PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS
PALMYRA VOTES, 1848-2012
1848
Wisconsinites voted for president for the first time in 1848, just after ratifying its constitution. They
voted for Lewis Cass, a Democratic politician who had once been Governor of the Michigan Territory
when it included Wisconsin, who won over Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate and former army general and a hero of the recently concluded war with Mexico. In general, the Democrats were regarded as
the party of states’ rights and smaller government while the Whigs were thought of as a party more attuned to the nation’s growing business interests. Both were national parties at a time when the question
of what to do with the unsettled territories and the newly acquired lands won from Mexico was front and
center. Would these lands be eventually be admitted to the union as slave or free states? As one of the
states formed from the old Northwest Territories, by statute Wisconsin was forever free.
Jefferson County, population 11,464, was one of the 29 original counties at statehood. Palmyra was
founded in 1842 and by statehood was a very small town behind the line of settlement. In 1848 the
Carlin House had been finished for three years as the town began to grow. Most of the original immigrants to Palmyra were Yankees from New York and the New England states.
1852
The Compromise of 1850 had provided an unsatisfactory solution to the slavery problem which was
mostly looked at in political rather than moral terms. There were many parts to the compromise but the
most controversial involved requiring northerners to arrest and return escaped slaves from the south to
their owners (The Fugitive Slave Act). Another allowed residents of new territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery (popular sovereignty) upon statehood.. The Democrats nominated
Franklin Pierce, a northerner from New Hampshire with southern sympathies. The Whigs, beginning
to fracture as a national party along sectional lines, nominated another general from the Mexican War,
Winfield Scott. Pierce and the Democrats won a decisive victory in Wisconsin and in the nation. In
Palmyra the railroad from Waukesha came through town and put Palmyra on the state’s main street.
1856
By now popular sovereignty was being tested in “Bleeding Kansas” as armed groups from north and
south fought in an attempt to seize control of the territorial government before statehood. The Whig
party imploded over the slave question as inflamed rhetoric and violence grew throughout the country.
The Republican Party was formed in Ripon Wisconsin on the principle of containing slavery in the areas where it already existed. The new party nominated famous western explorer John C. Fremont,
while the Democrats, by now the only party operating in both north and south, finally settled on James
Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who, like Pierce, was considered to have sympathy with southern arguments about slavery and the nature of the union. Buchanan won the election, but in Wisconsin voters
PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS
PALMYRA VOTES
1848
Wisconsinites voted for president for the first time in 1848, just after ratifying its constitution. In Wisconsin, Lewis Cass, a Democratic politician who had once been Governor of the Michigan Territory
when it included Wisconsin, won over Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate and former army general
who was a hero of the recently concluded war with Mexico. In general the Democrats were regarded as
the party of states’ rights and smaller government while the Whigs were thought of as a party more attuned to the nation’s growing business interests. Both were national parties at a time when the question
of what to do with the newly acquired lands won from Mexico was front and center. Would the new
lands be eventually be admitted to the union as slave or free states?
Jefferson County, population 11,464, was one of the 29 original counties at statehood. Palmyra was
then a very small town behind the line of settlement founded in 1842. In 1848 the Carlin House had
been finished for three years as the town began to grow. Most of the original immigrants to Palmyra
were Yankees from New York and the New England states.
Wisconsin, as one of the free states formed from the Northwest Territory, voted for General Zachary
Taylor over Lewis Cass. Former president Martin Van Buren representing the Free Soil (anti-slavery)
Party finished in third place. Palmyra votes were not recorded separately from the county until 1860.
1852
The Compromise of 1850 had provided what proved to be an unsatisfactory solution to the slavery problem which was mostly looked in political rather than a moral terms. There were many parts to the compromise but the most controversial involved requiring northerners to arrest and return escaped slaves
from the south to their owners (The Fugitive Slave Act). Another allowed residents of new states to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery (popular sovereignty). The Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce, a northerner from New Hampshire with southern sympathies. The Whigs, beginning to
fracture as a national party along sectional lines, nominated another general from the Mexican War,
Winfield Scott. Pierce and the Democrats won a decisive victory in Jefferson County, in Wisconsin and
in the nation. In Palmyra the railroad from Waukesha came through town.
1856
By now popular sovereignty was being tested in “Bleeding Kansas” as armed groups from north and
south fought in an attempt to seize control of the territorial government before statehood. The Whig
party imploded over the slave question as rhetoric and violence grew throughout the country. The
Republican Party was formed (in Ripon Wisconsin) on the principle of containing slavery in the areas
where it already existed. The new party nominated famous western explorer John C. Fremont, while
the Democrats, by now the only party operating in both north and south, finally settled on James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who, like Pierce, was considered to have sympathy with southern arguments
about slavery and the nature of the union. Buchanan won the election, but in Wisconsin voters gave
Fremont a decisive victory, the first of nine straight for Republicans. Jefferson County voters did too.
1860
This election was fought in an increasing atmosphere of dread as the slavery issue, compromised in 1820
and again in 1850, looked impossible to compromise a third time. The Democratic Party split in two as
southern Democrats joined remaining Whigs as the mainstays of the southern electorate. In the north,
the Democrats nominated Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, a supporter of popular sovereignty who
viewed himself as a moderate who could keep the south in the union. The Republicans nominated
Abraham Lincoln, also from Illinois, who did not promise to abolish slavery but to contain it. Two
smaller parties were hastily formed in border states in hopes of appealing to voters in both sections. In
1858 the Supreme Court had added fuel to the debate in a decision that declared slaves to personal property of their owners and thus not subject to restriction by congress (Dred Scott decision.) Abolitionists
such as John Brown agitated for the abolition of slavery.
The election turned on which candidate could win the north that had three times more voters than the
south. Lincoln won the national election and carried Wisconsin and Palmyra by approximately a four to
three margin. As the results were announced the southern states made their plans to leave the union.
1864
During the war years, with the southern Democrats out of the union, the high-flying Republicans used
their big majorities in congress to pass a series of bills that were among the most transformative in the
history of the country, before or since. Taken in part from the agenda of the defunct Whig Party, their
program included support for a high tariff, free land for homesteaders, federal support for education and
railroads, a revived national bank and modern ideas such as conscription for military service and a federal income tax.
Progress on the battlefield moved very slowly and Democrats hoped to take advantage of war weariness
by nominating one of Lincoln’s former generals George McClellan. But smashing victories by Generals Sherman and Grant in 1864 turned what looked like a likely defeat for Lincoln into “Father Abraham,” the president who saved the nation. Wisconsin again voted for Lincoln but by a slightly smaller
margin than in 1860. To help encourage loyalty in the crucial border states, Lincoln had chosen Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a Democrat loyal to the union, as his running mate, a decision that had a
great consequence when Lincoln was assassinated in April, 1965, only five days after the surrender of
Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s forces at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
Lincoln’s executive decision in 1862 to free the slaves had made the north and the Republican Party responsible both for the reconstruction of the south and the welfare of the newly-freed slaves. The split
between so-called “Radical Republicans” who wrested political control over reconstruction from President Johnson and his supporters who wanted to bring the defeated states back into the union as quickly
as possible on easy terms. Although Lincoln signaled support for leniency for the south, his death made
it impossible to know what he would have done in the epic political struggle to come.
1868
The burning issues during the last days of the war had to do with how the confederate states would be
brought back into the union and what would happen to the slaves. President Johnson argued for rapid
reconciliation and few protections for former slaves, called “freedmen.” Some Republicans agreed but
others, called the “Radical Republicans” wanted a strong military presence continuing in the south to
guarantee the rights of the freedmen. The fierce struggle continued with the impeachment (but not removal) of President Johnson and the ultimate victory of the Radicals. Army units stayed in the south
and the nation enacted the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution to help the freedmen.
The Democrats nominated Governor Horatio Seymour of New York. Seymour had reluctantly supported the war but deplored the powers that Lincoln and his allies had taken for the government and favored Johnson’s policies of reconstruction. Republicans nominated war hero Ulysses Grant who accepted the party platform. They also “waved the bloody shirt of rebellion” in accusing Democrats of
disloyalty to the country during the war. In the nation Grant won a fairly narrow popular but a convincing electoral victory helped by newly enfranchised black voters. Wisconsin went for Grant as did Jefferson County by a nearly ten to one margin.
1872
President Grant was identified with the “radical” wing of his party, but in truth he and many in his
party were growing tired of the problems of protecting interests of the freedmen in a hostile land.
Grant also was beset with scandals in his administration relating to reconstruction, financial markets and
the construction of the Pacific Railway that had been completed in 1869. The Democrats nominated
newspaperman Horace Greely who is famous for having said: “Go west young man, go west.” Greeley
also wanted to end radical reconstruction and reform the government. Wisconsin, like the nation, still
supported Grant as did the voters of Palmyra.
1876
The Civil War was still uppermost in most voters’ minds as the Democrats nominated New York Governor Samuel Tilden who had supported the war but not the radicals’ version of reconstruction. The Republicans nominated another former general, Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden took the popular vote nationwide with 51 % but neither candidate commanded a majority in the electoral college. The congress
appointed a special commission to pick the winner. The agonizing compromise resulted in a one vote
electoral victory for Hayes in exchange for a promise that federal troops be removed from the remaining
occupied states in the south. The result was that black gains were soon lost to Jim Crow laws and the
Ku Klux Klan that were not seriously challenged for nearly a century. In the west General Custer made
his last stand. The nation also celebrated its 100th birthday on July 4 of this year.
1880
The tariff and political corruption became major issues as the Civil War slowly began to fade away in
the nation’s memory. By now all the southern states had reentered the union. The new voters, mostly
Democrats, strengthened the party in national elections. Both parties nominated generals from the war,
Republican James Garfield who had become a U.S. Congressman from Ohio, and Democrat Winfield
Hancock, a career army general with service in the Mexican and Civil Wars. This race was very close
with Garfield earning a narrow victory by less than 2/10 of a percentage point. Garfield was assassinated after only 200 days in office and was succeeded by Chester Arthur, a famously successful politician not known for his convictions. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform act was passed in Arthur’s administration. In Wisconsin, Garfield won a comfortable victory assisted by voters in Palmyra.
1884
By 1884 the parties had come to closely resemble each other in their conservative principles although
they fiercely contested each election. Democrat Grover Cleveland of New York had earned a reputation as a honest servant who dealt forthrightly with corruption in his public life. Republican James
Blaine of Maine was compromised by his reputation as a slippery and corrupt politician. Cleveland was
charged (correctly) with having fathered an illegitimate child and had paid for a substitute in the Union
Army. Although Wisconsin went for Blaine, keeping Republicans’ string of state presidential elections
wins at eight, Cleveland won a narrow victory in the nation. Palmyra voters chose Blaine.
1888
Cleveland was defeated in the defense of his presidency by Republican Benjamin Harrison of Indiana,
grandson of President William Henry Harrison, who won the electoral but not the popular vote. The
tariff was again a major issue with Republicans generally favoring a higher tariff to protect U.S. industries. Under Harrison the tariff was again raised. Six new states entered the union during his presidency. In Wisconsin, Republicans extended their winning streak in presidential elections to nine and
Palmyra voters again contributed to the streak.
1892
By now several trends in national life were coming into focus. The western frontier, as measured by a
single line on a map, no longer existed, the country had undergone a revolution in industrialization,
some of it very painful, and boatloads of recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were
changing the demographics of many parts of the country including Wisconsin. Labor unions were showing clout and growing membership. The year also marked the end of organized Indian resistance in the
west. Grover Cleveland regained the presidency from Harrison by winning more of the farm states
including Wisconsin. His victory broke the long Republican ascendency in the state. In Palmyra, voters
stayed loyal to the G.O.P.
