Here's my latest column from the St. Cloud (MN) Times. Happy new year!
-Dr. DRL
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Parties, then and now, are at odds
Published: January 02. 2008 12:30AM
The eyes of the nation's pundits and political analysts will be on our neighbors in Iowa on Thursday as the first real contest of the 2008 presidential election plays out, likely reducing a crowded field of candidates to a mere handful before many of us have even replaced our 2007 wall calendars.
The early start of the 2008 campaigns certainly would have surprised Americans a century ago. Indeed, in 1908 The New York Times ran its first significant stories on the election to replace Theodore Roosevelt in March, when it gave a straw poll of the members of the Harvard undergraduate political club as much space as the Ohio state Democratic convention. When the paper turned more directly to national politics in the spring of 1908, the coverage emphasized issues and parties over personalities, revealing a culture that had much less interest in the intimate details of candidate's private lives than we do today and a political landscape that was defined more by partisan political machines than the media itself.
While the political process has changed dramatically during the past century, many of the central issues of 1908 would resonate with voters today. Indeed, the platforms of the 1908 presidential campaigns reflect positions we could well expect to see coming out of this year's conventions in Denver and the Twin Cities, sounding familiar themes on immigration, national security, campaign finance reform, foreign policy, government spending and trade.
The more things change
The Democrats of 1908 criticized the Republicans for ballooning federal budgets (and deficits), for protectionist trade policies that hurt the working class while bolstering corporate profits and for politicizing the judicial system by pushing courts to intervene in strikes.
But their harshest rhetoric was reserved for Republican foreign policy, specifically toward the Philippine Islands, which the United States had occupied since the end of the 1898 Spanish-American War. The occupation had not gone well and was marked by atrocities on both sides, including water torture and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. On the continuing conflict, the Democratic platform simply stated that "We condemn the experiment in imperialism as an inexcusable blunder which has involved us in enormous expense, brought us weakness instead of strength, and laid our nation open to the charge of abandoning a fundamental doctrine of self-government."
The Republican Party entered the 1908 election divided between its progressive and conservative wings. Both sought to capitalize on the popularity of outgoing President Roosevelt, but the eventual platform approved in Chicago underscored a victory by the conservatives. Its key passages spoke of economic opportunity, the revival of business growth and the need to protect American businesses through trade policies that guaranteed a "reasonable profit" and "security against foreign competition," while relegating Roosevelt's anticorporate "trust busting" rhetoric to the sidelines.
On the Philippine issue, it was noted that "the insurrection has been suppressed, law is established and life and property made secure." The Republican platform also included a specific plank on civil rights, calling for "equal justice for all men, without regard to race or color." By contrast, the Democratic platform mentioned race only in its opposition to immigration from Asia.
Remaining the same
The United States in 1908 was a divided nation, much as it is today. But the lines then were defined more by geography and class than by single issues such as abortion, immigration, or support for military intervention abroad. The November election results reflected those divisions, with the Northern states solidly voting Republican and the Southern states solidly Democratic. William Howard Taft, Roosevelt's chosen successor, won 51 percent of the vote but went on to be a one-term president.
We can take some comfort in knowing that while our political processes may change, many of the core issues that animate American politics remain constant. It would be interesting to share the 1908 party platforms with the candidates in Iowa today and ask where they would stand on the issues of a century ago.
There's a month to go before the Minnesota caucuses in February, and the answers to those questions would probably tell us more about the candidates than anything else we'll hear from the media during the next four weeks. Unless, of course, it's another story about John Edwards' hairstyle or Mitt Romney's favorite novel.
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