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Not Much Is New in This Election
July 28, 2016 The impression that this election cycle is unique is a common feature in
American politics.
By George Friedman
The United States now knows who the candidates of the two major political parties are. One of
these two will most likely become president of the United States in January. As usual, each
candidate and their partisans are predicting total catastrophe if the other wins. There are also
claims that there has never been an election like this in history. As is normally the case, the
candidate of the party out of power is claiming that the United States has reached a catastrophic
point because of the current government. The other candidate is saying that the country is not
collapsing but that it will collapse if the opposition’s candidate is elected.
This is pretty normal stuff, including the belief by much of the public that there has never been
such an election before. But that is wrong. There have been others with much more at stake.
The 1860 election resulted in a civil war that killed 600,000 soldiers on both sides. In 1968, the
leading candidate of the Democratic Party, Robert Kennedy, was murdered after winning the
California primary. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered a few months before and the
Democratic Convention was held amid massive riots outside the convention hall. In the end,
Richard Nixon was elected, about which no more needs to be said. In the 2000 general election,
there was a recount in Florida and the case wound up in the Supreme Court. The Democrats
continue to claim the election was stolen.
On a minor note, John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic running for president and some people
seriously believed that he would be controlled by the Pope. Some also believed Ronald Reagan
was a hack actor without any knowledge of the world and unqualified to be president. The same
thing was said of Harry Truman when he ran in 1948, after serving as president for over three
years. Chevy Chase portrayed Gerald Ford as too stupid to walk without falling over during the
1976 election. Barry Goldwater, in 1964, was accused by a bunch of psychiatrists who had never
met him of being psychologically unstable. Lyndon B. Johnson was accused of being a criminal in
1964 because he became a multi-millionaire without ever holding a job outside government.
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The point I am making is that the impression that there has never been an election like this one
is common in every election cycle. And charges that one of the candidates is a criminal and the
other is psychotic have been standard fare in American elections. My standard is whether
electing either candidate will cause a civil war. Short of that, it is safe to conclude that the
republic will survive either of them and the one elected, whoever it is, might surprise us.
The question is not why Americans regard this particular election as apocalyptic. The question is
why Americans routinely regard presidential elections as apocalyptic, without realizing they are
simply acting out an old script. One reason is a general one. Americans do not remember the
past very clearly, particularly when it doesn’t directly affect their lives. America was founded
without a past, but with a breathtaking future. As a culture, our focus has been there. We get
caught up in the moment and we lack a sense of perspective because our memory of the past
has been rendered fuzzy, with the hard edges removed.
A second reason is that this is the only time, once every four years, that all Americans have the
opportunity to participate in the same election. Otherwise, we vote for state office or
congressional district or tax assessor. But every four years, there is an opportunity to release
our pent-up anger. Americans were taught to be suspicious of monarchs at the founding, and
the president is the closest we get to a monarchy. It is natural that we should distrust our
president. Thomas Jefferson would have approved of it – except in his own case, of course.
We may not remember why, but we have a culture of distrusting the president. Even Franklin D.
Roosevelt, revered now, was reviled by many for the New Deal and by those who felt he
deliberately failed to defend Pearl Harbor. The president is the only lightning rod we have and it
should not be surprising that our feelings are so intense before the election and drop off
afterward, save for a few diehards getting ready for the apocalypse, which is also a feature of
American culture.
The fact is that the president has very little power. Donald Trump wants to make the country
great again. It’s a concept he borrowed from Reagan’s campaign against Jimmy Carter. Nobody
could oppose that. Americans constantly sense unprecedented catastrophe. In the 20th century,
America was stunned by a virulent Great Depression, then stunned again by Pearl Harbor.
Neither were expected and they reinforced the lesson taught in the Civil War that lurking
beneath American peace and prosperity is a deep defect, a demon, that has seized us and is
taking us to hell.
Hillary Clinton is running as a technocrat who can get the job done. She probably doesn’t
remember that she is running on Herbert Hoover’s platform. Hoover, a brilliant engineer, wanted
to bring technocratic government (though he didn’t call it that) to Washington to run it like he
ran his engineering projects. Americans love the claim of competence but have learned from
Hoover and his heir Jimmy Carter not to trust the people who believe in little but getting the job
done right.
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Trump comes across as the literary character Elmer Gantry, claiming to know the gate that leads
to heaven, treating unpleasant questions as the work of the devil. Clinton comes across as a
graduate student at the JFK School of Government at Harvard, spending her days studying and
writing policy papers on obscure topics and at night doing the real work of schmoozing and
maneuvering for some job or another.
Elmer Gantry and the grad school hustler are not exotic creatures. They are as American as
apple pie. And there are many such stereotypes in American politics. A candidate for president
must fit into this mold. Bernie Sanders was the aging hippie taking one more shot at trying to
remember what he once believed. Jeb Bush was the man with the resume, the name and the
money. He was the guy we all wished we were because he made it look easy – and for him it
was.
In each campaign, we are presented with candidates who we have never met and whose real
lives we know little or nothing about. The candidates are imbued with attributes that are about
us, not them. Each are hated for reasons we fully understand and loved for the same reasons.
Then the election is over and he or she takes office and we remember that the president really
doesn’t have the power to make us great again or to develop solutions to problems we might
have.
The founders designed the presidency to preside over the process of government rather than to
govern. Governing requires the other branches of the federal government and the states. We
overestimate the power of the president enormously. The presidential candidates act as if they
will rule. But the president only presides over the government and the elections every four
years, in our personal experience, create a drama that always ends in the disappointment of
inauguration. The one we hated is not a fiend. The one we loved is not a saint. And so we move
on to more important things like earning a living and picking up the kids, and the urgency of the
election fades for all but the few who remain obsessed.
The point is that there is a time for every season and this is the election season. Many believe
the candidates have never been as vile or wonderful as this crew and the future of the republic
depends on who is elected. That’s nonsense. There is no charge, no crime and no personality
quirk we haven’t seen before. We just don’t remember. It's not that the election doesn't matter.
It's just that we've been here before.
The Origins of American Incivility and Fear
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A fear has plagued the U.S. for decades that the country has lost its
greatness and is facing a looming catastrophe. But is this fear wellfounded? Find out with the free special report The Origins of American
Incivility and Fear. Click the button below to claim it now!
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