1896
The Democrats were hurt in this election by the Panic of 1893, arguably the most severe economic
downturn in the nation’s history, excepting the Great Depression of the 1930’s and the recession that
began in 2008. Cleveland had also enraged union supporters when he send federal troops to suppress
the Pullman (railroad) strike of 1894. Many farmers also opposed their party’s support of the gold standard (hard money) that made it more difficult to pay off debts. The result was the takeover of the party
by a more populist wing led by William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, one of the most dramatic orators
of his time. He was against big rail and big business and Darwinism, and favored cheap money, low
tariffs, prohibition, anti-imperialism and pacifism. Republicans remained reliably old guard by nominating Ohio governor William McKinley who favored big business, high tariffs, hard money and national
expansion. McKinley won a solid victory nationwide and also in Wisconsin where it was a landslide,
bringing the Badger state back into the win column for the Republicans. Palmyra voters agreed.
1900
By 1900 the nation’s economy had improved, blunting the populist message of the Democrats. The nation had also joined the ranks of the world’s imperialist powers by taking control of the Philippine Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico from Spain. All this had started with Americans’ interest in the revolution
in Cuba and the blowing up of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor. McKinley was pushed into
war largely by war Democrats and the “yellow journalism” of the U.S. press. It ended with the suppression of the revolution in the Philippines by the U.S. Army that lasted two years and claimed more than
four thousand American lives, about the same number that later died in the Iraq War. Mark Twain was
among many notable Americans who opposed the action in the Philippines. McKinley ran on his record
and Bryan on his principles. The result favored the Republicans who again won by a landslide in Wisconsin. McKinley was assassinated after only one year into his second term. In Palmyra, this was the
first election in which the Village and Town’s votes were reported separately. Both responded with
large margins for McKinley.
1904
The country’s new president was Theodore Roosevelt who had already served the last three years of
McKinley’s term. Roosevelt had been selected as McKinley’s running mate to heal a rift in the Republican Party between the old guard faction and the new progressives as embodied by Roosevelt. Now, the
activist Roosevelt was president. Progressivism contained many reformist ideas, including increased
regulation of business, breakup of the big business “trusts,” conservation of natural resources, attacks
on the corrupt “spoils system.” assuring the safety of the nation’s food supply, taking an even-handed
approach to labor unions and strikes, and, for TR, a robust and activist foreign policy where he conspired to seize Panama and began plans to build a canal. He called his foreign actions the “large policy.”
The Democrats nominated Judge Alton Parker of New York, a stalwart democrat who was actually
more conservative than Roosevelt. Though a strong candidate, he was no match for the exuberant Roosevelt who won a landslide in the nation, the state and both the Village and Town.
1908
After serving six years, Roosevelt decided to leave party leadership to his protégé William Howard
Taft of Ohio while he went big-game hunting in Africa. In the election Taft defeated William Jennings
Bryan, who sought the presidency for the third time. Bryan had recaptured the populist wing of the
party. As president, Taft lacked energy compared to his predecessor. Still, he pushed for progressive
causes including the 16th (income tax) amendment, more trust busting, civil service reform and the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission, one of the early federal regulatory agencies.
In Wisconsin, the 1911 state legislature passed the nation’s most energetic and comprehensive progressive agenda that helped establish the “Wisconsin Idea,” that the government should take the lead in
moving the state forward. The agenda included elimination of child labor, the nation’s first workman’s
compensation law, a graduated state income tax, a state-run life insurance option, an improved highway
system paid for and coordinated by the state and a “good government” bill that permitted the recall of
elected officials. Also, among other things, the idea advanced scientific agricultural. industrial and labor
research at the University of Wisconsin. A U.S. Senator from Wisconsin (formerly a U.S. Representative and State Governor) Robert La Follette emerged as one of the most influential progressives on the
national stage. Taft won the nation, state and both village and town.
1912
Dissatisfied with Taft’s tepid performance, Roosevelt returned to the political arena to challenge for the
Republican nomination. Taft prevailed however, and Roosevelt decided to run as the candidate of a
new, progressive organization that he called the “Bull Moose” party. The Democrats nominated the reform governor of New Jersey ,Woodrow Wilson, who advocated a program of banking reform and antimonopoly legislation. In this election, all three candidates, despite their political rivalries, were progressives to some degree as reform ideas swept the nation.
Wisconsin voters stuck with their habit of voting for a Republican but the split between Taft and Roosevelt gave Wilson a comfortable victory as is what happened in the nation. The Socialist Party candidate
Eugene Debs polled over nine hundred thousand votes, the high water mark for a Socialist candidate in
U.S. history. Palmyra voters stayed with Taft as the candidate of mainstream Republicanism.
1916
Wilson’s first administration represented the high water mark of progressivism in the United States.
There were new laws, that established the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve System, a
tougher (Clayton) anti-trust act, a lower (Underwood) tariff and a new income tax. The nation’s first
eight hour day was established in the Railroad industry and spread throughout the nation.
However, the domestic agenda was eventually overshadowed by the drift toward entry into war that had
broken out in Europe in August, 1914. Wilson proclaimed neutrality, but as had been the case in other
wars, the belligerent nations did not respect U.S. neutral rights on the high seas. Wilson tried earnestly
to keep the nation out of war and used the slogan “He kept us out of war” as his campaign slogan. There
was a very spirited isolationist movement, that included Senator La Follette, that strongly opposed U.S.
entry into the war. The Republicans nominated Charles Evans Hughes, former reform governor of New
York, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice. The Progressive party supported Hughes who lost the popular
vote to Wilson by only 3%. In Wisconsin however, Hughes won a narrow victory. Both village and
town voted for Hughes.
In April, 1917 the United States declared war on Germany and its allies and fought until the war’s end in
November, 1917. In only twenty months of bitter fighting the U.S. lost more than 116 thousand dead
and over 200 thousand wounded, a small percentage of the nearly 10 million killed and nearly 21 million
wounded in the war, but its contribution came at the right time and proved decisive to the allied victory.
On the home front, war bought many changes in American life as the federal government took over industrial and agricultural production and mobilized public opinion as never before.
The November 11, 1918 armistice brought an end to the most destructive war in the history of the world
to that point. As one of the leaders of the allies at Versailles, France peace conference, President Wilson
occupied a large seat at the table that he used to propose his “Fourteen Points,” an ambitious plan to reorder the world and change the way that nations interacted with one another. The plan included a
League of Nations that was supposed to peacefully settle disputes between nations. This was a difficult
order in a world where three major empires Austrian, Russian and Ottoman) had collapsed and many
other peoples struggled to find nationhood. The Soviet Union, the world’s first communist state shortly
came into being. Many Germans believed they had been treated unfairly.
As the soldiers returned, the country struggled with a return to a civilian economy with strikes in many
industries and race riots in several cities. And, after a great debate, congress elected not to join the
League of Nations, proposed by President Wilson as the basis for a new and peaceful world order.
1920
The Republicans nominated Warren G. Harding, a conservative U.S. Senator and former newspaperman from Ohio. Harding took advantage of the unsettled mood of the electorate and called for a “return
to normalcy,” that promised a return to prosperity and a rollback of many of the progressive innovations
of the previous two decades. In a campaign fought over the League of Nations, prohibition and labor
and farm issues, Harding routed Democrat Ohio governor James Cox. This was the first presidential
election in which women voted. The 19th Amendment had passed the congress earlier and was ratified
by the states in time for this election. In Wisconsin it was also a landslide for Harding. Palmyra voters
also favored normalcy.
1924
Vice President Calvin Coolidge of Vermont became president when President Harding died in office in
1923. He was a frugal man with a well-deserved reputation for honesty that helped him live down several major scandals that had plagued Harding’s administration. His Democratic opponent, lawyer John
Davis, a former U.S. congressman and diplomat, was caught between a new conservatism of the Democratic party and a progressive personal past. With the economy improving, Harding won in a landslide
over Davis and a third candidate, Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin who had run as a Progressive. Wisconsin voters, perhaps not unexpectedly, voted big for their popular favorite son, giving him
his only 13 electoral votes. Palmyra voters , however, were not impressed with “Fighting Bob,” rejecting
him by large margins.
1928
When President Coolidge famously used only six words to announce that he would not run for reelection, the Republicans nominated Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover of Iowa, a successful international mining engineer who had led the food relief effort in Europe during and following WWI, including aid to Germany and the newly Communist Soviet Union. As Commerce Secretary Hoover had
stressed efficiency in industry and agriculture and promoted production standardization and safety. He
also established the system of allotting the new radio frequencies to specific stations. During the campaign he asserted that the country was on the verge of eliminating poverty forever. The Democrats selected New York Governor Al Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated by a major party. Smith was a
“wet” who opposed prohibition as opposed to most Republicans who were “dry.” Radio was used extensively for the first time by both candidates. Hoover won a decisive victory in the nation and also in
Wisconsin. In foreign affairs Hoover and his party continued to resist American leadership in the world.
Both village and town delivered large margins for Hoover.
During Hoover’s term, the economy roared ahead, but dangerous bubbles had begun to appear in the
housing markets and on Wall Street. In October, 1928 the stock market suddenly crashed and the route
was on. In the years to follow the country’s gross national product declined for several years and the
unemployment rate rose to 25%, a blow to the nation’s confidence, especially after the boom years of
the Twenties.
1932
By 1932 the crash was already three years old and the country and most of the world had plunged into
the deepest depression in modern times. Hoover tried to buoy the country with upbeat speeches and unprecedented government involvement in the peacetime economy but nothing seemed to work. The Republicans nominated Hoover for another term. The Democratic candidate, governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York, was equally uncertain about what to do, but given the American tendency to blame
the president for a bad economy, the election result was a foregone conclusion, Roosevelt by a landslide.
In Wisconsin, FDR more than doubled Hoover’s vote total but in Palmyra Hoover held serve. During
this time Wisconsin was still a farm state but also had a well-developed industrial sector.
1936
By the time of this election, FDR’s policies were almost fully underway. Against bitter opposition the
“New Deal” established countless new government agencies to get people back to work and the economy moving again. Major agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration and the Home Owners
Loan Commission helped to stabilize the housing industry. Legislation such as the Federal Labor Standards Act and the Wagner Act that established the National Labor Relations Board were aimed to promote unions and fair treatment of workers. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission tried to regulate Wall Street to prevent another stock market crash. The
Social Security Administration provided security for older Americans. The Tennessee Valley Authority
and the Rural Electrification Administration helped to bring the modern world to the nation’s farmers.
The largest job creation programs, the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation
Corps, built much of significance in the country and in Wisconsin during the Thirties but were later unneeded as the nation turned to military spending in advance of WWII.
The Democrats again nominated Roosevelt while the Republicans named Alf Landon, governor of
Kansas. Roosevelt’s programs, nudged through a friendly congress, appealed to many people in many
walks of life and he won another landslide victory, defeating Landon in the electoral college 523 to 8.
Wisconsin voters did the same with FDR more than doubling Landon’s popular vote total. In this election, for the first and only time to date, both village and town voted for the Democrat.
