it largely deserted. The male residents, it seemed, were out hunting two of their neighbors, who had spoiled the town's Jackson unanimity by casting two lone ballots for John Quincy Adams. “As the day wore on, the whiskey flowed...and the result was a universal chase after the two voters, with a view to tarring and feathering them. They fled to the woods, however, and were not taken.” In New England, the same intimidation was seen against those who dared to vote for Jackson.

The end of the campaign began on Friday October 31^st with voting in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then on November 3^rd Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia cast their ballots. On November 4^th through November 14^{th, ,}voters in Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont had their say. New Jersey voters cast their ballots on November 4^th and 5^th . And on November 19^th it was the turn of Rhode Island, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. In Delaware, where John Q. Public had almost no voice at all, the campaign was so hushed, respectful and dignified that many failed to even noticed there was an election.

But none of these voters were casting ballots for President or Vice President. In 14 states the voters chose electors state wide, whose names and loyalties to either Jackson or Adams were listed on the ballot. In New York, each congressional district's  voters separately picked the electors, and then the electors elected two additional electors. But in Delaware and South Carolina, the legislators chose the electors, providing an additional layer of authority between John Q. Public and the vital choice of a new executive. Then on December 3^rd , 1828, the electors gathered in their various state capitals to directly cast their votes for President and Vice President. It was too convoluted to be called a democracy, but a sort of hybrid, democracy lite. In any case, the results were finally reported to Washington, D.C. on February 11^th, 1829. That night a cheerful mob sauntered into the unguarded White House to examine the furnishings, and had to be lulled back outside with free punch.

It was a good election for John Quincy Adams. He won two more states than he had in 1824. But the electorate had more than doubled, and Johnny Q's support had not. The result was that once again John Q. Adams lost the popular vote, as he had done in 1824. But this time he lost in a land slide, winning just 44% of the popular vote (500,000) to Andrew Jackson's 56% (642,000 votes) - a 12 point margin. In the electoral college it was even more decisive - 278 for Jackson, to 83 for Adams. And regionally the results were telling. Jackson won every state south of the Mason/Dixon Line, and the frontier bordering the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. Johnny Q won every northern state, except Pennsylvania, which gave Jackson over 100,000 votes, and Van Buren's New York. The nation had taken the first step on the road that led to Fort Sumter, in April of 1861.

Secretary of State Henry Clay, whose deal making in 1825 had fueled the political debacle, grew increasingly despondent as the disaster approached. He could not even work up an anger when Adams (above) refused an invitation to speak at the opening of the first section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, saying he considered such politicking undignified. "Adams", wrote Clay, "would rather be right than be President." It was a choice ambitious American politicians would have to make every four years for the next two hundred years. And the cost of deciding to pay that price would be painfully apparent to winner Andrew Jackson,  just before Christmas of 1828.

 - 30 -

RUNNING AGAINST SOCIAL SECURITY

  

I would say that Bertrand Hollis Snell is a shinning example of the “Peter Principle” in action. Bertrand started out his adult life as a bookkeeper. Then he successfully ran a cheese factory, and then a lumber company in upstate New York.  For awhile  he was the president of a small college. Then, in 1915,  Bertrand was elected to congress as a Republican.  In 1931 he became the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. That led, in 1932, to him being one of the primary architects of the disaster which befell the Republican Party in 1936 -  the first time they ran against the brand new Social Security program of the New Deal. In short, it was Bertrand Snell’s fault. Of course, he had some help.

Herbert Hoover's ineffectualness at dealing with the Great Depression  -the stock market crash had occurred just 6 months after he first took office - was so obvious that Herbert won only 6 states – Pennsylvania, Delaware, R.I., Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, and he lost the 1932 Presidential Election, by almost 18 percentage points.  And yet Herbert still had hopes he could engineer a come back. 

Yes, FDR’s New Deal had already created six million jobs, and had doubled industrial production and sent corporate profits from a $2 billion loss under Hoover to a $5 billion profit. 

But there were still 8 million Americans unemployed, and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) was charging that the new Social Security Administration was part of a fascist/communist take over of the federal government. Does any of this sound familiar?  Anyway, back to our story...

On Tuesday, 9 June, 1936, in the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio,  Representative Snell introduced Herbert Hoover to the Republican National Convention.  

Hoover did his very best to rally the faithful to his cause. And there were faithful in that auditorium. As Time Magazine detailed, “After 15 minutes (of) yelling, shrieking (and) hooting, (Hoover) was allowed to begin."

He warmed up quickly. According to Time, Hoover told the faithful, "Fundamental American liberties are at stake. Is the Republican Party ready…to cast your all upon the issue?" "Yes!" roared the crowd…."

".. have you determined to enter in a holy crusade for freedom which shall determine the future and the perpetuity of a nation of free men?" "Yes!" roared the crowd in ecstasy.” The faithful went on chanting “Hoo-ver, Hoo-ver, Hoo-ver,” long after Herbert had left the stage.

