Podcast
Listen to the acclaimed presidential historian Robert Dallek comment on the 2008 election. Two weeks before the election, Dr. Dallek discusses the historic nature of this and past elections.
2008 Election Blog
Commentary by Robert Dallek, Ph.D.
October 22, 2008
Watershed Elections
With only days left in the 2008 presidential campaign, it is not too soon to speculate on how historians will see the current election. I am of a mind to believe that the current fight for the White House will be remembered as a watershed election – a contest that changed the country’s direction for the foreseeable future.
I can think of several other elections that enjoy this distinction. The election of 1800 pitted Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic Republicans against John Adams and the Federalists. It was the first time in the country’s history that a presidential election produced a change from one party to another. Jefferson, who won, understood that this was a landmark moment in the nation’s history. He declared in his Inaugural speech: “We are all Federalists. We are all Republicans.” In brief, he was emphasizing that America’s democracy was built on the proposition that a nonviolent constitutional shift in party control was a central feature of the new republic.
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln’s election marked the first presidential victory of the modern Republican Party. Moreover, it represented the triumph of the country’s anti-slavery forces and all that could mean for the future of the Peculiar Institution. Because Lincoln’s election seemed to promise the ultimate abolition of slavery, eleven southern slave states seceded from the Union and provoked a civil war between North and South over the preservation of the Union.
The 1912 election was another game changer. Woodrow Wilson was only the second Democrat to win the White House since the Civil War. Wilson’s victory over the other candidates – Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft – marked the triumph of progressivism over conservative business control of the country’s national economy. During eight years under Wilson, the Congress would enact a series of domestic reforms, including reductions in the protective tariff and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System that manages the currency and banks to this day.
The Great Depression made 1932 another landmark moment in presidential history. Franklin Roosevelt’s defeat of Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover opened the way to the New Deal. Roosevelt’s reforms amounted to the greatest expansion of federal power in the country’s history. A variety of social and economic programs provided a safety net for all Americans. These programs included the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal conservation program that made electricity cheaper and more widely available; the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), regulating the stock markets; unemployment insurance to help wage earners who lost their jobs; Social Security, guaranteeing old-age pensions; a Wages and Hours law, setting minimum pay and maximum hours for any worker engaged in interstate commerce; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, insuring bank accounts up to $10,000 then and $250,000. The Roosevelt New Deal signified the humanization of the American industrial system that has helped stabilize U.S. capitalism.
2008: A Historic Election
The current election is likely to be seen as producing another major shift in the country’s economic, social, and political life. Both Senator Barack Obama, the clear front runner three weeks before the election, and Senator John McCain are promising significant change. Obama, the first African American to run on a major party ticket, and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the first woman to be a Republican candidate for the vice presidency, demonstrates that the election has already broken substantial new ground.
The financial and economic crisis the country is currently passing through also foretells greater regulation of banks and financial markets than in the past. The likelihood of some kind of federal health insurance measure to help 46 million uninsured and millions of underinsured Americans would alone mark a major social reform that will resonate in history.
There were other elections that brought a change in national developments but none quite as decisive as 1800, 1860, 1912, 1932, and now, I believe, 2008. No one can say for sure what future historians will say about the current election but it certainly has the feel of an important moment in U.S. history.
Critical Thinking Questions
- Analyze What do the watershed elections have in common?
- Compare and Contrast Compare and contrast the 2008 election with the other elections mentioned in the article.
- Form and Support Opinions Will the 2008 presidential election turn out to be historically significant? Is it already? Support your answer.