1940
Despite an economy that had only partially recovered from depression, the main focus of this campaign
was the growing threat of a war that had started in Asia in 1937 and Europe in 1939. FDR had convinced congress to begin conscription and partial mobilization while some Republicans argued against
helping China, under attack from Japan, and the European countries by Germany. The Democrats
united behind Roosevelt, a decision criticized by Republican for violating the unspoken two- terms-only
tradition. The Republicans, torn between an conservative isolationist wing and an interventionist wing,
finally nominated Wendell Willkie, a former Democrat and corporate lawyer and executive whose instincts were interventionist. By the November election, Germany had already blitzed and occupied Poland, Scandinavia, and much of France and Hitler had turned his gaze toward Great Britain and Japan
was aiming toward southeast Asia. In this time of peril Roosevelt won a surprisingly close victory with
55% of the popular vote to Willkie’s 45%. Willkie managed to cut into Roosevelt’s electoral dominance
by winning several states in the Midwest and Great Plains. In Wisconsin Roosevelt’s margin was 704
thousand to 679 thousand. In Palmyra both village and town delivered comfortable margins for Willkie.
1944
In December, 1941 the U.S. declared war on Japan and Germany (Japan’s ally) after the attack on Pearl
Harbor. With massive government spending, paid for with higher taxes and the sale of war bonds, to
fully mobilize the country, the depression ended and the election was all about the war and how we were
doing. Early in the war the U.S. agreed with its allies to accept nothing less than “unconditional surren-
finish. WWII, more than any war in American history, united the people in a common effort for victory.
Progress was very slow at first but gradually the tide began to turn. The U.S. helped supply Chinese
forces through the backdoor of Burma (now Myanmar) and its forces had success in leapfrogging north
in the Pacific ocean toward the main islands of Japan that were now within bombing range. In Europe,
the unlikely ally the Soviet Union (united by a common enemy) had turned back the Germans at Stalingrad and were now advancing into central Europe. In June, 1944, allied armies landed in France from
their staging areas in Britain (D Day.) The tide had definitely turned in the allies’ favor by the election
in November and the allies had already held several conferences to plan for the post-war world.
Despite Roosevelt’s being very ill, the Democrats nominated him for a fourth term with Missouri Senator Harry Truman as his running mate. FDR’s claim was that he had ended the depression and was well
on his way to winning the war. The Republicans chose New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who
had earned a reputation for crime-fighting and good government. He was known as a moderate Republican who accepted most of the measures passed by congress during the depression and was regarded as
an internationalist. There was also a widespread belief in the country that four terms for any president
were too many.
Roosevelt won the election but Dewey won 46% of the popular vote and several more states than Willkie four years earlier. Wisconsin and Palmyra disagreed with the national result and returned to the Republican fold with narrow victory for Dewey.
1948
Many transforming changes had taken place since the last election. Roosevelt died in April, 1945 leaving Truman as the new president. Truman was not well-known in the country and Roosevelt had not
kept him in the loop regarding foreign affairs. Yet it was Truman’s fate to drop the world’s first nuclear
weapon that ended the war and then meet with allied leaders to shape the peace. An internationalist, he
helped organize the United Nations which he hoped would be more effective than the League of Nations
that had gone on without U.S. participation and failed to prevent World War II. Fearing expansion of
our WWII ally, the Soviet Union, he aided the nations of Europe to rebuild (The Marshall Plan) and
gave military assistance to governments in Greece and Turkey to prevent their takeover by Communist
parties (the Truman Doctrine). When the Soviets blockaded supplies into the U.S., British and French
sectors of Berlin, Truman responded with an airlift that saved the city (Berlin Airlift). All of this was
included in the general term “containment” that described U.S. effort in the post-war world. At this
time, the United States had become THE acknowledged super-power in the world, the only country on
either side that had not suffered devastating human and economic losses during the war. Now we took
on responsibility for managing the world. In a move that would have far-reaching consequences Truman, along with many other world leaders, decided to support the formation of the new nation of Israel.
Truman’s political standing at home, however, was quite tenuous. Strikes and pent up frustrations and
demands from the war years combined to make his “first term” very difficult. But the Democrats made
him their candidate while the Republicans re nominated Thomas E. Dewey who was favored in the
polls. After a long “whistle stop” campaign by train Truman surprised the world with a 4% point victory. Wisconsin voters stuck with Truman while Palmyra voters remained with Dewey.
1952
Truman’s second term proved as tumultuous as the first as the country struggled to adjust to a peacetime
economy. More strikes and allegations of communist influence in labor unions had caused a (partly)
Republican congress to pass the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman’s veto that trimmed the some of the
rights of unions won during the New Deal. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin began his crusade to
remove communists from the army and state department. The question of black participation in society
was raised for the first time on a national level in over three generations and advanced by black veterans
recently returned from WWII. In response, Truman in 1948 issued an executive order to integrate the
armed forces, a process that took several years to fully implement.
In foreign affairs, Truman took the lead in establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to check
Soviet expansion in Europe, tried (unsuccessfully) to mediate the Chinese Civil War that resulted in the
Communist victory in 1949, supported France’s effort to regain its colonies in Indo-China and sent U.S.
troops to Korea under the U.N. command to throw back the communist North Korean’s attempt in 1950
to unify the peninsula under their control. This war appeared lost, then won, then lost again before settling into a stalemate between the U.N. forces and the joint command of the North Koreans and the Chinese who had come to the aid of their North Korean ally when it appeared they would lose. During all
of this Truman fired his commander, General Douglas McArthur, who had urged an aggressive attack on
the Chinese mainland. The three-year Korean stalemate frustrated the American people who remembered WWII with it’s popular support and decisive result.
Even though the 22nd amendment, passed in 1952, that basically limited presidents to two terms, did not
apply to Truman, he declined to seek another term. The Democrats nominated Illinois governor Adlai
Stevenson, making his first try at national office, while the Republicans chose Army General Dwight
Eisenhower, commander of allied forces in WWII and also of NATO. Eisenhower defeated Robert
Taft, leader of the conservative Republicans in the Senate, in the convention and presented a spotless
(non-political) record of success to the country. During the campaign he promised to “go to Korea”
which he did. Eisenhower won the election with 54% of the popular vote and won all the major regions
of the south. Wisconsin followed suit with an even larger margin of victory for Ike. Palmyrans agreed.
1956
Eisenhower quickly concluded the Korean War with an armistice agreement along nearly the same line
dividing north from south as when the war began, neither a clear victory or defeat for the U.S. No comprehensive agreement to deal with the issues has ever been signed. He built up the nation’s nuclear arsenal to deter a potential attack from the Soviet Union and continued the “containment” policy begun by
Truman. Seeing the entire world as a contest between democracy and communism as Korea appeared,
Eisenhower and the recently established Central Intelligence Agency conspired to influence politics and
regimes across the world, Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Lebanon, Vietnam, Cuba and other places. Like
Truman, he did not “recognize” communist control of mainland China.
In domestic affairs he completed the integration of the armed forces, sent federal troops to the south to
enforce school integration as per the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Topeka ruling in 1954. After the Soviet
Union beat the U.S. into space with Spunik, he encouraged a national effort to improve math and science
Instruction in the schools. He accepted the government programs of his predecessors and even extended
Social Security to more workers. His most visible accomplishment was the beginning of construction of
the Interstate Highway System. He lost favor with some voters when he failed to strongly to condemn
Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade.
Despite the many disruptive events of this era, the national mood was one of relative peace and perhaps
complacency. For the most part, the economy boomed and international problems seemed far away.
The election was a replay of 1952 with Eisenhower increasing his margin of victory both in the popular
and electoral vote over Stevenson. In Wisconsin, voters gave Eisenhower a reduced margin but still a
comfortable victory. Palmyra voters continued to “like Ike.”
1960
The moderate Eisenhower’s popularity in winning consecutive elections masked the fact that the Republicans had not yet succeeded in breaking up the Democrats’ grand coalition of voters that had been built
up during the New Deal and WWII. They nominated Richard 1ixon of California, a former congressman who had served as Eisenhower’s vice president in both terms. Nixon was most famous for his
fierce anti-communist rhetoric and was only tepidly backed by the president. After a hotly contested
primary season, the Democrats turned to John F. Kennedy, a young senator from Massachusetts who
emphasized his youth and vigorous lifestyle. He also claimed that the U.S. suffered from a “missile gap:
with the Soviet Union and called for higher military expenditures. Kennedy was the second Catholic to
run on a major party ticket and he had to assure the public that, as president, he would act independently
of Catholic leaders. Televised debates between the candidates, both excellent debaters, were held for the
first time, and the election might have turned on the fact that Kennedy looked better on television to
many voters. In the nation, Kennedy won the election by an eyelash while Wisconsin voters gave Nixon
a narrow victory. Palmyra voters began what became a long love affair with Nixon.
1964
Kennedy had good luck when his economic plan seemed to bolster the economy that had been dragging
during the late Eisenhower years. Martin Luther King emerged as an effective civil rights leader in a
field of more radical alternatives. Kennedy generally supported moderate civil rights legislation and
send federal troops to help integrate the University of Mississippi in a highly charged situation among
many others. Kennedy sponsored a new immigration law that accepted more people from all over the
world instead of favoring those from Europe. He dramatically announced a program to put a man on the
moon and began the popular Peace Corps that sent young Americans to help in the developing world.
In foreign policy he continued the Eisenhower policy of employing the CIA to carry out regime change
in dangerous countries such as the Dominican Republic and Iraq. When the Soviets built a wall that prevented crossings from East to West Berlin and isolating allied sectors from Western Europe, he claimed
common cause with the people of West Berlin and called up additional troops until the crisis was over.
The call-up included the nearly fifteen thousand members of Wisconsin’s 32nd Infantry Division.
Regarding Cuba, Kennedy tried to find a way to oust Fidel Castro and eventually decided on a plan,
started in Eisenhower’s term, in which Americans would support Cuban insurgents in an invasion. The
invasion at the Bay of Pigs resulted in a defeat for the insurgents and led to a Cuban effort to bolster its
security by accepting Soviet missiles that were targeted on the U.S. Eighteen months later photographs
showed many missiles in place and prompted the president to quarantine Cuba that meant stopping Soviet ships that were delivering more missiles. Eventually a crisis was averted when the Soviets turned
their ships around and the U.S agreed to pull its missiles out of Turkey. Many believe that this was the
closest the two great world powers came to nuclear war. Later, in an attempt to diffuse tensions, he
signed what was the first Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev.
In Vietnam Kennedy found himself continuing Eisenhower’s policy of supporting South Vietnam but
wondering if was good policy. But when the U.S. acquiesced in the assassination of ineffective president Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. took on responsibility for the new nation.
When Kennedy himself was assassinated in November, 1963, the presidency fell to Vice President and
former Texas Senator and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, though not as charismatic as Kennedy, was a consummate politician who worked diligently and effectively to advance Kennedy’s program in the aftermath of the assassination.
Johnson won his party’s nomination. His opponent was blunt-speaking Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who represented the right wing of the Republican Party. Goldwater favored states’ rights and
opposed most of the big government innovations of the New Deal and others proposed in the campaign
by President Johnson. Johnson succeeded in portraying Goldwater as a dangerous figure who might
lead the nation into a quagmire in Vietnam, or worse, a nuclear war. The result was one of the biggest
victories in any presidential election with a 23% point victory. Wisconsin voters followed suit with
Johnson nearly doubling Goldwater’s total. In a break with tradition, village voters gave Johnson a big
victory while the town narrowly picked Goldwater.
1968
The three years following Johnson’s victory proved to be tumultuous. When the situation in Vietnam
seemed to deteriorate, Johnson used a shadowy incident at sea to demand and receive authority from
congress to increase the U.S, role in helping South Vietnam. As the fighting escalated, Johnson painted
an optimistic picture while events on the ground suggested a different interpretation. The Communist’s
Tet Offensive into the heart of South Vietnam in 1968 was a dagger into the president’s argument. Morale is some army units nearly fell apart with drug use and insubordination as soldiers themselves questioned the mission. The total U.S. commitment reached over a half million troops and casualties rose.