Noted Time Magazine; “The demonstration could not be stopped for half an hour, even when Speaker Snell tried to introduce a little old lady, surprisingly pert for her 77 years, the widow of President Benjamin Harrison.”  

Finally Bertrand banged his big gavel and informed the crowd that Herbert would not be coming out for a curtain call because he had already boarded a train for New York. Stunned, the floor demonstrators paused for a breath, and in vague confusion the demonstrations petered out. 

Except, Herbert had not even left the building. He was in fact, just off stage, waiting to be recalled by the carefully prepared demonstrations, and proclaimed the Presidential nominee by acclamation. That was his plan, anyway. 

But Bertrand (above, center) had already determined that the party nominee would not be Hoover. It could not be Hoover. That would be a disaster for the party. Instead, Bertrand had decided the choice would be Republican Governor, Alf Landon, known affectionately to the faithful as “The Kansas Coolidge”. The party chairman had cut the ground right out from under Hoover.

Governor Landon  was the only Republican governor re-elected in 1934. He had a reputation as a fiscal conservative who cut taxes and balanced the state budget. That made him the Republican wonder-kid, the perfect man to oppose the “tax and spend” Roosevelt.

Alf's candidacy had a few problems, of course. What candidate does not? First; Landon had balanced the Kansas budgets because Roosevelt's New Deal had kicked in millions of dollars to offset the state's deficits.

Second; Alf publicly supported so many parts of the New Deal, including Social Security, that he was at odds with most of the Republican party platform. Third; Alf was a terrible public speaker. He mumbled. And like any good mid-westerner, even when speaking clearly he didn’t blow his own horn very much. As H. L. Mencken noted, he "simply lacks the power to inflame the boobs."

The party platform that Alf was going to have to stand on had been engineered by Chairman Snell and forty-four year old John Daniel Miller Hamilton (above), the “crinkly haired” “jut-jawed” G.O.P. general counsel, who reeked of “animal vigor.”  Or so said Republicans. 

Hamilton (above) was paid $15,000 a year to be the party's  attack dog. He was described by one fellow Republican as having, “…a seven-devil lust to live and shine under the blessings of the rich”.  Both Snell and Hamilton were Alf’s front men, and Hamilton had even nominated the Kansas Governor. And to seal the deal, in his nominating speech Hamilton had read a telegram from Governor Landon promising to support the anti-New Deal anti-Social Security platform. 

Said the Republican platform; “For three long years the New Deal Administration has dishonored American traditions…has been guilty of frightful waste and extravagance, …has created a vast multitude of new offices, …set up a centralized bureaucracy, and sent out swarms of inspectors to harass our people."

"It has bred fear and hesitation in commerce and industry, thus discouraging new enterprises, preventing employment and prolonging the depression…We pledge ourselves: To preserve the American system of free enterprise, private competition, and equality of opportunity...We advocate: Abandonment of all New Deal policies that raise production costs, increase the cost of living, and thereby restrict buying, reduce volume and prevent reemployment. …”.  

Sound familiar? It should. Basically, this has been the Republican Party Platform for the last ninety years!

But the platform saved its most vicious criticism for that newest New Deal program, Social Security. It was opposition to Social Security that had "energized the base". 

As it was initially passed the program did not cover farm workers, the self employed, state, federal or local government workers, railroad workers, or domestics. There was no aid for the disabled, and there were no cost of living allowances. Still, the Republican platform for 1936 charged that the New Deal, "...while purporting to provide social security, have, in fact, endangered it", and claimed that "the fund will contain nothing but the government's promise to pay" and is "unworkable".  Again, does any of this sound familiar? 

 

Bertrand Snell had a master plan for victory, funded by a $14 million war chest (equal to $207.5 million today), with over a million of that coming from just three families – DuPont, Pew and Rockefeller – and the rest almost entirely from business leaders anxious to prevent further Federal regulations of their business. 

And then there was “The Liberty League,” described by one historian as “…the best-financed and the most professionally run…anti-big-government organization ever to come down the pike.” Before the Tea Party, that is. The League was the original "Astro-turf" - a pesudo-grassroots organization. It raised and spent as much cash as the two established parties combined (30% of it coming from the Koch brothers of the day,  the DuPont family). The League's  national headquarters occupied 31 rooms in the National Press Building, and there were 20 state branches. Hamilton confessed later, "Without Liberty League money we (the GOP) wouldn't have had a national headquarters."

The campaign that followed saw the constant repetition of the extremist scare tactics. The New Deal became “The Raw Deal”. Franklin Delano Roosevelt became “Stalin Delano Roosevelt”. William Randolph Hearst asserted in a pro-Landon editorial, “The Bolshevist tyranny in Russian has ordered all Bolshevists, communists and revolutionaries in the Untied States to support Roosevelt!" It all sounds so familiar in the anti-Obama Care pre and post Trump world.

In late October 1936 the Republican National Committee sent checks for $5.00 to 400 black pastors in Maryland, along with a letter, which began, “Dear Brother,” and then argued that the G.O.P. had always done more to help blacks than the Democrats had. Of course, not  since reconstruction, but it was the thought that counted, right?  And $5.00 wasn't small enough in 1936 to seem like an insult, right?

