Remembrances of elections past

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, commentators (myself included) sought to liken the current election to some prior quadrennial contest. The assumption seems to be that we've exhausted our supply of unique elections and are now simply recycling the old ones.

Now that the election of 2008 has passed, we should be able to state with some degree of confidence which previous postwar election it most closely resembles.

Unfortunately for McCain, it wasn't 1948. Although the polls were wildly inconsistent in measuring the extent of Obama's lead, the RCP average of the polls mirrored the final outcome fairly closely. (We should know by now a candidate's in trouble the minute they start talking about 1948.)

We can also toss out the various elections in which a contented public returned an incumbent president to office by an impressive margin. This takes care of Eisenhower's win in '56, LBJ's in '64, Nixon's in '72, Reagan's in '84, and Clinton's in '96. To this list we can add W's reelection in 2004 (although it was close and hotly contested) and his father's defeat of Michael Dukakis in '88 (which was tantamount to a reelection of Ronald Reagan for a third term).

Bush v. Gore also fails to make the first cut. The 2000 election is mainly remembered for "hanging chads" and inaugurating the meme of a "50-50" electorate divided into red and blue states. Apart from the tattered remnants of the red-blue divide, it's hard to see anything in the election of 2008 that's reminiscent of 2000.

That leaves six possible candidates for the election most similar to 2008: Ike v. Stevenson in 1952, Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960, Nixon v. Humphrey and Wallace in 1968, Carter v. Ford in 1976, Reagan v. Carter in 1980, and Clinton v. Bush and Perot in 1992.

Of these, I'm first going to toss out 1960. Although Democrats like to compare Obama to JFK (and, more tellingly, Michelle Obama to Jackie Kennedy), there's no obvious similarity between the actual elections. Americans were reasonably content throughout the Eisenhower years and in 1960 merely had to decide which young Cold Warrior -- the handsome and athletic Kennedy or the pale and lip-sweating Nixon -- ought to succeed him. Shockingly, handsome and athletic won.

We should probably next eliminate 1952. Although that election to succeed an unpopular incumbent pitted an articulate and intellectual politician from Illinois against an aging war hero admired by Republicans and Democrats alike, it ended with a win for the war hero. Sorry, Mac!

The next election to get the boot has to be 1992. Although Clinton, like Obama, was a young newcomer who capitalized on economic worries to defeat the party which had long held the White House, Perot's decisive spoiler role in '92 strains any further comparisons to 2008.

The election of 1968 offers some plausible parallels to 2008, but they don't really hold up under close inspection. These may qualify as troubled times for the U.S., but we're not experiencing assassinations and street riots as was the case 40 years ago. While discontent over the war in Vietnam dominated the election in 1968, the war in Iraq had become virtually a second-tier issue by Election Day 2008. Nixon's perceived role as the tough-minded leader who would restore a sense of order to nation that was falling apart at the seams finds no parallel in Obama's soft-focus hope-a-palooza campaign. Furthermore, Nixon by 1968 was anything but a newcomer on the American political horizon. Finally, any comparisons to 1968 forces us to disregard the third-party candidacy of George Wallace, which garnered 46 electoral votes.

This leaves the two Carter elections, 1976 and 1980. Like others, I've written before about the parallels between this year and 1980. Where I think the comparison falls short is that Reagan was promising not just change, but a very specific kind of change. He sought a mandate to dismantle the big government policies of the past and project strength abroad. Obama's ambitions are far less clear. While there is every reason to suspect he is a man of the left, it's not at all clear that's the reason America is sending him to the White House. To the contrary, his primary appeal derives from his youth and style, and the perceived significance of his racial background. To a large extent, Obama downplayed his liberal philosophical orientation during the general election in order to project an image of moderation and an openness to opposing viewpoints.

The key in all this is the fact that while Reagan represented a political movement, Obama embodies a cultural phenomenon. There is simply no Obama analogue to the terms "Reagan Republican" or "Reagan Democrat." That is not to say Obama name will never be associated with a particular governing philosophy, only that such a philosophy wasn't the focus of his campaign.

That leaves 1976 as my choice for the election most similar to 2008. Both years' campaigns saw the emergence of appealing Democratic candidates who were newcomers to the national stage. Both campaigns featured well-known Republicans who were liked and admired by Americans across the political spectrum. Both of these Republicans, however, were hobbled -- mostly unfairly --by their connections to the grossly unpopular GOP president who had won the previous two elections. Their Democratic nominees, by contrast, were uniquely poised to offer voters the promise of a new era in Washington, free from the taint of the embattled prior incumbent. The promise of change outweighed concerns over the Democratic challenger's relative lack of experience and vaguely-defined political philosophy. The Republican candidates, moreover, were not well-positioned to present an ideological alternative to the Democrats due to their own poorly-defined political philosophies. In the end, despite giving the Democrat an unexpectedly tough run for his money, neither Ford nor McCain was able to stem the tide of change that fate had beckoned.

The parallels between this year and 1976 naturally invite the speculation that Republicans will reclaim the White House in 2012. I hope that happens, but not if it means reliving the Carter years. Good luck, Mr. President.