Even a “Korea style” outcome looked increasingly out of reach.
At home, opposition to the war built rapidly, especially on college campuses where many young men
faced conscription. Many colleges, including the University of Wisconsin, faced demonstrations that
were often violent, requiring riot police and National Guard troops to manage them. A radical group of
students calling themselves the “New Left” used anger over the war to criticize most of the other institutions of national life, businesses, schools, churches and others. The appearance of “hippies”
added a counter cultural aspect to the mix and angered traditionalists. Race trouble boiled over and demonstrations continued in some cities including some in Wisconsin and major riots in others. Radicals
such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown preached a new doctrine of Black Power. In April, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis while attempting to organize sanitation workers. The nation seemed to many to be coming apart.
Despite this contentious atmosphere, Johnson forged ahead with his domestic goals that he called “The
Great Society” headlined by the “War on Poverty.” This ambitious agenda included new programs such
as Medicare for older Americans and Medicaid for the poor and represented a continuation of a liberal
program to cope with national problems that had begun with the progressives and continued through the
New Deal. Congress also passed significant civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965 and the Supreme
Court declared, among other things, that “one man had one vote.” that prayer could not be recited in
public schools, and that a defendant had the right to an attorney.
Politics were also in flux as the Democratic Party struggled to hold its parts together and the Republicans devised strategies to take back the presidency. During the Democratic primary season, when polling in Wisconsin showed his position to be weak, President Johnson stunned the nation by announcing
that he would not run. Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared as a candidate but he was weakened
by discontent over the war and the state of the nation. Former president Kennedy’s brother Robert Kennedy entered the primaries as an anti-war candidate but was assassinated after he won the big primary in
California, now the nation’s largest state. Humphrey went on to capture the nomination at the convention in Chicago that was marked by riots and police reprisals.
The Republicans nominated former vice president Richard 1ixon, who was making a political comeback, over Michigan Governor George Romney. His campaign stressed law and order and bringing the
country back together. He also implied that he had a secret plan to end the war. For his part, Humphrey
ran on his party’s domestic achievements but also distanced himself from the war. The election also
attracted Alabama Governor George Wallace, a strong segregationist and economic conservative who
supported the war. In the election Nixon prevailed with less than a 1% margin over Humphrey and Wallace winning over 13% of the popular vote. Wisconsin also narrowly elected Nixon with Wallace a distance third. Palmyra voters delivered large margins for Nixon.
1972
President 1ixon had extensive foreign policy experience as Eisenhower’s vice president and dedicated
his second term to improvement of the American position in the world. He perceived a fissure in relations between China and the Soviet Union and moved to exploit it by traveling to China, a move that
shocked the world and which probably only he, as a dedicated anti-communist, could have accomplished
politically. The move had the effect of creating competition between the communist giants and reduced
the support given by each to North Vietnam. This was vital to Nixon’s hope of ending the Vietnam War
on favorable terms for the United States because the war on the ground continued to go badly. Nixon
expanded the war by bombing and then invading communist sanctuaries in Cambodia that touched off
more trouble on college campuses including Kent State in Ohio where four students were killed by the
national guard and the University of Wisconsin where a graduate researcher perished in a bombing of a
building where mathematics research was being done for the U.S. Army.
In addition to starting the path to full diplomatic recognition of the Peoples’ Republic of China, Nixon
signed a treaty with the Soviet Union to ban defensive weapons in space (ABM Treaty) and the first of
what became the first of several treaties to limit the number of nuclear weapons in each nation’s arsenal.
SALT 1). He helped to overthrow a leftist government in Chile and overtly encouraged the friendly regime of the Shah of Iran (himself the beneficiary of a CIA-backed coup d’etat in 1954) to take on a
greater role in the security of the Persian Gulf Region.
Nixon’s domestic policies were dominated by an economy characterized by “stagflation,” an unusual
condition in which growth was slow but inflation was high, and was caused, in part, by heavy federal
spending for both domestic purposes and the Vietnam War. As a president who wanted to be on the
right side of history he embraced new laws to clean up the nation’s air and water, signed into laws bills
establishing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He proposed a national health care plan that failed in congress. In Nixon’s first
term Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, a program first proposed by President
Kennedy. Nixon was also the first president to propose the “war” on drugs that continues to this day.
Nixon “did his duty” in enforcing supreme court orders regarding school desegregation and implemented the first federal “affirmative action” program in the U.S. military. In politics he implemented his
party’s “southern strategy,” a plan to break up the Democrats’ coalition that dated from the New Deal,
by attracting southern conservative Democrats to the Republican Party.
In the election, the Democrats finally nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern after a primary season that started out with 15 candidates. George Wallace was shot and nearly killed early in the
process and was not a factor afterwards. Despite the confusion, the Democrats adopted electoral reforms
that emphasized primary elections and caucuses that have been used by both parties since.
During the campaign Nixon stepped up the bombing of North Vietnam as he tried to gain an end to the
war at the conference table. As voters headed to the ballot boxes he proclaimed that “Peace is at
Hand.” . A burglary of the Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate Building in Washington
had been exposed prior to the election but the Democrats got little traction from it. The result was a
sweeping victory for Nixon who gained nearly 61% of the vote to only 36% for McGovern. In Wisconsin it was closer but still a clear victory for Nixon. Palmyra voters concurred.
1976
In 1973 Nixon had ended the war in Vietnam with a treaty that called for the U.S. to withdraw from the
country but permitted North Vietnam’s forces to stay in the south during the withdrawal. The political
advantage at home that Nixon hoped to gain was dashed by the deepening Watergate scandal that eventually resulted an almost total loss of credibility for the president. People wanted to know: “what did he
know and when did he know it?” When it became apparent that he would be impeached by the House of
Representatives and convicted by the Senate, he became the only man to resign the presidency which he
did in 1974. He was replaced by Vice President Gerald Ford, a former congressman from Michigan selected by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who had resigned earlier in disgrace after a bribery and influence-peddling scandal.
Ford quickly moved to bring the country together after Watergate, a task that suited him well because of
his steady and respected service in the house and reputation for honesty. In his two years as president he
struggled, as had his predecessors, with inflation and a new problem, a growing budget deficit that he
tried to solve by encouraging congress to cut federal taxes. After resisting, he eventually OK’d the federal bailout of New York City that was in financial straits. In international relations he carried on the
policies of his recent predecessors including détente with the Soviet Union. He signed the Helsinki Accords that pledged signatory nations to respect human rights around the world and was one of the founders of the G-7 organization (now the G-12), major countries that consult about international economic
problems. His relations with Israel were strained when he objected to its policies following the Yom
Kipper War in 1973. Sensing war fatigue in the country, he declined to aid South Vietnam when the
north broke its agreement and overran the south. The final scenes were marked by Americans and Vietnamese allies fleeing by helicopter off the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon.
Ford remarkably survived two assassination attempts in 1973. His most controversial decision as president was his pardon Nixon for anything he may have done during the Watergate Affair. Later he arranged an amnesty for young Americans who had fled the country to avoid military service. Both these
moves sparked vociferous controversy.
Despite being both an unelected president and an unelected vice president, he decided to run in 1976.
His opponent was former Hollywood actor and California Governor Ronald Reagan. Ford bested
Reagan in a primary season that went all the way to the Republican convention.
His opponent was Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a virtual unknown nationally, who developed a
national campaign strategy that eventually wore down his several competitors. Carter had a demeanor
that made him appear not to have ambition that served him well and came off as a decent man who
would restore dignity to the office. This played well after Nixon’s malfeasance and Ford’s pardon. Being a southerner (the first elected from the deep south since 1848), he took most southern states that had
begun to drift Republican.
In 1976 the nation celebrated its 200th birthday.
Carter bested Ford by 2 percentage points nationally and in Wisconsin by an even narrower margin.
Palmyra voters split, the village giving a narrow victory to Carter while the town preferred Ford.
1980
As with all modern presidencies, Carter’s was a busy one. Inflation and high interest rates plagued the
country along with another energy crisis brought on by petroleum export restrictions by OPEC nations.
In response Carter got congress to establish a new Department of Energy and impose fuel economy standards for cars. He also promoted subsidies for solar energy and erected solar panels on the White House
lawn. When a polluted waterway in upstate New York (the Love Canal) became severely polluted, he
helped establish the EPA Superfund that has been used many times since to clean up dirty sites. An accident at the Three Mile Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania, gave the fledgling nuclear industry a setback that it is only now (2012) recovering from. When New York City faced bankruptcy Carter supported a bailout, as he did in supplying government loans to struggling Chrysler.
In other domestic matters, he began a buildup of U.S. military forces that had been severely diminished
in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and, in a tack to the right for a Democrat president, supported deregulation of the nation’s telephone system and airlines. Where previously the airlines could compete
only on service, now they could compete on price. He helped establish the Department of Education.
His plan for universal health care failed when it was opposed by many Republicans and undermined also
by some members of his own party.
In foreign affairs, he encouraged détente as Nixon and Ford had done but felt betrayed when the Soviets
invaded Afghanistan to prevent an anti-Soviet government from taking power. In response he arranged
for the U.S. team to boycott the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Otherwise, he signed another SALT
agreement and also sent the first U.S. ambassador to Communist China as pursuant to the Shanghai
Agreement that President Nixon had negotiated. In the Middle East he used personal diplomacy at
Camp David to bring the leaders of Israel and Egypt together to sign the first of what Carter hoped
would be a series of agreements to bring peace to the Middle East. And in Latin America, he took the
first steps to cede control of the Panama Canal to the host country.
In Iran, the government of the shah, a U.S. ally since Nixon’s presidency, was overthrown by an Islamic
insurgency and the shah forced to leave the country. When Carter allowed the ailing shah to receive
medical treatment in the U.S., a government mob attacked the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took its employees as hostages. For the next 444 days, the remainder of Carter’s presidency, Carter grappled with
how to bring them back safely. They were eventually released as the new president, Ronald Reagan,
took office.
Carter again got his party’s nomination while the Republicans turned to Ronald Reagan. Reagan represented the right wing of his party, the first since Barry Goldwater to be nominated. Goldwater had
been portrayed as dangerous by Democrats and went down in flames, but the characterization was impossible to repeat with the avuncular and ever-optimistic Reagan. Citing Carter’s policy failures and
lack of leadership, especially regarding Iran, Reagan asked voters if they were better off now than they
were four years ago. He was also the first candidate to run on the mantra that the government itself is
the problem responsible for the ills of the country.
In the election Reagan won a decisive victory, a result duplicated in Wisconsin. In Palmyra both village
and town delivered enthusiastic majorities for Reagan.
1984
At 69, Ronald Reagan was the oldest person to have taken the oath of office for the first time. He was
fortunate in not having to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis that had bedeviled Carter when the hostages were released as Reagan was taking the oath. In the first weeks of his presidency he was wounded
in an assassination attempt but won favor in the nation for his graceful recovery.
Reagan had several big ideas that he hoped would reduce the size of our federal government and change
the direction of the country. He showed his disdain early for labor unions by firing the unionized members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union that had refused to make concessions in their contract. He tried to stimulate the economy and reduce inflation by spending heavily on new weapons and
persuading congress to reduce the top income tax rate from 70% to 28%. This economic idea of cutting
taxes to increase revenue was called “trickle down economics,” the hope that tax cuts for the wealthy
will create new jobs, an article of faith of the Republican Party since. In Reagan’s era, inflation came
down but he was forced to raise some of the taxes that were cut in order to deal with a growing deficit
that tripled during his two terms. He also faced criticisms for trying to cut some government programs
that dated back to the Lyndon Johnson administration. He showed flexibility by compromising with
congressional Democrats on a new formula to improve the financial foundation of Social Security.
