[This has been a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the first nutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago was certainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 election contexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]
For one of
the
most successful third-party candidates in American history, on three ways
to analyze why such candidates exist.
1)
Splintered Parties: Dissatisfied with the increasingly
conservative, isolationist, pro-business and anti-labor stance of the
Republican Party in the 1920s, Robert
“Fighting Bob” La Follette, the most famous political figure in the history of Wisconsin
and an ardent supporter of labor unions, progressive taxation and wealth
distribution, and other liberal causes, decided not long before the 1924
campaign began to leave that party and form his own, the
Progressive Party. Many of the most successful third-party candidates and
campaigns in American history have started in similar ways, with a schism
in one of the major parties; I’d say that defines these particular
third-party candidates as well-established political players, part of the
existing system, yet with a new perspective that challenges that system’s
current duality and offers voters a somewhat familiar but still new alternative.
2)
Self-Confidence: While third parties are thus
generally responding to evolving realities within the existing parties and
system, as well as to voting blocs that are no longer represented by those
parties, they have also almost always depended on a famous individual around
whom the new party can be organized. And from William
Jennings Bryan to Teddy
Roosevelt to Ross
Perot to Ralph
Nader to RFK Jr. (not providing a hyperlink for that mofo, sorry), most of
those individuals have been, shall we say, very fond of the sound of their own
voices. It’s understandable—to run a campaign that challenges the major parties
is an act of striking self-confidence, if not indeed hubris. Quite likely that’s
necessary in our political system; but at the same time, it can make these
third parties dangerously close to cults of personality. From what I can tell,
La Follette was genuinely more focused on the people than himself; but it’s
always a fine line with third-party candidates, is what I’m saying.
3)
Setting the Stage: However we parse their
motivations, there’s no doubt that third parties can have a real effect on
elections, and at times that effect has been a very frustrating one (looking at
you, Ralph). It doesn’t seem like La Follette’s presence in 1924 necessarily did
so, since he probably gained votes from more liberal voters in both parties. And
in any case, there’s another, longer-term potential effect of third-party
campaigns, especially those that reach a certain level of success as La Follette’s
definitely did: they can help reshape political conversations, setting the
stage for future evolutions of the parties and the system as well as the nation
overall. It was nearly a decade before Franklin Roosevelt would begin creating
the New Deal, and of course the onset of the Great Depression was the most
significant factor in that sweeping transformation of American politics and
society. But I would argue that La Follette’s campaign proved that there was a substantial
public appetite for (among other reforms) support for workers and taking care
of the most vulnerable, all of which helped make the New Deal possible.
Last 1924
contexts tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other crazy elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this one
you’d share?
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