History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (15 page)

Still, the size and scope of the national liability in the twenty-first century might have tested even Hamilton’s resolve. In 2009, when the presidency transferred from George W. Bush to Barack H. Obama, the U.S. debt stood at 53 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, the highest relative percentage since the Second World War.
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In 2012, the U.S. national debt reached $15 trillion. To place that number in perspective, it is equal to spending $1 million per day, every day, for 41,096 years.

10
. BOTH HAVE BEEN COMPARED TO HITLER

During an election year in the Bundesrepublik, German Minister of Justice Herta Däubler-Gmelin criticized U.S. President George W. Bush for aggressively seeking military involvement in Iraq. “Bush wants to divert attention from domestic difficulties,” the minister hypothesized. “That is a popular method. Hitler has done that before.”
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Although it is a rare exercise among elected officials (especially in Germany), in the armchair sport of demonization, the Hitler card is a convenient play. Among other undeserving recipients, many recent U.S. presidents have been targets in the tasteless game of Füehrer tag, Bush and Obama included.

Critical of Bush’s aggressive foreign policy in 2003, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation claimed “Bush is a new Hitler.” In 2006, eccentric Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez referred to Bush as “the devil” during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. For a brief period in 2010, the North Iowa Tea Party placed images of Hitler, Obama, and Vladimir Lenin on a billboard with the caption: “Radical leaders prey on the fearful and naïve.” Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh made several such analogies of the Obama administration, including the statement, “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.”
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The tenor of such accusations depends on the ear of the beholder. Those prone to hyperbole might invite such comparisons. Fortunately, all of the above Hitler analogies experienced widespread condemnation soon after they were uttered. In productive public discourse, most understand that there is a wide chasm between critique and circus.

Talk show sensationalist Glenn Beck made so many Hitler references about the federal government during both administrations, comedian Lewis Black surmised that Beck had “Nazi Tourette’s.”

In the fight to gain a decisive edge, political parties invented an ever-widening array of tactics to put their candidate ahead. Massive parades and rallies emerged in the late 1820s. Succinct campaign slogans emerged in the 1840s. Promotional novelties appeared with frequency in the mid-1880s, maturing into a wholesale gadget, button, and banner industry by the end of the century.

One of the most striking innovations was to have candidates campaign for themselves. For generations, most Americans distrusted anyone who appeared hungry for power. Accordingly, presidential contenders were silent runners, cautious even when their names surfaced for nomination. A shift occurred in the 1880s, when personal “stumping” grew in earnest, mostly from a candidate’s front porch. Wanting to see their man in person, thousands visited James Garfield at his Mentor, Ohio, home. Two races later, a total of two hundred thousand called on Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. Noting the power of personal contact, Nebraskan William Jennings Bryan conceived the mobile campaign in 1896, riding the railroads for an astounding eighteen thousand miles, the equivalent of crossing the continental United States six times.
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With bigger efforts came greater expenses. In the 1860s, major parties ran successful campaigns on one hundred thousand dollars or less. In 1896, William McKinley’s war chest filled to an unprecedented three million dollars. Budgets exploded with the introduction of television in the 1960s and the expanding role of caucuses and primaries in the 1970s. Even with adjusted dollars, John Kerry spent more money in his losing bid in 2008 than Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Harry Truman did in ten successful races combined.

Major contenders launched their campaigns from cyberspace for the first time in the 2008 race. In their innovation, they were simply following an old pattern. From punch bowls and parades, to conventions and smoke-filled rooms, to yard-cards and airtime, the race has often gone to the most inventive.

Following are several examples of those who persevered by design. Ranked by percentage differences in electoral votes, these are the ten closest presidential contests in U.S. history.
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1
. 1800

To keep peace among the family of states, article 2, section 1 of the Constitution mandated that electors had to choose two persons “of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves.” There was no stipulation on which vote would be for president or vice president; whoever finished second would be offered the deputy position. The framers did not foresee the rise of political parties and, with them, the invention of “running mates.”

Germinating in the political pool were two embryonic, diametrically opposed factions. The Federalist cell endorsed the wealthy, a strong central government, and commercial ties with Britain. Their antibodies were the comparatively egalitarian Democratic-Republicans, who praised agrarianism, a subdued federal government, and the Revolutionary ally in France.

In the exceedingly malicious race of 1800 (see C
ONTROVERSIAL
E
LECTIONS
), the Federalists ran President John Adams and Revolutionary War veteran Charles Cotesworth Pinckney against the Democratic-Republicans’ Thomas Jefferson and New York state attorney Aaron Burr. In a process that lasted from summer into late autumn (Election Day was not established until 1845), the tide shifted back and forth, until South Carolina, the last state to submit its results, cast all eight electors for Jefferson and Burr.