With new and expensive weapons systems, Reagan ratcheted up the pressure on the Soviet Union to
keep pace. His MX missile, single intercontinental ballistic missiles with up to ten separate warheads,
were first deployed in 1986. The missiles were mounted on rail cars that moved about the country to
better assure their survival if the Soviets attacked first. He also moved an enhanced version of the older
land-based Pershing intermediate missiles to Europe to be closer to the Soviet Union. He also employed
strident rhetoric toward the Soviets, calling them in 1983 the “evil empire.”
In his first term, he moved against what he perceived as Soviet attempts in the Middle East and Latin
American by inserting U.S. forces into Lebanon, and invading the small island nation of Grenada to expel Cuban workers who were building an airfield. The troops in Lebanon were withdrawn after a suicide truck bomb killed more than 200 American troops. Since the Soviets were still fighting to control
Afghanistan, he began support for the mujahidin, anti-Soviet fighters, some of whom later morphed into
the Taliban. He also provided arms to Saddam Hussein as a counterweight to Iran that had been our
nemesis since the hostage crisis.
By November, 1984 Reagan had become a popular, though controversial, president.
1984
The high-flying Reagan was re-nominated as the Democrats turned to Minnesota Senator and former
Vice-President Walter Mondale. Mondale was an old-fashioned liberal Democrat who had bested Colorado Senator Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson, the first serious black candidate in the primary.
Reagan was helped in the campaign by an improving economy and the defection of some disgruntled
middle class Democrats who may have resented their party’s perceived emphasis on helping the poor.
The ever-optimistic Reagan appealed to American’s patriotism and ran as the candidate who was
stronger on defense. It was in this campaign that he used the phrase (and television ad) “Morning in
America. The election ended in a route with Mondale taking only 13 of the 538 electoral votes. Reagan
again won Wisconsin and Palmyra by healthy margins.
1988
Reagan’s second term was marked by a stock market crash in 1987 that threatened to hamper the recovery. He went ahead with controversial deployment of a new manned bomber called the B-1 that was
expected to replace the ageing B-52. The B-1 had been under development since the Fifties and critics
charged it was nearly obsolete when it was deployed. The space shuttle Challenger exploded in flight.
The president declared a new war on drugs and signed a new law that sanctioned employers who gave
jobs to illegal immigrants.
His second term was clouded by the fallout from the Iran-Contra Affair, in which several of his top aids
sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to aid a group in Nicaragua that was fighting the leftist government, both against the law. Reagan was not directly implicated but opponents criticized him for not
knowing what his assistants were doing.
Reagan also escalated his rhetoric against the Soviets, challenging President Mickhail Gorbachev to
“tear down that wall” with reference to the Berlin Wall that had stood since 1961 and said that communism would soon be on the “ash heap of history.”
But despite the fire of his words. Reagan continued to work with Gorbachev to eliminate medium-range
missiles from Europe and work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons altogether. He also offered
to share free-of-charge a U.S. program called the Strategic Defense Initiative (or “Star Wars”), system to
defend territory against enemy missiles that was still in the planning stage. When he left office in 1989
no one knew that in two years the Berlin Wall would be gone, that communism would collapse in Eastern Europe and that the Soviet Union would collapse with it.
The Reagan legacy has been much debated but one part is clear. In winning two terms and clarifying a
few major objectives he renewed the right wing of American politics that had labored in the wilderness
for many years. His sunny disposition concealed his steely resolve on many issues and promoted the
right wing agenda that is prominent today. Though too genial and flexible to be a real extremist, he
made it respectable for others to become so.
The Republicans nominated George H.W. Bush of Texas for president. Bush been a congressman, head
of the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Ambassador to China and the United Nations, Chairman of the
Republican Party and Vice-President of the United States, arguably the best resume of any presidential
Dukakis. Known as a
candidate in history. The Democrats nominated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
moderate, in the campaign Bush tilted right on several social issues that Reagan had not emphasized
such as gun rights, capital punishment, opposition to abortion and in favor of prayer in public schools
that the Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional. He also pledged not to raise taxes. The result was a
tidy victory for Bush in the country while Wisconsin picked Dukakis. The Town of Palmyra chose Bush
while the Village astonished by going for Dukakis by a narrow margin.
1992
As Bush was being inaugurated, the Berlin wall was breached from the East, setting in motion a chain of
events that liberated Eastern Germany and other nations of the Soviet bloc from Communist control.
Only two years later, the Soviet Union itself collapsed and its former republics reconstituted as national
states. The Cold War that had shaped, some would say distorted, U.S. foreign policy for nearly five decades, was over. Now it was necessary to interpret the world through a different lens. As it turned out,
the new world would be as difficult as the old.
The “victory” was brought about by several factors. The U.S. had resisted Soviet power from the outset
and, despite varying styles, all the presidents from Roosevelt through G.H.W. Bush, promoted a bipartisan, pragmatic policy in which the threat of force was accompanied by negotiations. Secondly, Communism proved to be a totally inadequate method of organizing national economies and it was only a matter
of time before it would collapse of its own accord. Thirdly, the Soviet Union itself could not hold its
constituent peoples around its Russian core. Finally, during the Reagan presidency, the government of
the Soviet Union was led by Mickhail Gorbachev, a reformer who was nudging his country toward some
of the practices of the West, notably transparency in government and freer markets. The end of the Cold
War in 1990 with no shots having been fired by either side must be scored by any measure as a remarkable achievement by our government and presidents of the era.
However, at this time of victory and in the rejoicing at the “peace dividend.” other trends soon came
into focus. One development was inevitable. The rest of the world was catching up to the U.S. After
WWII we enjoyed the preponderance of economic and political power in the world, but starting with
Europe, Japan and the other “Four Tigers” of Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore)
and moving eventually to lower wage countries such as India and Communist China (that had reformed
its economy but not its government), other countries were a competitive threat. Some of our own corporations moved abroad to take advantage of cheap labor and lack of regulation, a trend that continues.
Other problems were more self-inflicted. In most years the nation spent more than it received in taxes,
causing deficits that each year increased the national debt. Also, each year after 1974 the country ran an
increasing deficit in its balance of payments with other nations. Starting with oil, the deficit soon included manufacturing and other inventory, making us a “debtor nation” for the first time in decades. To
pay for the in-balance, our government had to sell the debt not just to ourselves but to other nations.
Even our households increasingly relied on debt to support their accustomed standard of living. As
workers lost jobs to foreign competition and new technologies and the credit line was stretched, the
economy began to create a growing disparity between the wealthy and ordinary Americans. Some believed that the “American Dream” was in danger.
In such times of unease many Americans looked for someone to blame.
Bush was the last president after Roosevelt whose adult life had been shaped by World War II. Despite
his weighty background and obvious ability, he suffered by comparison to his predecessor in defining
his goals to the American people, the “vision thing” as he called it.
Bush quickly ran into trouble with his pledge not to raise taxes. He had never been comfortable with
supply side economics, at one time in the primary against Ronald Reagan calling it “voodoo economics,” and he agreed to a tax increase when the deficit threatened to grow dramatically. Thereafter he
faced considerable opposition from his own party in fighting the slight recession that continued. The
most significant domestic legislation in his presidency was the “Americans with Disabilities Act” that
gave persons with many sorts of disabilities greater federal support.
On the world stage, Bush organized an international force to force Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army out of
Kuwait. Called the Gulf War or Desert Storm, the coalition won a swift victory over the overmatched
Iraqis with very few allied casualties. However, he declined to press the advantage into Baghdad itself
because he feared the problems that might arise from an occupation of the country. He hoped the Iraqi
people would get rid of Saddam Hussein on their own, a vain hope as it turned out.
He also ordered U.S. troops into Panama to apprehend President Manuel Noriega, a former ally, who
was later convicted on charges of smuggling drugs into the U.S. He also launched a humanitarian mission to Somalia when warring factions in their civil war used starvation as an instrument of policy. In
the western hemisphere, he originated the legislation to reduce tariffs called the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that was later signed into law by President Clinton.
Bush continued Reagan’s policies of negotiating with the Soviet Union and in 1991 signed the START
II treaty that continued the momentum of cutting the size of the great powers’ nuclear arsenals. And he
was the president of record when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed.
Bush won his party’s nomination over Pat Buchanan who emphasized cultural issues such as abortion
and school prayer in the campaign. The Democratic nomination eventually went to Arkansas Governor
Bill Clinton who won out over a host of candidates. A third heavyweight candidate, Texas billionaire
independent H. Ross Perot, threatened to take votes from both Bush and Clinton.
In the general election campaign, Bush campaigned on his successes in foreign affairs, which the public
evidently saw as less important after the end of the cold war. He also pointed out his service as a pilot in
the Pacific in WWII as contrasted with Clinton’s alleged draft dodging during Vietnam. Clinton bore
down on economic issues and the weakening position of the middle class. He said: “It’s the economy
stupid.”
Despite persistent doubts over Clinton’s sincerity as a family man, the voters chose him in what essentially was a three-way race. Clinton won a plurality and Bush attracted the lowest percentage of the vote
(37%) by a major party candidate since Alf Landon (36%) in 1936. Perot, who had campaigned chiefly
against NAFTA, finished with 19%. Those figures were similar to the vote in Wisconsin. The Village
and Town both voted for Bush.
1996
Few presidents in our history came from as unlikely background as Bill Clinton. But despite growing up
in a sometimes dysfunctional home in the remote town of Hope, Arkansas, Clinton excelled as a student,
eventually winning bachelor’s and law degrees and a Rhodes Scholarship. He became governor of Arkansas at age 32 and quickly moved into the limelight on the national stage. He was a natural politician
who could talk easily to ordinary people. He believed he had a special bond with black Americans and
joked sometimes that he was the first black president.
Clinton made two decisions early in his first term that, if nothing else, delayed action on his agenda that
included health care and welfare reform. The first was to militarize our humanitarian mission in Somalia started by President Bush, a move that backfired when two Blackhawk helicopters crashed in Mogadishu and our soldiers dragged through the streets. The second was the order to allow homosexual service men and women to serve in the armed forces if they did not identify themselves, the “Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell” policy. At the same time he endorsed a federal law call the Defense of Marriage Act that
defined marriage as between a man and a woman. He also, without any Republican support, signed the
Budget Reconciliation Act that raised the top income tax rates on the wealthy, dropped rates on those
near the bottom, reduced the tax on capital gains and mandated a balanced budget.
Other early actions included the signing of the NAFTA bill into law, an anti-crime bill that used federal
funds to put 100,000 new officers on the street around the country to combat growing crime, an act that
mandated unpaid leave to employees for family and medical reasons and the Brady Bill that restricted
ownership of hand guns. James Brady was President Reagan’s Press Secretary who was badly wounded
in the assassination attempt against Reagan. In 1993, his supporters began work on a comprehensive bill
to reform health care, called Hillary Care by detractors, that would cover all Americans and reduce
costs. This complicated bill was one of only a very few Clinton-sponsored bills that was defeated.
In the 1994 congressional elections voters sent enough new Republicans to Washington to put both the
house and senate into Republican hands, the first time that had happened in more than 40 years. Called
“The Contract with America” and managed by new House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the new
order represented a militant conservative set of principles and jeopardized Clinton’s chances of reelection in two years.
Clinton portrayed himself as a centrist Democrat and tacked toward the center, hoping to attract moderate Republicans and independents to his side. In fact, there was great contention between the two leaders that included two government shutdowns for lack of a congressional action. Remarkably, they did
agree on a new law that reformed the federal welfare system that placed a five year limit on benefits.
