5-9-16<\/p>\n
I have been asked many questions these days about the proper attitude and informed decisions to be made by Christians and people of faith about the elections this year. To be more precise, I have been asked the same question by many people: Is Donald Trump someone to be trusted; does he know or understand biblical principles and basic Christian creedal tenets; is he someone who will \u201cmake deals\u201d with the devil \u2013 so to speak \u2013 once in office?<\/p>\n
I am asked those questions by a variety of folks, in my putative role as a social critic, political commentator, and Christian writer. I have no special insights, not holy ones I claim, anyway. Among those who ask me these burning questions is\u2026 myself.<\/p>\n
A crazy political season. A crazy world, crazier and more ominous by the day. If it is not the advent of End Times, we might wish it were. We all should be primarily seeking spiritual, moral, and ethical answers \u2013 because our major challenges in America are, and have been caused by, spiritual, moral, and ethical lapses.<\/p>\n
I will don another one my hats, my actual training as a historian, and posit some observations. Those who make stark critiques and censure are Jeremiahs. Most of us historians, as Gibbon and Macaulay did, wait millennia to make sense of history, to discern missteps.<\/p>\n
There is an aspect of the human spirit that tends to think that contemporary crises are unprecedented, perhaps apocalyptic. It cannot always be true; but someday it will be. Oddly, we occasionally adopt the attitude of Dr Pangloss, that \u201cthis is the best of all possible worlds,\u201d and in certain ways it too sometimes is correct. <\/p>\n
But has our society, in our days, begun its ultimate dissolution? Is it possible that we are past \u201csliding down the slippery slope\u201d and, rather, in the maelstrom of the flushing toilet of history, a vortex going \u201cdown the tubes\u201d?<\/p>\n
I think it is reasonable to think so. Too many of our foundations are crumbling, too many moral traditions are denigrated or ignored. But our political season, as crazy as it is, is not unprecedented. <\/p>\n
We can look back at other crises in presidential contests. In 1800 the election was deadlocked \u2013 at the time, the House of Representatives, not the general populace, voted for president and vice-president, separate votes for each of two candidates; all later adjusted by a Constitutional amendment. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each had more votes than the incumbent president John Adams, but a secret deal withheld some of Burr\u2019s electoral support and resulted in his defeat. The invective, chicanery, and dirty dealing all led to what history calls the \u201cRevolution of 1800.\u201d A few years later, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and eventually fled west where he reportedly attempted to organize an uprising against the United States and\/or Mexico.<\/p>\n
Let us gloss over the social aspects of Andrew Jackson\u2019s presidency, bereft by scandals, charges of \u201cloose women\u201d in the White House kitchen, and White House events where the president invited the general public, leading to shredding of carpets, destruction of furnishings, and theft of property. Jackson\u2019s presidential campaigns led to the \u201cspoils system\u201d of trading votes for jobs.<\/p>\n
In the 1860 election, the Republican Party, then only six years old, gained the White House as beneficiary of four candidates in the field. Abraham Lincoln\u2019s nomination was secured by his manager who forbad Honest Abe from attending or knowing anything about their machinations \u2013 such as promising the same federal offices and cabinet positions to more than one person. The campaign was dirty (Secession was imminent) and dangerous (Lincoln reportedly travelled through pro-slavery Baltimore on his way to the inauguration in a plaid cloak and Scottish cap to evade assassins).<\/p>\n
In 1896 a virtual unknown, William Jennings Bryan, delivered a speech (the \u201cCross of Gold\u201d) to the Democrat convention that stampeded the delegates to nominate him in a frenzy. Barely old enough to serve as president, Bryan\u2019s radical, socialist agenda split the party in two and had Americans, those who were not seduced by the firebrand, fearful of blood in the streets.<\/p>\n
Theodore Roosevelt, wildly popular on his retirement in 1909, went on an African safari and tour of Europe for a year, partly to grant the spotlight to his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft. But during Taft\u2019s term, there were personal slights of TR; reversal of many Roosevelt policies; serious broken promises; and a calamitous decline in the GOP\u2019s popularity, including the loss of Congress. Severe affronts to Roosevelt, and an irresistible demand from many Republicans, persuaded him to challenge Taft for the nomination.<\/p>\n
An ex-president versus a sitting president. Friends became enemies. \u201cLiar\u201d and \u201cFathead\u201d were among the many epithets. There were mass defections from the GOP after the nomination was wrested from TR, who had won most of the new-fangled primaries. The speakers\u2019 platform at the Republican convention had barbed wire under the bunting, in fear that riots would break out. TR\u2019s bolt of the convention led to the independent Bull Moose party, which soundly trounced the GOP; Taft won only two states. A Socialist, Eugene Debs, polled nearly a million votes. In late October, a bartender who had been persuaded against a Third Term shot Roosevelt point-blank in the chest. TR insisted on continuing to his speech; with blood streaming down his shirt, he spoke for almost 90 minutes. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the four-way election.<\/p>\n
