Election Year

Summer is winding down now. I have fewer than 48 hours in Cincinnati before I jump on that plane heading back to Jordan. Of course, there are many things I will miss about summer, but one thing I am fairly certain I will not miss—grrr…the barrage of the 2012 presidential campaign TV commercials! I wondered if I was making it up about this overwhelming bombardment of TV commercials, but then a story in The Cincinnati Enquirer a couple of days ago confirmed that bombardment is certainly an apt word. The newspaper analyzed TV time and found that Cincinnatians trying to enjoy a little summer TV or watch the news (my father fits the category) had campaign candidate commercials battering their psyche at the rate of 9.7 an hour in the last month! Soooo…if we watched the CBS News (my father’s favorite) from 6-7 PM, an average 9.7 Romney/Obama ads blistered our brains in the course of an hour.

Yes, as a reminder dear readers, Ohio is a “battleground” state. I would bet there are no ads in either New York or Wyoming. Seeing the same ads over and over from both sides not only makes one a little crazy, wish for a respite from the mental fatigue of an election year, but made me want to retreat into history—a quieter time, an easier time, when all Americans wanted the same thing. Ahhhh…no ugly characterizations or political posturing…

If you are a historian, you know that that time has never existed! People just say it did…and they don’t remember accurately.

I did decide to go back 150 years in my mind to think about another election year, the mid-term election of Abraham Lincoln’s first term. Would that fit for a time when all Americans wanted the same thing??? No, that year of 1862 must have made many Americans tremble. It was one year into the Civil War, but that November would be an election year for Congress, and as we always note, a referendum on the sitting president.

Let’s leave the swelter of the summer of 2012 (seriously—I think I have enjoyed maybe 2 whole days this summer with temperatures under 90 degrees!!!!) and think about the time before TV campaign ads and wonder a little what it was like 150 years ago:

By January, 1862, fighting had quieted down in the East. The troops were in winter quarters, and the new Union commander, General George McClellan, was sick with typhoid fever. Only President Lincoln seemed to be champing at the bit for action. Lincoln never could extract more than flip promises from the temperamental, preening McClellan. The day after Christmas Lincoln had ordered General Ambrose Burnside “to be off at once.” Exactly where Burnside was to go, Lincoln didn’t say, so everyone stayed put.

In this winter lull, President Lincoln decided to spend some time with the troops. He had received an invitation from the 55th New York Infantry Regiment for a celebration in early January, and Lincoln accepted. The regiment enjoyed considerable good buzz because it was a French regiment known for good food and the flashy uniforms of the zouave. Lincoln heard the colorful uniforms were patterned on the French North African troops and consisted of a red fez, red pantaloons, and a short, blue jacket.

We think of Washington today as a hothouse of partisan bickering, but let’s recover the context of 150 years Washington. We need to remember the realities of wartime Washington at this time—what a crazy time where Confederate sympathizers played host to Union officers and Northern soldiers toiled not far from enslaved African-Americans. Washington had become an army camp.

The regiment’s French chefs prepared their best dishes for the President’s visit, and the leader of the regiment toasted the Commander-in-Chief: “May you quickly see the Union reestablished—but not so soon, however, that the 55th may have an opportunity to contribute to it on some field of battle.” Lincoln returned with a few words of thanks, which he closed by remarking, “All that I can say is that, if you fight as well as you treat your guests, victory is assured us.”

By the end of 1862 roughly one quarter of those sartorially splendid zouaves will have died in battles across Virginia. But it’s not really the war that interests me, but the fact that 1862 was an election year, doing what Americans may do better than anyone. And it was not lost on Americans in 1862 that this election year had a harrowing risk: The New York Herald Tribune noted that this would be the first democratic election ever successfully held during a civil war, anywhere, at any time! As we hear emphatically every election, this really was an election in which the issue was what kind of nation this was going to be—unified, however painfully, without slavery, or forever split with or without it. It was an election campaign in which the issue was truly our young nation’s future…

How would the election go as a referendum on President Lincoln’s tenure so far? If you scour the news of the day, one is hard-pressed to find compliments for the politically savvy Illinois Lincoln. Cartoons lampooning him, pegging him as a humbug, among many things, were a dime a dozen. If you suspend your knowledge of the outcome of the 1862 mid-term election, and also his re-election bid in 1864, there really is no sense of inevitability in Lincoln’s win and future lionization. These were nasty campaigns, albeit, ones without TV ads at the rate of 9.7 an hour.

So when election day in November, 1864 came, President Lincoln ran against his old general-in-charge George McClellan. When the electoral smoke cleared, McClellan wrote a friend that he had conducted his campaign with “dignity and had nothing to be ashamed of.” He continued, “For my country’s sake, I deplore the result—but the people have decided with their eyes wide open. It was a struggle of honor patriotism & truth against deceit and selfishness & fanaticism…” Oh my, maybe the French are right with their phrase about the more things change, the more they stay the same! I am picturing a Frenchie in a zouave outfit wagging his finger through time…

As people reacted to Lincoln’s re-election there were many who believed it was “one of the greatest national acts in all history” (and yes, we seem to have always loved hyperbole!) and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Seldom in history was much staked on a popular vote—I suppose never in history.” I enjoyed this comment as well, from George Strong, a New Yorker known for his colorful diaries: “The crisis has been past, and the most momentous popular election ever held since ballots were invented has decided against treason and disunion. My contempt for democracy and extended suffrage has been mitigated. The American people can be trusted to take care of national honor.”

The Civil War would end within six months, and of course, President Lincoln would be assassinated within a week of that historic conclusion.

How interesting—for me, at least!!—to think back 150 years and wonder what those elections were like. In bad history books we ossify the players too easily, we crop out the dissension, and we reduce it all to a stale inevitable conclusion. What a pity! How much more fun—for me, at least!!—to recover the context and think about the fights and the fears, the editorializing and the hyperbole, and realize again how alike we are. Granted, we are not now in the middle of an official civil war (will the Chik-Fil-A brouhaha make it into history books?) but it is always a question of the trajectory of our nation. President Lincoln, in his simple words, always makes reconciliation seem desirable and easy, spoke to a crowd gathered the day after the election in 1864 saying, “May we not all re-unite in a common effort to save our common country?” If you delve more deeply into the history of that election you find that President Lincoln made plans in the summer for the transition for another president. He told his cabinet in another hot August, he felt he had “no friends” and would work for a smooth transition.

But come November, when the re-election passed into history, Ulysses Grant telegrammed Lincoln praising the United States that “no bloodshed or riot throughout the land” had occurred and that that “is a victory worth more to the country than a battle won.”

You know, I remember in 2007 being asked in Jordan what I loved most about the United States. Without much time at all I responded that I love the day after election days the most. Even though elections are contentious and commercials in these battleground states constant and exhausting, the day after, just as Grant said 150 years ago, there is no bloodshed and no riots. Think about it. Americans rarely savor that peace and quiet. To sound a little 19th century like, “since ballots were invented,” few places on earth have enjoyed such acceptance and calm about electoral results.

Time to return to 2012…a little more enjoyment of the United States, and on Monday late afternoon my father will drive me to the airport and I will return to another home…