the first contested presidential election -- 1/06/22
Today's encore selection -- from The First Presidential Contest by Jeffrey L. Pasley. The first two U.S. elections were essentially uncontested, with George Washington as the universal preference. The third election, which occurred in 1796, was the first contested election, and it immediately showed the vitriol and ad hominem attacks we have come to expect in presidential politics. In it, Thomas Jefferson was accused of lacking manliness and proper Christian values, among other deficiencies. In fact, presidential contests have almost never been about a rational comparison of policies, but instead have been morality tales framed by the respective campaigns:
"[When] we think a bit more broadly about the cultural structures of American presidential politics, then this first contested election was absolutely seminal. It set the geographic pattern of New England competing with the South at the two extremes of American politics with the geographically intermediate states deciding between them. It established the basic ideological dynamic of a democratic, rights-spreading American 'left' arrayed against a conservative, social order-protecting 'right,' each with its own competing model of leadership. One can even detect the creation of what linguist and political commentator George Lakoff calls the essential 'conceptual metaphors' of American political life, government as 'strict father' or 'nurturant parent,' but it is not necessary to go that far. Historian Alan Taylor has described a similar idea as the competing political 'personas' of Federalists and Democratic-Republicans: 'fathers' versus 'friends' of the people. It was the Federalists, especially, who got the battle of metaphors started with their efforts to emasculate the image of Thomas Jefferson, but the opposition redressed the balance with a vengeance in the attacks they mounted on the allegedly monarchical, tyrannical tendencies of George Washington and 'Daddy Vice,' as Vice President John Adams referred to himself.
.jpg) John Adams
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 Thomas Jefferson |
"Even with their patchiness, the two campaigns of 1796 managed to construct remarkably coherent images of the two candidates that connected clearly to the policy issues and cultural tensions of the day, especially those raised by the French Revolution. The young United States found its government severely pressured to choose sides in the world war that spun out of that revolution, and its politics were roiled by the democratic enthusiasms it spawned. Keynoted by congressman and pamphleteer William Laughton Smith of South Carolina, with some inspiration from Edmund Burke and guidance from Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist attacks of 1796 wrapped their caricature of Jefferson in a powerful conservative critique of French revolutionary radicalism, the Enlightenment, and post-Christian morals. With the Sally Hemings revelations still in the future, the critics focused chiefly on Jefferson's lack of manly qualities, as evidenced especially by his interest in science and technology. According to the Federalists, here quoted in a sort of dual biography of the two candidates published in Boston, the 'timid and wavering' Jefferson was not cut out to be a 'statesman, still less ... a patriot.' Woe betide America if 'her liberties depended upon the depth of his political knowledge, the strength of his virtue, or the vigour of his mind.' Jefferson's inability to 'act the man' would invite foreign aggression and lead to national ruin: 'our national honour forfeited; war probably ensue, our commerce be destroyed, our towns pillaged.' Better to opt for the 'security' of the 'resplendent abilities,' 'faithful services,' 'inflexible patriotism,' and 'undeviating firmness' of John Adams, who would have the wisdom and strength to stand against 'mad democracy' and 'the wiles of ambition.' The basic images of liberalism and conservatism in American politics have never strayed very far from this original Federalist template.
"The politics of the 1790s was not a primitive (or sophisticated) competition of personality cults, or at least not any more primitive than our own. In fact, the 'informed voter' model of party politics touted in civics lessons and journalism schools, where the media provide information that allows voters to select the candidate who best matches their own policy preferences from a list of issues, has rarely been more than an aspiration in American politics. By taking a small leaf from the work of George Lakoff and other scholars of modem political culture, we can proceed on the premise that even with fully developed party politics, partisanship not only can but may most effectively be expressed in terms of metaphors and morality tales rather than platforms and arguments."
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