As president of the Senate, Jefferson himself opened the electoral certificates in February 1801 to confirm what had been known for quite some time. Both he and Burr were tied at seventy-three votes, sending the decision into the House of Representatives, where partisans for the defeated Adams were waiting.

Each state in the House was to cast one vote. Whichever candidate received the majority would become president. It was common knowledge that Burr was the inferior candidate in rank, but anti-Jefferson camps saw an opportunity to embarrass the “Sage of Monticello.” Six states went with Burr, eight with Jefferson, with Maryland and Vermont unable to decide.

And so it went, for seven days and thirty-five ballots, all with the same result. There appeared to be no end to the deadlock, and the Constitution did not permit a repeat election. Jeffersonians suspected the Federalists of scheming to keep Adams as president, and others wondered if Adams would proclaim himself president for life. The concern was credible enough to prompt two pro-Jefferson states to organize their militias.
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Sincerely fearing a civil war, and for the “political existence” of his small and defenseless state, Delaware’s lone representative, James Bayard, switched his vote to Jefferson. Both sides criticized the long and arduous wait, but they accepted the final outcome, allowing the fourteen-year-old United States to survive yet another crisis in its troubled pubescence.
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The postelection fiasco of 1800 prompted the introduction of the Twelfth Amendment, mandating electors to specify their choice for chief executive and vice president. Several controversies surrounded the law’s wording, and a final version was not ratified until 1804.

2
. 1876

More than eight million men voted, and it all came down to three states, two candidates, and one Supreme Court justice. At first, the election looked as if it belonged to Governor Samuel Tilden of New York. After eight years of the corrupt and ineffective Grant administration, the Democrats were one electoral ballot shy of victory with three states left.

An apprentice of Martin Van Buren, breaker of the Tweed Ring, and enemy of the spoils system, Tilden was praised by fellow Northerners for his antislavery past and favored by white Southerners for simply not being a Republican. Such popularity gave him nearly 4.3 million votes to his opponent’s 4 million and a virtual lock on the Electoral College. Both he and his opponent went to bed on Election Night assuming Tilden had won.

Over the coming days, Republican nominee and Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes took hope that the game was not yet lost. Election results had been called into question in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Republicans and Democrats both claimed victory in each state and sent conflicting electoral ballots to the Senate. At stake were nineteen electoral votes, and Hayes needed all of them to win. Though less famous and politically less influential than Tilden, Hayes possessed two critical advantages over his fellow northerner—he was a Union veteran, plus his party still controlled much of the occupied South through Reconstruction.

Thrown into a dangerous stalemate, for which the Constitution had no answer, the divided Congress fabricated a committee of fifteen delegates, including five members each from the House, Senate, and Supreme Court. Evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, the committee voted precisely along party lines. The last and critical voice belonged to Justice Joseph Bradley, independent in name but vaguely Republican in practice.

After insinuating he would rule in favor of Tilden, Bradley awarded the three states and all nineteen of their electors to Hayes. Democrats could not help but notice that those three states were the only ones in the entire South that the Republicans managed to win. The backlash was so overwhelming that President Grant had Hayes secretly take the oath of office two days before Inauguration Day, for fear that a violent mob might prevent the official swearing in from taking place.
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Never vindictive against the voters at large, Samuel Tilden willed much of his wealth and extensive book collection to the general public, an endowment that would become the New York Public Library.

3
. 2000

The campaign of 2000 was a sleeping pill right up to the closing of the polls. Pundits called the election
Gush vs. Bore
, a flaccid bout between a president’s son who had a friendly face and little gift for oratory and a sitting vice president who had all the charm of a mild headache. Dismal voter turnout—barely 50 percent—attested to their collective inability to inspire the masses. But then came Election Night.

In 2000, as in 1876, a Democrat outpolled a Republican by hundreds of thousands in the popular vote and led the Electoral College for weeks, standing just shy of the required majority. In both elections, Florida was in dispute, prompting review boards to conduct recounts, resulting in a microscopic lead for the Republican (45 votes in 1876, 537 in 2000). In both instances, the final word came from a solitary member of the Supreme Court who ruled in favor of the Republican. And after both decisions, the beneficiaries considered the outcome fair and just, the defeated party cried conspiracy, and the losing candidate asked for, and received, public calm.
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