Clinton also helped organize NATO airstrikes against Bosnian Serbs who were killing Muslim Serbs in
Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities, the first time NATO had acted in combat. The air campaign ended
with a cease fire signed by the parties in Dayton, Ohio that ended the violence with an uneasy peace.
By this time our government had become well aware of a new Arab terrorist group known as Al Qaeda
that had been started by a Saudi named Osama bin Laden who objected to U.S. support for Arab dictatorships and Israel, and foreign military deployment in the Middle East. Bin-Laden’s group cut its teeth
in resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan and was beginning to develop a world strategy. Their first act
in the United States was the bombing of the U.S. Trade Center in New York City in 1993.
During his first term Clinton was dogged by rumors and investigations of marital infidelity and financial
malfeasance while governor of Arkansas. Though none of these allegations bore fruit, they, along with
policy setbacks, were thought to have damaged his reelection bid. Clinton, however, won his party’s
nomination easily as the Republicans fought amongst themselves through much of the primary season.
In the end, 75 year old Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, a moderate deal maker who was
pushed to the right in the primaries, defeated his top challengers, Pat Buchanan who again emphasized
social issues and publisher Steve Forbes who advocated a flat income tax. Three prominent Republicans
who might have run but didn’t were Colon Powell, Dick Chaney and Donald Rumsfeld. Ross Perot
hoped to improve on his strong showing as an independent four years earlier.
In the general election Clinton campaigned chiefly against Gingrich, who the polls indicated, had become unpopular, and dominated, winning over Dole by 9 percentage points with Perot third at only 8%.
of the popular vote. Wisconsin voted solidly for Clinton as did the Village. The Town voted for Dole.
2000
Clinton’s second term was marked by continuing struggle with the Republicans in congress although
they did agree on a bi-partisan bill to provide health care coverage for more children. The US now had
five separate health care systems, the employer-based plan, Medicaid, Medicare and the Veterans’ Administration, all covering separate constituencies. Another bipartisan compromise yielded the Balanced
Budget Act of 1997 that reduced the growth of federal spending while shoring up Social Security and
Medicare for the short term.
Clinton was greatly aided by the performance of the US economy that surged to new heights during his
administration’s two terms in office. Average growth increased from 2.5 % to 4.0%, inflation dropped
from 4.7% in the previous administration to 2.5 %, a record number of new jobs were created for any
administration, 92% of which were in the private sector, median income increased sharply for all quintile groups as the poverty rate fell and more Americans owned homes than ever before. Spurred by the
zippy performance in tech stocks and higher income tax rates, the stock markets set new records. Most
surprisingly, during the last three years of his presidency, the government finished in the black.
In foreign affairs, Clinton ordered additional air strikes to support the cease fire in Bosnia, then a successful campaign in support of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Though controversial, these interventions
to pacify the always-volatile Balkans were accomplished with few allied casualties. He visited Vietnam,
the first American president to do so after the war, and signed the US-China Act to continue the normalization of relations that had begun with President Nixon in 1972. In trying to build on the treaty between Israel and Egypt started by President Carter, he further pushed Israel and the Palestinians toward
an agreement in Oslo that ended in bitter failure at the last moment. He took a chance by sending a special envoy to bridge the differences between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland that ended. At
least temporarily, the violence that had bedeviled the area for hundreds of years.
In his second term Al Qaeda also stepped up its attacks against foreign targets, including US embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. The US also was hit at home by
a domestic terrorist when Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995,
killing 168. Clinton established a counter-terrorism office to deal with the new threat.
Clinton had largely put the ethical and moral questions that had dogged him behind him when, in early
1998, reports surfaced in the press about an alleged sexual relationship with Monica Lewinski, a young
White House intern. This complicated legal case was investigated by former Solicitor General and
judge Kenneth Starr who had started with the earlier cases and then went on to the Lewinski affair. His
report described the facts of the case and concluded that Clinton had lied under oath to cover up his involvement. The House of Representatives then voted to impeach (bring charges against) the president
who was tried by the Senate on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Despite a 55-45 Republican majority in the Senate, only 45 senators voted guilty on one charge and 50 on the other, far short of
the two thirds majority required for removal. Clinton thus became the second president (Andrew Johnson in 1865 was the first) to be impeached but not removed. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be
impeached. No president has been impeached and removed.
In the primaries, Vice President Al Gore, the front runner from the start, won over a number of challengers. His main opponent was former basketball star and New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley. On the
Republican side, George W. Bush, son of the former president George H.W. Bush and Governor of
Texas, defeated a long list of opponents that included Buchanan and Forbes again and also Arizona
Senator John McCain. Of the several minor candidates, the Green Party’s Ralph Nadar was most viable.
The general election campaign was fought by both candidates making proposals about what to do with
the budget surplus. Gore made the strategic decision to keep Clinton on the sidelines so as to avoid a
connection with scandal, despite Clinton’s popularity with many voters. Bush declared himself a
“compassionate conservative” and attacked Gore for Clinton’s tax policies and gun control advocacy.
The election was very even and hard fought and came down to the results from the state of Florida that
went back and forth during the count as did the TV networks that were covering the event. In the end
the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a lengthy dispute over which votes should be recounted by overruling
the Florida Supreme Court on the issue. The disputed votes were not recounted and Bush was declared
the winner of Florida and the nation. He became one of a only three candidates to that point to have
won the presidency without winning the popular vote, the others being Hayes (Republican) over Tilden
(Democrat) in 1876 and Harrison (Republican) over Cleveland (Democrat) in 1888. Wisconsin chose
Gore but the Village and Town were on the winning side with Bush.
2004
George W. Bush was the son of George Herbert Walker Bush. He had come to the presidency after a
career as a Texas oilman, campaign worker for his father, owner of the Texas Rangers Major League
Baseball Club and Governor of Texas. Although Republicans had seized control of both houses of congress, he had to deal from the start with the bitterness of Democrats who believed that he had probably
not won the office fair and square. He satisfied his conservative supporters by withdrawing U.S. support
for the Kyoto treaty on global warming that required nations to reduce their greenhouse gasses that had
been supported by President Clinton. He believed that zealous environmental restrictions would be bad
for the economy. He also announced his support for Republican plans to return most of the forecast
surpluses to the people and reduce the federal income tax rates for most people. The latter proposals
became law and are known as the Bush Tax Cuts.
Then, only seven months into his term Al Qaeda successfully carried out a “low tech, high concept” attack against the Twin Towers buildings in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D. C. that killed
more Americans than the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. President Bush quickly visited New York and
delivered a measured but defiant message to the terrorists that seemed to sum up the feelings of most
Americans and brought the country together in a spirit of patriotism. Later the 911 Commission the
president appointed to investigate the disaster concluded that our intelligence services had enough information to stop the attack but had failed to communicate with each other.
Since the attackers, mostly from Saudi Arabia, had received training at camps in Afghanistan, Bush
moved quickly to neutralize the camps by direct attacks and alliances with groups known as the Northern Alliance who struck at Al Qaeda’s ally the Taliban, a Muslim fundamentalist group then in control.
In only a few months the Taliban was driven from power and Al Qaeda’s camps rendered almost unusable, an impressive achievement by a small group of CIA and Special Forces operatives.
While a follow-up strategy in Afghanistan was being considered, Bush, influenced by advisors known
as “neo cons,” moved to define our interest more sharply in other nations problematic to U.S. interests.
In the “Axis of Evil” speech he called out Iraq, Iran (both big oil producers) and North Korea as dangers
to world peace. Bush decided on a campaign to oust Saddam Hussein as Iraqi president because of alleged stockpiling of “weapons of mass destruction,” principally chemical, biological, and alleged support by Hussein for Al Qaeda. After a spirited controversy, he received support from congress for the
campaign of “shock and awe” that rolled up Iraqi forces and arrived in Baghdad in short order. Hussein
was later tracked down, tried in an Iraqi court, and executed. Shortly afterwards, ,Bush proclaimed
“mission accomplished” aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
But problems soon developed. Iraq was rife with ethnic and religious rivalries and the main groups,
Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds fought each other and against the United States that tried to encourage a unity
government that would work to solve national problems. As the U.S. committed more troops to keeping
the peace, the situation in Afghanistan began to unravel for similar reasons. Soon we were involved in
two wars in which it was unclear how we could win or even what winning it would look like. Although
few at home questioned the Afghan operation, opponents sharply questioned whether Iraq ever had
weapons of mass destruction or if it had supported Al Qaeda, since credible evidence for neither was
ever found. The increased spending for the two wars combined with the Bush tax cuts eliminated the
surplus during his first year in office.
Beside the tax cuts Bush carried out a conservative domestic agenda, vetoing a bill that would have expanded increased health care coverage for children . But he also signed into law a bill that provided a
prescription drug benefit to Medicare recipients and another called No Child Left Behind that provided
federal leadership to improve educational achievement. Both of these were opposed by the conservative
wing of his party. He also favored a bill that prohibited a surgical procedure called “partial birth” abortion late in the term and vetoed a bill that would have increased the number of lines of stem cells supported by federal moneys. His immigration bill to provide a pathway for citizenship for undocumented
aliens was defeated in the senate. After 9/11 he favored the Patriot Act that gave the government more
tools to uncover presumed terrorists and approved a program to torture suspects to obtain information.
He was hurt politically when Enron, a deregulated Texas energy company run by a close friend, was
found to have unlawfully cheated its customers and inflated the stock price for its officers’ benefit.
In the election the Republicans again nominated George W. Bush over Arizona Senator John McCain
and others while Massachusetts Senator John Kerry emerged the victor in a crowded field of Democrats that included John Edwards of North Carolina, selected later as the vice presidential nominee. Despite an apparent lack of progress in the wars, President Bush’s popularity stayed reasonably high, especially after the capture of Saddam Hussein from a hole in the ground in December, 2003. And despite
increasing deficits, the economy continued to create some new jobs, albeit sometimes at lower pay.
During the campaign Kerry criticized Bush for failing to get international consensus for the Iraq invasion and for the seemingly slow progress of pacification in both wars. Kerry, whose wife was a billionaire heiress, was portrayed as a Massachusetts liberal and elitist who was out of touch with the aspirations of the American people. Both campaigns attempted to impugn each other’s military record, Bush
by reinterpreting Kerry’s Vietnam record as a decorated Naval officer operating a “swift boat” in the
Mekong Delta, and Kerry by calling attention to Bush’s alleged flight to safety in a Texas Air National
Guard unit that was not called to active service. Kerry had been active in a veterans’ anti-war group
when he returned from Vietnam.
Bush held on in a very close race that he sealed by winning Ohio in a late-night squeaker. The election
underscored the Republicans strength in the south and west while Democrats held strong in the northeast
and mid west. Wisconsin barely delivered for Kerry but the village and town remained with Bush.
2008
Bush began his second term with the Enron scandal back in the news as it reached the courts. In August
2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas with high winds and
drenching rains, killing more than 200 and causing more than one billion dollars in property and environmental damage. The greatest losses occurred in the City of New Orleans, a large part of which is
built below sea level, where federally built levees failed to hold back the storm surge from the gulf and
the swollen waters of the Mississippi River from the north. Though there were heroes, the federal government, by nearly every measure, failed in its responsibilities for prevention and relief. This hurt the
Bush administration but also seemed to convince some Americans that the feds couldn’t get anything
right.
Bush’s signature domestic effort in term two was his effort to partially privatize Social Security, a program dating from 1935, that provided income security to older Americans. Bush’s efforts failed and
Social Security remained a popular but expensive program that would eventually need major tinkering to
survive.
