In the Washington Post, David Mayhew asks which was the most important presidential election in US history.
This is tough, because not all consequential presidencies derived from consequential elections. Roosevelt sailed to victory in 1932 and 1936, which respectively inaugurated and ratified the New Deal. It’s hard to feel the elections themselves were consequential, because they were nothing like close; it’s the surrounding circumstances and the appeal of Roosevelt’s reactions that were important; the presidency was won or lost before the actual election.
The 1860 election wasn’t close, so it’s more like 1932 that way. The 1960 election was very close, and maybe an earlier Nixon presidency would have made a big difference, but I’m not sure. A Dewey win in 1948 might well have mattered, but again, I’m not entirely sure.
I think the best match of consequential election – where the election itself determined who would go to the White House – to consequential presidency – where the person in the White House really shifted the course of history – was probably 2000.
The Edge of the American West 
41 comments
February 19, 2012 at 12:42 pm
eric
where the election itself determined who would go to the White House
And for the purposes of this discussion, I’m including all vote-counting-related program activities as part of “the election itself”.
February 19, 2012 at 12:58 pm
ben
I’m confused. If a person’s presidency was important or consequential in itself, then wouldn’t the relevant election be important and consequential as well? FDR’s 1933-1937 presidency was consequential; how, then, could the 1932 election—the election of someone consequential—not be consequential? Consequential for its effects (consequences, one might say), chief among which is the actual service in office which then had further important consequences.
February 19, 2012 at 1:01 pm
jim
I’m not sure that you can claim that an election which wasn’t close was somehow not consequential. The votes still needed to be counted. Still, granting that, I think a strong case can be made for 1960. There were allegations of election fraud (whether well-founded or not; in any case not followed up) in a close election. And a Nixon presidency would have had major consequences. No assassination. No civil rights act. Perhaps no 1968 assassinations. No riots? Obviously counterfactual history is risky (you can prove anything if you’re allowed to make up evidence), but there’s at least a strong possibility that we would still be living in a segregated world if Kennedy had lost.
February 19, 2012 at 1:04 pm
eric
Well, ben and (to a degree jim) – I’m thinking that the events of the election itself – the campaign through the vote-counting – weren’t what was really consequential in 1932 – that it was the preceding economic events and policy response that were consequential, not the stump-speaking, platform-building, or indeed vote fraud.
February 19, 2012 at 1:16 pm
ben
Ok, so “consequential elections” means “elections in which election-related activities weren’t of primary importance in determining the outcome of the election”, or something like that? That isn’t really what the phrase suggests to me and it doesn’t seem to be what the WaPo author is getting at—the election of 1860 was important even if Lincoln could have slept through it—but I will (gracefully) acknowledge that it is a possible, and even interesting, question.
February 19, 2012 at 1:17 pm
TF Smith
If one sets the criteria as both A) a close electoral college vote, and B) significant historical consequences, seems hard to argue 1844, 1876, and 1916 probably all fit the bill better than 2000. US control of the American Southwest, the final withdrawal of federal strength from the South after the Civil War, and the election of an internationalist Democrat prior to US entry into WW I seem more consequential even than 10 years of land war in Asia…
Best,
February 19, 2012 at 1:18 pm
eric
ben, I’m thinking that a consequential election is one in which election-related program activities themselves determined the outcome.
But you are graceful, even if you say so yourself.
February 19, 2012 at 1:20 pm
JWL
Election? Do you mean the Judicial Coup of 2000?
Because, yeah, that was pretty doggone consequential, all right.
February 19, 2012 at 1:22 pm
TF Smith
Hard to “not” argue 1844, 1876, and 1916 probably all fit the bill better than 2000, that is…
February 19, 2012 at 1:31 pm
mbw
I don’t think you mean “consequential” here, especially because you seem to be equivocating over whether you mean “consequential” to pick out “had a lot of important game-changing consequences” or “an election that was up for grabs.”
Here’s what I think you’re saying — see if this seems right. There are some elections, like Roosevelt’s re-elections or Lincoln’s election, where the outcome isn’t seriously in doubt, or at least the campaign doesn’t have much to do with the outcome. This is compatible with believing that there would have been lots of different game-changing consequences had someone else been elected, but the election itself isn’t really part of the story.
There are other elections, where the outcome is in doubt, influenced by electioneering, &c., and the fact of who won turned out to have profound consequences for the country, and perhaps these consequences were unforeseeable at the time. In this case, the election itself appears to be more central to the story.
Call the latter case “momentous” and I think we’re good, no? The article you link seems to be using “consequential” in the first sense.