The Young Republicans grew up during this election to get out the "youth" vote.  And to encourage women to vote Republican, fashion shows were staged.  Every show would start with a woman wearing a wooden barrel on suspenders, marked, “If The New Deal Wins”, followed by lovely models in Paris designs, marked “If Landon Wins." Women were expected to be swayed by such "fashion politics".

A few weeks before the election, tens of thousands of workers opened their paychecks to find what looked like an official government notice. In fact it was from their bosses and the Liberty League, warning workers that if Roosevelt were re-elected, come January they would all suffer a 1% pay reduction because of the socialist Social Security Program. This prompted the head of the Social Security Board, a life long Republican, to issue an immediate response, asserting that "Any political message in a worker's pay envelope is coercion. It is a new form of the old threat to shut down the mill if the employer's candidate isn't elected. We're supposed to be beyond that in this country."  Well, we are approaching a century later and we still aren't!

Finally, Landon himself was coaxed into actually speaking out against Social Security, and join the anti-Social Security bandwagon. In a Milwaukee speech, he called the program ""unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."  It was socialism, communism, and an attempt at the redistribution of wealth. And it would bankrupt the nation in a year. Or maybe two. Almost a century later, and the Republicans are still predicting its immanent demise. And working to create it.

However, it appears that most Americans saw all of this Republican effort in the same light as that expressed by one voter,  who said that Roosevelt was "the first man in the White House to understand that my boss is a son-of-a-bitch"   In 1936 the Democrats came out swinging, including FDR, as illustrated in a speech he delivered in Boston, and which he wrote himself. “In the summer of 1933", said FDR, "a nice old gentleman fell off a pier. He was unable to swim. A friend ran down the pier, dived overboard and pulled him out. But his silk hat floated away with the tide. After the old gentleman was revived he was effusive in his thanks. He praised his friend for saving his life. Today, three years later, the old man is berating his friend because the silk hat was lost.”

The election of Tuesday, 3 November, 1936 was the most lopsided since James Monroe ran unopposed in 1820.  Eighty-three percent of eligible voters showed up at the polls and Roosevelt won almost 61% of their vote.  He carried every state in the union except Vermont and Maine, giving rise to the Democratic twist on the old adage, “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont”. 

Roosevelt won 532 electoral votes to Landon’s 8.  Seventy-one percent of Americans of African decent voted Democratic, as well as 57% of women, 63% of men, 76% of low income voters, 80% of Catholics and 86% of Jewish voters. After the election the Democrats held the Senate, 75-16, and the House, 332 to just 88 Republicans.

Landon would admit that his attack upon Social Security had been a mistake, and henceforth he publicly opposed any attempt to dismantle this New Deal program. John D. Hamilton would say after the election, "The Lord himself couldn't have beaten Roosevelt in 1936, much less the Liberty League." Maybe; but the election was the death knell of the Liberty League. They lingered into 1940, when the DuPont family finally pulled their funding, and the group quietly died. Long before that John Hamilton had his own reactionary reckoning. 

In 1937 Hamilton's wife sued him for divorce, on the grounds of “gross neglect of duty, abandonment and extreme cruelty.” That same year Alf Landon had Hamilton removed as Party Chairman, as Landon tried to rebuild the party in his own Midwestern less reactionary less-ideological image.

Under Landon's non-red baiting non-FDR hating conservative guidance,  the party stopped trying to overturn all of the New Deal all at once and began to climb its way back. The Republicans would gain strength until 1948 when it looked like they were certain to regain the White House. 

But late in that campaign they gloated too publicly about finally eliminating Social Security,  and that handed Harry Truman his come-from-behind re-election. It was not until Ronald Reagan in his 1981 inauguration speech that the G.O.P again openly called for overturning substantial parts of New Deal programs. But even Reagan knew better that to attack Social Security, openly. 

The election left Bertrand Snell, the leader of smallest minority in the House of Representatives since the Civil War.  He was one of the few Republicans re-elected in 1936. But he did not run again in 1938.  Instead, he went into the newspaper business. He published the "Potsdam, New York Courier-Freeman" and ran it until 1949. He also became the owner of the New York State Oil Company. He was ably qualified for both of those jobs. He died in 1958, while a Republican occupied the White House. That Republican was Dwight D. Eisenhower, He was a national hero, born and raised in Kansas, and a product of the Landon influence. But the conservative wing of the GOP charged that "Ike" was a Republican In Name Only, and his administration was nothing better than a "little New Deal" administration. 

It seemed that with time, the Grand Old Party is determined to forget the lesson Bertrand Snell had sacrificed to teach them, and which Alf Landon had given so much to drive home to the party faithful. Running against Social Security is political suicide. And now so are abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act. Republican ideology is so convinced it is evil, they have become blind to the advantages it gives middle class Americans.  And that isolates them as they have not been since 1936.

- 30 -