For the Love of History

Pulitzer Prize-Winners Edmund Morgan and Ed Larson and American Journalism History Award-Winner David Greenberg

Even if history has become invisible in presidential debates, these and other American historians are still offering provocative insights into the campaign and historical parallels, which candidates may—or may not—be eager to embrace.

Revolutionary Historian: Argument Against Obama Applied to Founders

Edmund Morgan, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, has authored over a dozen books on the nation’s Founding Fathers. He argues that the nation’s revolutionary figures would be disqualified by today’s partisan insistence upon standards of political experience.

In response to claims that Obama, a first-term U.S. senator from Illinois, is inexperienced and unfit to serve as president, as Hillary Clinton and various Republicans have charged, Morgan draws upon the nation’s founding history.

“The people in the 1790s were pretty new. The argument against Obama would apply to any one of the first presidents.”

He said the Founders were far apart from the political elite in Great Britain. “It was one of the great deficiencies of the British Empire; [there was] no place for people like Washington and Jefferson. I don’t think that the argument about experience makes an awful lot of difference.”

As Morgan noted, while they are remembered as an influential coalition of intellectuals, the Founders had little experience governing beyond holding a blend of local offices and occasionally representing the colonies abroad.

He also said that an even more youthful, arguably less experienced
Massachusetts senator did not face a backlash from voters because of his young age.

“Jack Kennedy was younger than Obama now and he did pretty well.” Kennedy’s fresh idealism and vigor were his greatest assets, according to Morgan.

Presidential Biographer: Obama Belongs to ‘Stevenson Liberal Tradition’

David Greenberg, a professor of history at Rutgers University, has drawn a separate analysis of Obama as a candidate in the liberal tradition of another Democrat from Illinois: Adlai Stevenson.

“Obama’s campaign belongs to a similar ideology with its own distinctive politics, a tradition that goes back to the 19th century’s mugwumps [who were] opposed to the grubbiness of politics and disliking of politics of compromise and the dirty pool.”

Stevenson, a former Illinois governor, was twice nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, unsuccessful in both his 1952 and 1956 bids against Dwight D. Eisenhower.

He also sees the Republicans, with few exceptions, fitting a trickle-down Reaganomics economic model. Greenberg, a Calvin Coolidge biographer, believes that the current strain of GOP economic thought traces back to the Coolidge Gospel of supply-side economics that defined the 1920s. “I think they [Republican 2008 hopefuls] embrace Coolidge economics.”

Greenberg is unsure if voters will tie today’s conservative economic policies to the Great Depression or to the more favorable legacy of Reagan, the man. More likely the latter, he said.

Pulitzer-Prize Winning Historian: 2008 as an Epic Clash

Ed Larson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, has studied the 1800 election in depth and sees a political climate and electoral engagement parallel to today’s.

As in 1800, Larson thinks America is now engaged in an elective war in which “one side claims that it’s a phony-war for political purposes to get people elected and that it is based on fears rather than a true threat.”

Both 1800 and 2008 are marked by a widespread concern for domestic security. Adams’s Alien & Sedition Acts, arguably an extension of the federal government’s legitimate power, aimed to clamp down on dissident activities inside the nation.

Much like this legislation, the Patriot Act and related domestic surveillance programs, which are set to be re-authorized this year, have been justified as a way to protect Americans from foreign enemies, even at the cost of some of their own freedoms.

According to Larson, because these issues—of war and peace, of liberty and tyranny—are historically divisive and often arouse heated debate about the nation's core principles, there is the “real sense” on both sides—then and now—that the country might not survive if the other side wins.

“In [most] past elections, I don’t think Americans really believed the future of the Republic was at stake. People truly believed in 1800 that if the Federalists continued in power, the country would descend into revolution and things would collapse.”

And facing the 21st century threat of radical Islamic terrorism, Larson said that the sense of polarization (and urgency) is returning. “If Giuliani gets elected, liberties will be gone,” Democrats allege.

“Given the risks of Pakistan falling into chaos, civilization as we know it might come to an end, and with the domestic terror threats that are so great, we need to act,” Giuliani supporters argue.

Larson’s bottom-line: “Americans view this as an absolutely critical election.”

Only history will tell.

This is the second part of a two-part series. Read part 1 here.