Another year of the gun, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy, after a primary victory in California, were killed. A sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, was forced from running again when he could not endure widespread protests and a rebellious Democrat Party. Millions in the streets and campuses; a bitter primary; riots outside the convention; the anarchist Yippies; a candidate nominated (VP Humphrey) who had not even run in the primaries; the return of the has-been Richard Nixon; and the amazing grass-roots revolt of third-party candidate George Wallace. The story of 1968.<\/p>\n
So\u2026 does this year\u2019s election cycle seem tame yet? For all the elements that foreshadowed our current season of discontent, I think the campaign of 1884 has the most parallels. So far. The GOP, in the White House for 24 straight years, was rife with divisions. Factions called \u201cHalf-Breeds\u201d and \u201cStalwarts\u201d hated each other and vied for power. An office-seeker of one faction had assassinated President James Garfield, of another, when he was frustrated in securing a federal job. Bosses continually attempted a comeback for ex-president Ulysses Grant, whom they could control.<\/p>\n
Sen. James G Blaine was the favorite for the nomination. A former Speaker of the House, he had been involved numerous. He sold influence; he had solicited bribes. He arrogantly admitted many of these discretions, but he was a magnetic speaker who swayed crowds and inspired devotion. He faced opposition, however, not so much from strong candidates, but a field of lesser names.<\/p>\n
The major threat to Blaine instead was from the reform movement in the GOP, a gaggle of veterans and newcomers. Among the former were George William Curtis and Carl Schurz, whose political careers went back to the Civil War. Leaders of the latter group were young Henry Cabot Lodge and 24-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, a major force in the convention. Their efforts to advance reform candidates failed on the floor.<\/p>\n
There was public revulsion against Blaine (\u201cBlaine, Blaine; James G Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!\u201d street crowds chanted) but a lot of GOP voters fell in line. Grover Cleveland, the Democrat candidate, was \u201cugly honest,\u201d a good reputation for 1884; but midway through the campaign it was revealed that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child \u2013 remember, this in the staid Victorian era. (\u201cMa! Ma! Where\u2019s my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!\u201d rival crowds chanted.) THAT was some campaign.<\/p>\n
As in 2016, a large number of Republican politicians and activists faced moral and practical dilemmas. Many of them sincerely believed that Blaine was toxic for the party\u2019s self-esteem and for its future; and they had made threats \u2013 or promises \u2013 never to vote for Blaine. Excruciating.<\/p>\n
There was, collectively, a Solomonic decision. Reformers like Curtis and Schurz and Henry Ward Beecher, America\u2019s most prominent pastor, whose sister had written \u201cUncle Tom\u2019s Cabin,\u201d left the Republican Party, and supported Cleveland. They were dubbed \u201cMugwumps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reformers like Roosevelt and Lodge, however, reluctantly remained within the party. Never endorsing Blaine, they \u201csupported the ticket,\u201d stating that the only way to influence the party was from within the party. Young TR, whose wife and mother had died a few months earlier (on the same day), left for an understandable \u201csabbatical\u201d on his cattle ranch in the Dakotas. For two years he was a cowboy, out of the public eye. He made one or two campaign speeches for down-ticket candidates, including Lodge who ran for Congress.<\/p>\n
Lodge lost. He and Roosevelt both considered their political futures ruined.<\/p>\n
Both were mistaken, of course. Many of the Mugwumps eventually returned to the GOP, which thereafter always had \u2013 has had \u2013 a reform wing. Cleveland won, but a dozen years later he and many establishment Democrats boycotted the agrarian radical Bryan. Blaine lost the 1884 election, but by a whisker. <\/p>\n
The final detail of the final moments of that crazy 1884 campaign might be relevant if not dispositive to troubled Republicans weathering Hurricane Donald this year: a moral, specifically a religious, aspect.<\/p>\n
Just before election eve, Blaine attended a dinner of industrialists and monopolists at Delmonico\u2019s in New York. One of the speakers, a nonentity minister, in his speech described the Democrats as the \u201cparty of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.\u201d Rum was a smear on lowlife aspects of stereotyped Democrat voters; Rebellion was a reminder of the Democrats\u2019 association with Secession.<\/p>\n
Romanism, however, was a word that touched social and religious nerves. It was a direct reference to Catholicism, imputing a congenital association between Democrats and the Pope; and was not meant as a compliment. The consequent furor over the insult (which Blaine had ignored) energized New York City\u2019s Irish immigrants. New York City went Democrat; New York State and its electoral votes narrowly went for Cleveland\u2026 enough to tip the national outcome away from the GOP.<\/p>\n
The scenario is a different animal than whether to endorse a candidate you distrust or despise in 2016 \u2013 but it reminds us that religion is never far from the larger debate. Our civic consciences might still roil over whether to Trump, or not to Trump. Life has gone on in America despite, as Kipling wrote, \u201cThe tumult and the shouting dies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Myself, I greet with dubiety Trump\u2019s assurances that he is familiar with the Bible, understands doctrine, and has a saving knowledge, as we say, of Jesus Christ. But we are not to judge: I question, however. \u201cGod judges the man; voters judge the candidate\u201d is, this year, less of a maxim and feels like more of an excuse.<\/p>\n
Many of us have the nagging feeling that things are different this time, that past is less than prologue. The Captains and the Kings may depart, yet we seem closer to our destiny, maybe an apocalypse.<\/p>\n
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