In the 2006 elections the Democrats regained control of both houses of congress and pushed to end the
war in Iraq. Shortly afterwards President Bush announced a new “surge” of troops under General David
Petraeus to be used to provide more security in Baghdad and to win the allegiance of Sunnis in western
Iraq who were being courted by a new Al Qaeda presence. The new congress did not support the surge
but neither did it deny funds for its implementation. Whatever its wisdom, the surge did help stanch the
violence and give Iraquis a longer opportunity to resolve their differences.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban recovered from its early losses and renewed its attacks on the U.S. and
thirty country coalition forces and those of the new U.S.-backed Afghan government headed by Harmed
Karzai. Some of the fighting inevitably spilled over into neighboring Pakistan, a conflicted ally of the
United States to which many people thought Osama Bin Laden had escaped following the battle of Tora
Bora earlier in the war. In sum, despite efforts to build up an independent Afghanistan that would suppress the Taliban and keep Al Qaeda out, progress came very slowly if at all in a country that in its long
history had never been successfully occupied.
In addition, the economy, that had been fairly positive for Bush in the first term, began to show signs of
stress with the biggest shocks starting in late 2007 starting with a collapse of a bubble in the mortgage
industry.. For several decades housing values had trended mostly upward with the implicit assumption
that “your home can never lose its value.” Now people with little chance of making payments were offered mortgages that companies “bundled” together with other mortgages into instruments that were then
sold separately in the securities markets. When it became apparent that some of the debt was bad and no
one actually knew how to value these securities, the markets began to unravel and so did some of the
nation’s largest brokerages and banks that were heavily invested. Many homes were foreclosed and
prices plummeted, sharply reducing the equity that many families had in their homes. Stagnant wages
and job losses soon added to the downward spiral. Despite a stimulus package and a tax rebate promoted by the president, the great investment house Lehman Brothers and the insurance giant A.I.G. collapsed. As the election loomed it was clear the economy would join the war in Iraq as a major campaign
issue.
Bush’s popularity was at a low point, but the Republicans did not lack for candidates to replace him.
The field was led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former naval aviator who had endured more
than five years of captivity in North Vietnam after his plane had been shot down. His major opponents
were former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite of social and religious conservatives, Mayor
Rudi Guiliani of New York who had won accolades for his assurances after 9-11 and Governor Mitt
Romney of Massachusetts who had sponsored comprehensive health care reform in his state. Former
governor of Wisconsin Tommy Thompson competed in early primaries. McCain was well known in
Wisconsin for his cooperation with Democratic Senator Russ Feingold to reform campaign finance laws.
The Democrats also began with a large field, starting with Hillary Clinton who had been elected to the
U. S. Senate from New York, former Senator John Edwards (again), Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, and
freshman Senator Barak Obama of Illinois. Eventually, the campaign became a contest between Clinton and Obama that dragged on until it came to an exhausted finish with Obama’s victory.
McCain was the son of an admiral and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. When he
started the 2008 presidential campaign he had already served two terms in the house and had been
elected four times to the senate. He was married to a wealthy heiress that, as with some other candidates, opened him up to charges that he didn’t understand the average man. He had always considered
himself a “maverick” who voted his conscience over his party but during the primary season he had been
pushed to the right. He ran a campaign based on the issues, having voted for the Bush stimulus package
(as did Senators Obama and Biden) and a defense of his vote to invade Iraq and the surge that followed
later. When his poll numbers were weak he gambled by selecting Alaska Governor Sara Palin as his
running mate, move that charged up his conservative base but likely hurt him with independent voters.
Though effective as a public speaker, Palin failed the test of credibility on foreign policy issues.
Barak Obama was the son of a black student from Kenya and white (mostly English) mother from Kansas, and a boyhood residency in Hawaii and Indonesia that gave him experiences different from every
other candidate who has ever sought the office. He had excelled academically at Yale and had worked
on Wall Street, as a community organizer in Chicago and as a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He also served in the Illinois legislature before being elected to the U.S. Senate
where, after only two years, he began his campaign for the presidency. An accomplished orator, he inspired some voters with the rhetoric of hope and change.
In an election season in which voters were not inclined to respect the experiences of those who had been
in Washington for a long time, Obama might well have profited from his lack of top-level experience.
His unusual background, that likely would have been the kiss of death in most campaigns, could be seen
as an asset in a changing country beset by economic problems long in coming and difficult to solve and
two foreign wars that seemed as though they might last forever. He had also voted against sending
troops into Iraq, a position taken by no other major candidate, that may further have won favor with voters. Obama also made a strong and successful attempt to connect with younger voters and ran a nimble
campaign that utilized social media and the internet. Obama promised to fix the economy, end the Iraq
war and persuade the congress to enact a health care bill. McCain promised a conservative program..
The election resulted in a big victory for Obama in the nation and state. Village and town voters, however, picked John McCain.
2012
By now there were other trends that had come front and center. Almost before the ink had dried on the
new constitution in 1787. the founding fathers had divided themselves into two political factions that
disagreed vehemently on how their new document should be interpreted. The Washington/Hamilton
party, called the Federalists, and the Jefferson/Madison party, called the Republicans (not today’s party),
accused the other of undermining the spirit of the revolution that created our independence. Both parties
hired journalists to interpret events to their employer’s advantage and to get personal and negative.
Some of the issues on which they disagreed, such as slavery were eventually solved, but others, such as
the relationship between state and federal governments, the role of the president and power of the government v. the rights of the people are still with us today. They are embedded in the system the founding fathers created. And they will never go away.
By 2012 two contrasting narratives of recent American history were apparent in American politics. The
first was, that as the country became larger and more diverse it was natural and inevitable that the federal government would take a greater role in the life of the nation, through regulation of the economy, a
stronger executive and democratization of peoples’ rights through extension of voting rights and several
supreme court decisions. World Wars I and II and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and 70’s contributed greatly to these developments. This vision played out most obviously in the presidencies of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson when federal power increased as did presidential power and programs were employed that added to individuals’ civil rights
and economic security. Proponents of this ideal regarded these changes as inherently good and a vindication of the founding fathers’ grand experiment in government.
A countervailing view has been present in American politics, but not always equally. Certainly by the
Lyndon Johnson presidency (1963-1968) the idea that the great liberal programs such as Social Security
and Medicare, the regulatory agencies such as the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal
Trade Commission, and the need for a large defense establishment to confront our enemies abroad were
accepted except at the margins where opposition was noisy but mostly ineffective. Both political parties
had moderate centers and much of what was decided was through compromise.
It wasn’t until the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) that another narrative achieved some measure of equality with the first. In this view the development of bigger, and some would say, more intrusive, government was harmful to the nation, that we are a nation of individuals whose spirit and ambition is being killed by laws and regulations from a overbearing government. The conservative right,
nearly always historically opposed to the liberal agenda, now began to fight back against high taxes levied by the need to fund the entitlement programs and a big military. They generally believe that the
founders would be disheartened by the growth of government. The story of the last thirty years or so is
that of the successful effort of the Reagan right to compete seriously with the moderate left of the Democratic party. Both sides however, have adopted the mantra of deregulation and smaller government.
Since the early 1990’s the two sides have been at more less equal strength. Added to this has been the
growth of party and campaign operatives to spin the news and opponent’s records, a 24 hour news cycle
that requires raw meat every few hours. For candidates this means continuous campaigning fed by an
unprecedented supply of money from corporations, unions, wealthy individuals and political action committees that are legally able to spend almost unlimited money. This followed a Supreme Court decision
in 2010 (Citizens United) that equated free speech rights with political contributions.
Whereas in the past social questions were confined to a few great moral issues such as slavery, women’s
suffrage and prohibition of alcohol, in recent years more “hot button” issues have divided the electorate,
inflaming zealots on both sides. These include gay marriage that recently joined old standbys gun
rights, religion in public life, evolution and, since 1973, abortion rights.
Barak Obama took office after an election that returned Democratic majorities in both houses of congress. What he did not have was unity in his own party that contained a number of legislators who were
conservative on various issues. The Democrats also lacked the sixty vote supermajority in the senate
that enabled the Republicans to filibuster many of his initiatives. What he hoped was a mandate for
change turned into a slog in which everything he attempted was questioned and contested. The Republicans were heavily influenced by a new phenomenon in politics called the Tea Party, loose but well
funded groups on the far right of the political spectrum that promoted small government, lower taxes and
the conservative view of most social issues. The Tea Party also rejected compromise with Democrats
and the dwindling band of moderate Republican legislators. In 2010 Republicans won back the House.
Still, Obama was able to persuade congress to pass an important stimulus plan in 2009 that provided
funds to states to forestall cuts to education and public safety and also a small amount of infrastructure
construction and repair. Congress passed laws to buy back some troubled real estate loans, subsidize
owners of old gas-guzzling cars to trade them in for new ones (Cash for Clunkers) and other energy
credits, and gave credits to Chrysler and General Motors to avert their bankruptcy. Congress also
passed a controversial bill, called Dodd-Frank, that provided new rules to regulate the financial services
industry by curbing reckless speculation in the markets and creating a new bureau to protect consumers
from shady and deceptive practices. Critics charged that the measures would stifle innovation and retard
job growth.
Honoring a campaign pledge, Obama also unsuccessfully sought controversial new regulations to control global warming and bring the nation into compliance with the Kyoto Treaty of 1997. He also
pressed for more subsidies for sustainable “green energy.”Events soon overtook his environmental
agenda when a deep water oil rig operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico failed and gushed oil uncontrollably into the water for five months until it was finally capped in September, 2010. This tragic accident
set off a political and legal battle over who was responsible for the accident and for the cleanup. By
2011 the worst of the spill had cleaned up, responsibility had been determined and rules put in place to
compensate the victims and hopefully prevent further such accidents.
Other issues were his promise to close the Guantanamo prison in Cuba to try the suspected terrorists
held there in U.S. civil courts that failed when congress refused to appropriate the money to carry out his
order, and his ending of the controversial “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy relating to gays in the military
that began with President Clinton. Soon after, Obama agreed to support gay marriage.
However, the greatest political achievement of his first term was passage of a comprehensive health care
law that would cover virtually all Americans, a concept that had first been broached during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt and again by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Lyndon Johnson,
Nixon, Kennedy and Clinton. The new law retained private doctors, hospitals and insurance companies
but put them under increased federal regulation and required all citizens to purchase insurance. The controversial “mandate” was necessary to keep people from going without insurance until they needed it.
The law was passed without Republican support and created a firestorm of opposition from those who
claimed it to be “socialized medicine” and resulted in a majority of state attorneys general challenging
the law on constitutional grounds. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed its constitutionality.
In foreign affairs, Obama tried to gain support in the middle east by smiling on a series of uprisings
known as the “Arab Spring” that ousted, or attempted to oust, reactionary leaders in Tunisia, Egypt,
Libya and Syria. For his outreach he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. In the summer of 2012 it appeared that Tunisia and Libya (with the help of U.S, and NATO air power,) had succeeded in ridding the
country of the old regime. Egypt was a different case in which the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood gained
legitimacy and some power, the effect of which was uncertain for the interests of the United States.
Syria approached civil war and remained unsettled as did much of the middle east.
Obama also took steps to bring nuclear materials from the old Soviet Union under control and signed a
new START treaty with its successor state Russia. Like the U.S., Russia retains many missiles.
As he had promised, he ended the U.S. combat role in Iraq at the end of 2011 and announced that, after a
controversial “surge,” operations would end in Afghanistan, by now the longest war in our history, by
2014. As with Vietnam, both wars have illustrated the perils of an expeditionary war against a determined insurgency. In the summer of 2012 it is not clear what the future of Iraq and Afghanistan will be.
