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What’s Old is Not So New Again

Home - by illustr8r - October 14, 2012 - 08:00 America/New_York - 7 Comments

from LA Times

Reading the Election: Did modern presidential politics start with Aaron Burr?

Portrait of Aaron Burr by John Vanderlyn in 1802. (New York Historical Society)

Two hundred years before the contested election of 2000, another contested election pitted a sitting vice president against a president running for a second term, for the only time in U.S. history. I’m talking, of course, about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

One of the ironies of that election, though, is that when it was finally resolved in the House of Representatives, the decision was between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. That’s because, in the early days of the republic, presidential voting involved double balloting, in which members of the electoral college selected two candidates; as a result, Jefferson and Burr, who was running to be vice president, ended up with the same number of electoral votes. After the election, the 12th Amendment did away with double balloting, and only one campaign, that of 1824, has subsequently been settled in the House.

Burr is a key figure in Pepperdine University professor Edward J. Larson’s “A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, American’s First Presidential Campaign,” a 2007 book that posits 1800 as the flashpoint from which modern presidential politics begins. It’s a compelling argument, not least for how it traces the rise of political parties — in this case, the Federalists, representing Adams, and Jefferson’s Republicans, a precursor of today’s Democrats — with all the divisiveness and backbiting we’ve come to know.

“Citizens choose your sides,” a New York Federalist newspaper declared in the spring of 1800. “You who are for French notions of government; for the tempestuous sea of anarchy and misrule; for arming the poor against the rich; for fraternizing with the foes of God and man; go to the left and support the leaders, or the dupes, of the anti-federal junto. But you that are sober, industrious, thriving, and happy, give your votes for those men who mean to preserve the union of the states, the purity and vigor of our excellent Constitution, the sacred majesty of the laws, and the holy ordinances of religion.”

If such rhetoric sounds familiar, that’s one of the unexpected pleasures of “A Magnificent Catastrophe.” But there are other, equally compelling parallels. As Larson makes clear, even in 1800, political geography was an essential issue, with swing states (although they weren’t yet called that) such as New York, New Jersey and (yes) Pennsylvania in play.

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In heaven, John Adams has a terrible migraine and a nervous tick of shaking his head back and forth. Thomas Jefferson’s throat is hoarse from yelling down from above, “Quit calling me a Democrat!”