The Importance of Popular Appeal in Presidential Elections
Andrew Jackson made his first appearance in the presidential elections in 1824, when he ran against John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, John Calhoun, and Henry Clay. Calhoun, dropping out early, narrowed the field to four. The results of the election saw Jackson with the most electoral votes, followed by Adams in second, Crawford in third, and Clay in fourth. No man, however, achieved enough electoral votes to be elected President, and so the election was given to the House of Representatives. The recently-passed 12th Amendment limited the field to the top three vote-getters; Clay, who was Speaker of the House at the time, was out of the race. Due to a personal animosity towards Jackson which stemmed from a regional rivalry, (the two men were from neighboring states), Clay managed to strike a deal with the state Delegates and get Adams elected; in return, Clay was named Secretary of State.
Jackson’s next bid at the Presidency came in 1928. Outraged at the results of the previous election, and feeling that it had ultimately been decided by a political “elite” personified in Adams and Clay, Jackson worked to broaden the electorate, reaching out to what her perceived as the “common man.” To this end, Jackson’s campaign portrayed him as a “coarse man of the frontier, a war hero, a battler of banks … and a leader of the unschooled and exploited men…” (CQ, p. 25). In short, Jackson hoped to get the people who had never voted before, poorer, working class white men, to get out, and vote for him. This strategy worked handily, and gave him the election in 1928 with 56 percent of the popular vote.
Jackson’s expansion of the electorate also increased the number of people looking to benefit from his being elected President; many people sought government jobs. Jackson, however, would ultimately keep a great number of government employees in their positions, but only after they had expressed their loyalty to him. This helped usher in a system of “mass party loyalty”, where, in order to get a patronage job, a person had to be utterly loyal to the party. This system paved the way for the vast party machines of the major cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Henry Clay was another man who was able to reach out to new groups of voters and seriously change the way elections ran. Clay ran for President three times; once in 1924 as listed above, once in 1832, and finally in 1844.
Clay was nominated in 1932 by the National Republican party, which had arisen in protest of tariff policies enacted by the Jackson administration. For his base of supporters, Clay looked to people who supported “balanced development”. He was hoping to appeal to citizens who wished to keep America small; he opposed the Mexican War, fearing it would overstrain the country, and lead to dangerous embroilment in foreign affairs. Clay was running against Jackson, up for a second term; Jackson easily beat Clay, winning a total of 219 electoral votes; Clay only managed 49.
Clay’s next run for the presidency would be as a Whig in 1944. As the Whig party developed, it struggled to reach a greater number of people, stressing conservative moral values and steady economic growth. The Whig platform supported temperance and free public schools, earning them a good chunk of the Anti-Mason party, including Vermont. Just prior to the election of 1944, however, the Whig president John Tyler vetoed a bill establishing a national bank that had been pushed through Congress by Clay. In protest, all but one of Tyler’s Cabinet members, who happened to be Clay supporters, resigned. This caused a weakening in the Whig party that ultimately cost Clay the election to James K. Polk of Tennessee. Clay managed to get 48.1 percent of the popular vote, taking five northeastern states and five border states. The South and the Northwest won the election for Polk; he supported an expansionist program that included accepting Texas into the Union as a slave state.
Another man who failed to win the Presidency but was able to bring a large number of people into the political process was William Jennings Bryan, who ran in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Bryan, running on a platform of farm debt reform and the introduction of a silver currency, drew in the West. A Representative from Nebraska, Bryan won the Democratic nomination with his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, repeated across the country. He used the same theme in the election of 1896, attacking eastern bankers and businesses that were taking advantage of western farmers. Unfortunately, Bryan managed to alienate some of his own party; namely, those Democrats who supported gold currency. Bryan’s opponent, William McKinley, won easily, spending far more than Bryan had. Bryan ran against McKinley again in 1900, and again, lost.
In 1908, the Democrats nominated Bryan again, hoping his forceful presence would be enough to win against William Howard Taft, the Vice President. Bryan pushed for lower tariffs, nationalization of the railroads, and other progressive measures. Taft adopted a good deal of these issues into his own platform, however, and appealed directly to those Bryan was trying to reach. Taft won the election with 51.6 percent of popular vote, compared to just 43.1 percent for Bryan. While Bryan had managed to mobilize western farmers at the turn of the century, he was unable to translate this into a win.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, unlike Bryan and Clay, was able to take a mobilization of voters and make it into a win – four times, in fact: 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. Despite having polio, Roosevelt mounted an aggressive campaign in 1932, visiting 41 states and making wide use of radio broadcasts to reach the working person who may not have had time to attend a rally or political speech. Roosevelt also made a special effort to reach out to female voters, who had only recently gained universal suffrage. With the race occurring in the face of the Depression, Roosevelt proposed sweeping governmental changes that would greatly increase federal spending. This endeared him to the average man, and helped him to victory in 1932 with 57 percent of the popular vote, and all the electoral votes, except for Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, and the three states of northern New England. Roosevelt seemed to appeal to everyone, including immigrants and Jews.
Roosevelt won the Presidency again in 1936, sweeping every state except for Maine and Vermont. Roosevelt was able to do this by capturing the northern black vote, which since the Civil War had been tied almost exclusively to Lincoln’s Republican party. As Roosevelt’s New Deal helped the average working man, however, blacks began to become attracted to the Democratic party. This trend ultimately triggered a major realignment of the South, as the Democratic party became the champion of civil rights under John F. Kennedy. The South would eventually turn Republican, with a good number of southern Democrats switching parties while holding office. Although Roosevelt went on to win the Presidency twice more, in 1940 and 1944, by the 1936 election he had established his base, much wider and more diverse than the base previous Democrats, including Woodrow Wilson, had relied on.
These four strong personalities, Jackson, Clay, Bryan, and Roosevelt, all were able to mobilize voters in America, to varying degrees of success. Roosevelt and Jackson effectively appealed to the common man. They also both ran soon after the electorate had grown: Jackson with universal white male suffrage, and Roosevelt with universal female suffrage. The two men were able to translate a larger electorate into more votes for themselves, and thus win the presidency. Clay and Bryan also tried to appeal to the common man, but were less effective. Clay’s conservative morality did not hold quite enough interest for everyone, and Bryan’s silver currency was only favored by western farmers, and fiercely opposed by eastern bankers. Despite the fact that both Clay and Bryan ran three times, neither was able to win a single presidential election, proving that mobilizing voters isn’t enough; a successful candidate must mobilize the right types of voters to win.
