Hammond Scott John - Campaigning for President in America, 1788-2016

Copyright 2016 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hammond, Scott J. | Roberts, Robert North | Sulfaro, Valerie A.

Title: Campaigning for president in America, 1788-2016 / Scott John Hammond, Robert North Roberts, Valerie A. Sulfaro.

Description: Santa Barbara, California : Greenwood, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015046107 | ISBN 9781440848902 (hardback) | ISBN 9781440848889 (paperback) | ISBN 9781440850790 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: PresidentsUnited StatesElectionHistoryEncyclopedias. | Political campaignsUnited StatesHistoryEncyclopedias. | Presidential candidatesUnited StatesHistoryEncyclopedias. | Political partiesUnited StatesPlatformsEncyclopedias.

Classification: LCC JK524.R57 2016 | DDC 324.70973dc 3 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046107

ISBN: 978-1-4408-4890-2 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-4408-4888-9 (paperback)

EISBN: 978-1-4408-5079-0

201918171612345

This book is also available as an eBook.

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To Deborah, Caitlin, and William Roberts; Chere, Adriana, and Neil Hammond; and Jack McCaslin, for their unconditional love and support.

The manuscript for the current volume was prepared and finished during the early stages of the 2015/2016 presidential campaign season, and our final draft was delivered to our publisher the day following the South Carolina Democratic primary. Thus our discussion of that campaign is already incomplete. Since then, we now know that Sec. Clinton has improved her position by managing to win primaries and caucuses in seven more states, raising her delegate total to 577 as of this writing. Sen. Sanders managed to win four states during Super Tuesday, and at this point can claim 386 delegates. While Sen. Sanders remains a viable candidate, these results reinforce our position that Hillary Clinton, given events through March 1, should win the nomination of her party and is the likeliest candidate to be elected to the presidency. On the Republican side, Donald Trump still holds the lead in delegates after Super Tuesday, but Sen. Cruz remains within striking distance, and Sen. Rubio, with a win in Minnesota, cannot be ruled out at this point. Sen. Rubio must now rely on his home state of Florida to sustain his campaign. Auspiciously, that primary is to be held on the Ides of March. Currently, as this book goes to press, Sen. Rubio is a distant second in the polls to Mr. Trump, and it is unclear whether or not he has enough time to gain the momentum necessary to score a needed win in the Sunshine State. Should Sen. Rubio lose Florida, the nomination for the Grand Old Party is most likely to become a two-way contest from this point forward to the California primary.

Having said all of this, it is our hope that the necessarily incomplete discussion of the 2016 campaign within this volume proves to be helpful in at least a small way. Finally, we hope that this book provides a solid introduction to both the history of presidential campaigns as well as the various qualities and elements that continue to remain meaningful. Democracy depends on rational, civil discourse, and civil discourse in turn relies on informed participants interacting as fellow citizens within the public arena. When civil discourse is abandoned, and rational dialogue gives way to reactive and unreflective emotion, democracy becomes vulnerable to the designs of demagogues and enthralled by the force of personality. This is not to say that there is no place for emotion in politics; many of the greatest moments in political campaigns stir the human heart. Rather, this is simply to remind us that only those emotions that elevate usthose emotions that are supported by careful reason and shared through the civil debate over which means is best to achieve our shared ends as Americanswork to the benefit and improvement of our institutions and the realization our national purpose. It is our hope that the outcome of the campaign that is now unfolding before us will uplift our democracy and enable us to share together all that is true and good within the American spirit.

Scott John Hammond

Robert North Roberts

Valerie A. Sulfaro

March 2, 2016

Four years have passed since the release of the second edition of this work, a three-volume set that was produced to serve primarily as a library collections reference source and as an introductory tool for serious students of politics interested in both the history of presidential campaigning and in the various features and dynamics that currently define presidential politics. This three-volume edition was itself an expansion of a single-volume work that had been published several years before, composed with the same basic intention. Both the single-volume first edition and the three-volume second edition featured, in addition to the elements mentioned above, several entries describing campaign slogans as well as entries focused on specific issues written independently of the longer campaign narratives. So as to produce a more streamlined edition more amenable and accessible to a wider readership, all of the stand-alone entries on campaign slogans and most of the more dated campaign issues have been removed for this new volume, maintaining the inclusion of those campaign issues that are still current as well as retaining the campaign narrative chronicle that accounted for a large portion of both the first and second editions. Additionally the number of separate entries explaining major campaign events has also been reduced, those being primarily retained within the narratives themselves. There are a few exceptions to this editorial decision, but generally the narratives cover events that in previous editions would have merited an independent entry. In sum, this third edition is an attempt at combining elements of the first two: the inclusion of a considerable number of topic-specific entries as in the first and second volumes combined with the longer narratives as they were expanded in the three-volume set (the second volume). This volume also possesses qualities of its own, as a few new topic-specific entries have been added, while older entries have been updated and strengthened. All of these modifications are designed to assist readers in their efforts to further understand presidential campaign politics, to answer some questions about presidential campaigning, and to stimulate the more committed students toward further research.

Presidential politics is a rich, complex, and vitally important facet of American democracy. But knowledge of political history seems to be on the wane as increasingly fewer students appear on college campuses with a reasonable grasp of the fundamental events, actors, institutions, issues, episodes, controversies, themes, principles, and ideas pertaining to the development of American political culture and the story of American democracy. Admittedly, while a new encyclopedia by itself cannot serve as the sufficient corrective for the current state of political education, it can supply a mine of information that will stimulate the thinking student onward toward richer, deeper veins. This work is designed with that very purpose in mind. This volume, it must be remembered, will only support the initial stages of a students inquiry and help to foster in a modest way the continued legacy of a particularly fascinating and relevant aspect of the American political pastpresidential politics and its colorful, and at times indecipherable, multifaceted history of idealism, cynicism, high aspiration, overweening ambition, persuasion, enthusiasms, honesty, deception, bombast, inspiration, human nobility and folly, embittered rivalry, inventive strategy, sincere promise, masked intentions, scandalmongering, grace, inconsolable disappointment, unrestrained elation, the admirable and the contemptible, the moments of personal heroism, the revelation of flawed character, unrestrained elation, and devastating heartbreak.