In May of 2012 he announced the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a daring commando
raid into Pakistan carried out by US Navy seals.
Obama has addressed the perennial problems with Iran and North Korea as well as Syria with a regime
of sanctions that he has urged other nations including Russia and China to support.
In July, the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney for president. Romney, the son of former Michigan
Governor George Romney, is the first Mormon to be nominated by a major party. Romney is a successful former head of a private equity firm who is touting his experience in the business world as his primary qualification for the presidency. He also served as the coordinator of Salt Lake City’s Winter
Olympic Games in 2002 and as a one term governor of Massachusetts during which he sponsored a
comprehensive health care plan for his state. He won out over a large and disorderly field that included
Texas Governor Rick Perry, U.S. Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, businessman Herman Cain, perennial candidate Ron Paul, and the last challenger to remain in
the race, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. By September, Romney and Obama, supported by “super pacs”, issue advocacy groups that can raise money for candidates with minimal disclosure, were raising vast sums of money for the last months of the campaign.
As we approach the elections both candidates are staking out their positions and looking for a winning
strategy. Obama is touting his successes in ending the wars, eliminating Bin Laden and other key Al
Qaeda leaders, some with the increasingly sophisticated drone technology, moving the country toward a
cleaner and cheaper energy future, and, despite a recalcitrant Republican party, keeping the nation from
falling into a deeper economic hole. He wants to solve our short term economic weakness (caused by
the cyclical failure of the economy) before tackling our long term structural weakness (caused by our
lack of fiscal discipline both in the government and private sectors and our reliance on foreign governments to make up the difference.) It is very difficult to do both of these things at once. Thus, we find
Obama trying to keep spending demand up by using tax policy to raise incomes of low and middle income Americans and digging in his heels to forestall cuts in the expensive entitlement programs Social
Security and Medicare, both of which the Republicans have sought to privatize. He also believes that
his signature domestic achievement to date, called Obamacare by critics, will reduce health care spending in the long run without compromising quality.
Romney criticizes Obama for not having “solved” long term problems such as those posed by Iran and
North Korea and for not dealing forthrightly with the challenges from China, now both our largest international competitor and creditor. He has proposed to stimulate the economy by making the Bush tax
cuts permanent and privatizing Medicare, a plan advanced by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan of
Janesville whom he selected as his vice presidential running mate. He says Obamacare will cost more
than current practices and contribute to a larger public debt. Regarding health care he is running against
the program that he sponsored as Massachusetts governor. He promises to repeal Obamacare. Though
not fully spelled out in detail, his program would cut taxes and reduce the size of the federal government. In sum he would deal with the cyclical problem by cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and the
structural problem by reducing government spending.
The campaign is being influenced by the fiscal and political situation that looms ahead in January, 2013
regardless of who wins the presidency or the congress. During Obama’s tenure to date, the contest over
taxing and spending has played out most dramatically as the country has approached its statutory debt
limit, the point beyond which the country cannot pay its bills (or many of them) without congressional
action. When the 112th Congress recessed in the spring of 2012, it left the country facing a “fiscal cliff”
in which all the Bush tax cuts, not just those on the wealthy, would expire at once along with a reduction
in the payroll tax that finances Social Security and Medicare. Capital gains taxes would also increase
and preferential tax treatment of dividends would cease. In sum, taxes would increase for most Americans. The tax increases would be paired with large spending cuts in most discretionary areas including
defense (called “sequestration”) but Social Security and Medicare would be exempt. No one can predict
with certainty, though many are trying, what the effect on the economy will be.
Congress can avert this scenario in several ways, acting on long term taxing and spending policies before they take effect, passing a resolution to keep taxing and spending policies for a short period
(“kicking the can down the road”) or some combination of the two. Some observers are suggesting another look at one or more of the various commissions and committees that had studied the matter in the
past years but failed to gain traction. The most comprehensive fix was offered by the Simpson-Bowles
Commission, a bi-partisan group created by President Obama that cut some taxes, raised others and did
what no one else including the two candidates has done, tackle the tangle of deductions and exemptions
that complicate the current tax code, that is necessary for comprehensive reform. Simpson-Bowles also
took on spending and recommended cuts in defense and other discretionary spending as well as entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. Obama did not rise to the defense of Simpson-Bowles and
Congressman Ryan, one the commission’s most prominent members, did not vote for it. The result was
that its recommendations were still-born and it was never sent to congress for action for an up or down
vote as intended. Some pundits suggest that Simpson-Bowles, or some portions of it, might be resurrected and found palatable to both sides as the crisis draws near. One factor limiting compromise might
be the pledge that 238 congressmen and 41 senators, nearly all Republicans, have taken a pledge never
to raise taxes.
Just recently Congress kicked the can down the road again by passing a continuing resolution permitting
government funding at old levels that will avert the fiscal cliff until shortly after the election when the
tension will likely start over again.
In Wisconsin, the election is being fought in the wake of the polarizing dispute between partisans loyal
to Governor Scott Walker who won both the election in 2010 and an attempt to recall him in 2012 and
his critics who accused him of reversing progress in an historically progressive state. Because the two
sides are relatively equal pundits consider the presidential election in the state a toss-up. In September
Obama edged ahead in several polls but Romney’s strong performance in the first debate encouraged his
followers.
As is the case around the country, Palmyra voters will have another chance to sort through the issues and
candidates and make their choice on election day as they have done since 1848. They may add to the
Democrat or Republican narrative of history. Or will they again contribute to a divided government
with scant chance for compromise. Will they choose Barak Obama or Mitt Romney? Will they pick a
winner or a loser?
Information for this article was taken from The Wisconsin Cartographers’ Guild, Wisconsin Past and
Present, a Historical Atlas, Madison, WI, 1997, Wisconsin Blue Books, Wisconsin Historical Society,
That’s the Ticket: A Parade of Presidential Elections, Madison, WI 2009, the Palmyra Enterprise and
various internet sites.
Written by Tom Stanley. The author is solely responsible for the accuracy and interpretation of the
facts.
Presidential Election Results, 1848-2012
Wins are voting with the national winner, losses are voting against
Year
National
Party
Winner
State
Winner
1848
Taylor
Whig
Cass
1852
Pierce
D
Pierce
1856
Buchanan
D
Fremont
W L
Village
W L
Winner
Town
W L
Winner
x
Village and
x
Town votes
x
were not
x
x
1860
Lincoln
R
Lincoln
x
Lincoln
x
separated
1864
Lincoln
R
Lincoln
x
Lincoln
x
until 1900.
x
x
1868
Grant
R
Grant
x
Grant
x
x
1872
Grant
R
Grant
x
Grant
x
1876
Hayes
R
Hayes
x
Hayes
x
1880
Garfield
R
Garfield
x
Garfield
x
1884
Cleveland
D
Blaine (R)
1888
B. Harrison
R
B. Harrison
x
B. Harrison
1892
Cleveland
D
Cleveland
x
B. Harrison
1896
McKinley
R
McKinley
x
McKinley
1900
McKinley
R
McKinley
1904
T. Roosevelt
R
T. Roosevelt
x
x
T. Roosevelt
x
x
T. Roosevelt
x
x
1908
Taft
R
Taft
x
Taft
x
Taft
x
x
x
x
x
Blaine (R)
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
McKinley
McKinley
L
Town
X
Taft
X
X
Hughes
X
X
Harding
X
X
Coolidge
X
X
Hoover
X
National
P
State
W L Village
1912
Wilson
D
Wilson
X
1916
Wilson
D
Hughes
1920
Harding
R
Harding
1924
Coolidge
R
La Follette
1928
Hoover
R
Hoover
X
Hoover
1932
F. Roosevelt
D
F. Roosevelt X
Hoover
1936
F. Roosevelt
D
F. Roosevelt X
F. Roosevelt
1940
F. Roosevelt
D
F. Roosevelt X
Willkie
X
Willkie
X
1944
F. Roosevelt
D
Dewey
X Dewey
X
Dewey
X
1948
Truman
D
Truman
X
Dewey
X
Dewey
X
1952
Eisenhower
R
Eisenhower
X
Eisenhower
X
Eisenhower
X
1956
Eisenhower
R
Eisenhower
X
Eisenhower
X
Eisenhower
X
1960
Kennedy
D
Nixon
X
Nixon
X
1964
L. Johnson
D
L. Johnson
X
L. Johnson
X
Goldwater
X
1968
Nixon
R
Nixon
X
Nixon
X
Nixon
X
1972
Nixon
R
Nixon
X
Nixon
X
Nixon
X
1976
Carter
D
Carter
X
Carter
X
Ford
1980
Reagan
R
Reagan
X
Reagan
X
Reagan
X
1984
Reagan
R
Reagan
X
Reagan
X
Reagan
X
1988
G.H.W. Bush R
Dukakis
1992
Clinton
D
Clinton
X
G.H.W. Bush
1996
Clinton
D
Clinton
X
Clinton
2000
G.W. Bush
R
Gore
2004
G.W. Bush
R
Kerry
2008
Obama
D
Obama
2012
?
Totals
Since 1856
W
Taft
X Wilson
X
Harding
X Coolidge
X Nixon
X Dukakis
X
W
L
Y
Hoover
X
F. Roosevelt X
X
G.H.W Bush
X
X
X
G.H.W. Bush
X
X
Dole
X
X G.W. Bush
X
G.W. Bush
X
X G.W. Bush
X
G.W. Bush
X
X
McCain
X
X
McCain
X
14
30 9
28 11
25
NOTES
In this article we have assumed that Palmyrans in both village and town voted for the Republican candidate in every election after 1856, when the first Republican (John C. Fremont) appeared on the ticket,
and 1900 when the votes of the Village and Town were first reported separately. This is because of the
overwhelming majorities in the Jefferson county vote during this period. From 1848 to 1860 Palmyra
votes were included only in the Jefferson County tally
1848— the first presidential election for Wisconsin residents. The national winner was Zachary Taylor
from the Whig Party, a national party that fell apart before the Civil War. Taylor died in office and was
succeeded by Millard Fillmore
1856—the first election that featured a Republican candidate, John C. Fremont
1860—the Republicans were a north-only party with no support in the south. Lincoln outpolled the
northern Democratic candidate, Stephen A. Douglas, and two others to claim the victory with only 39%
of the popular vote nationwide
1876—After a long stalemate in the electoral college, a special commission awarded the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes after he promised to withdraw the remaining federal troops from the south
1880—James Garfield was assassinated soon after taking office and was succeeded by Chester Arthur
1992—Grover Cleveland became the first (and so far only) candidate to win the presidency a second
time after losing an election in between
1900—William McKinley was assassinated during his second term and was succeeded by Theodore
Roosevelt
1912—Theodore Roosevelt failed in his comeback attempt with his new party called the “Bull Moose.”
1924—Robert La Follette of Wisconsin ran as a Progressive third party candidate and polled 16 % of the
popular vote. The losing Democrat that year was John Davis
1940—Franklin Roosevelt became the first president to exceed the traditional two term maximum when
he won a third term. He was elected to a fourth term in 1944
1945—Franklin Roosevelt died in office and was succeeded by Harry Truman who won election in 1948
1960—John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and was succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson
1976—Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 and was succeeded by Gerald Ford who lost to Jimmy Carter in
1976
1992—H. Ross Perot won nearly 20% of the popular vote (but no electoral votes) as a third party candidate. He did less well in 1996
2000—After a long period of uncertainty following the election, George W. Bush won the electoral vote
when the U.S. Supreme Court terminated a recount underway in Florida.