February 19, 2012 at 1:34 pm
eric
Sure, mbw – I’m happy to accept that distinction, and to acknowledge it’s not what Mayhew meant.
February 19, 2012 at 1:43 pm
ben
Right “weren’t” should have been “were”. That was a stupid mistake on my part.
February 19, 2012 at 1:49 pm
silbey
eric’s formulation is *more* interesting. Rating the most consequential elections in the other sense is like rating the Presidents (or Generals, to gore my own ox): you’re going to end up with the same several candidates and an endless argument over which is more important. Whee!
February 19, 2012 at 2:49 pm
ben
I didn’t want to give him an inflated head.
February 19, 2012 at 2:54 pm
jim
To argue against TF Smith:
1844: I take it the argument is that had Clay not moderated his position on Texas, he’d have carried New York, been elected and Texas would have remained an independent republic. But carry that on a few years. California still achieves statehood; Lincoln finds it even easier to win in 1860; Texas joins the Confederacy in 1861 and we’re back in our own timeline.
1876: Does anyone believe that Tilden would have kept Federal troops in the former Confederate states? The fact that it was a Republican willing to remove them as his part of the corrupt bargain says that their days were numbered.
1916: Yes, Wilson did an awful lot of damage personally, particularly in eastern Europe. But, again, it’s very difficult to believe that Hughes would have stayed out of the War.
Many historical movements are overdetermined: the western expansion of the United States, the end of the occupation of the former Confederacy, the entry of the US into European quarrels are examples. Whether this or that individual won an election made little difference.
There are occasionally individual presidents who do make a difference: FDR and the ferment of the early New Deal, Truman and his loyalty program which initiated the anti-Communism movement, Johnson and the civil rights act.
I frankly don’t know whether Bush was one of them. I think we would have been involved in a land war in Asia after 9/11 anyway. It could have been more limited, perhaps: formally in Afghanistan with unacknowledged incursions into Pakistan and western Iran. The civil liberties violations of the Bush administration have been continued under Obama by Congressional fiat. They’re what the elite as a whole want.
February 19, 2012 at 2:58 pm
jim
bah! eastern Iran.
February 19, 2012 at 3:11 pm
TF Smith
1844: If Clay is president, is there a war between the US and Mexico? More than just Texas is in question, true? Including the “Edge” itself….
1876: Fair point, but could Tilden’s policy have been even worse than Hayes, when it comes to civil rights? Did he go on the record, one way or the other, during the campaign about civil rights or even Republican control in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida?
1916: Hughes was Harding’s secretary of state and lead US negotiator during he Washington Naval Conference, which sort of suggests he would have been somewhat less enthusiastic about US intervention in 1917-18 than Wilson. During the campaign, critiicized Wilson’s intervention in Mexico, and campaigned for “preparedness” which was a typical Republican nationalist position – but there was big gap between that and active interventionism.
Best,
February 19, 2012 at 7:37 pm
jroth95
I really think that the issue of global warming makes the Bush-Gore debacle a hands-down winner. Even if you want to stipulate lots of limitations about control of Congress and how an elected Gore would have acted relative to the unelected IRL Gore, climate change appears to be an issue of such massive salience that even small differences of inflection and impetus could have (had) species-changing effects.
The placement of Bush in the White House effectively determined that the US would do absolutely nothing to ameliorate, let alone reverse, climate change in any relevant timeframe. And that’s the whole game.
February 20, 2012 at 4:12 am
Main Street Muse
I agree that 2000 was the most consequential election of the 20th century. Popular vote elected one man, one political way of thought. Winner was a different man, with a very different political way of thought. Outcome of the election decided by US Supreme Court, after Florida, run by one candidate’s brother, swung votes to the governor’s brother – with accusations of outright fraud, particularly in Florida’s minority neighborhoods.
The 2000 election left most Americans feeling queasy about the electoral process. It gave us a president who had not captured the hearts and minds of voters. It gave us the impression that our voice as citizens had given way to fraud and deception.
And then Bush/Cheney immediately began acting as if they had an enormous mandate. And early in their reign, they began chipping away at the concept that American citizens have rights of any kind. Even before 9/11/01, Cheney felt it was his right as VP to keep his oil policy advisors a secret from the American public. Bush seemed to love the vacation aspect of being in the White House (far too many photo ops of him cutting brush on the ranch.)
Bush/Cheney inserted us into a war in Iraq, using dubious reasoning to get us there. Regulatory departments were gutted by the Bush/Cheney anti-regulatory policies. In 2004, Henry Paulson was one of several banking executives who lobbied for decreasing banks’ capital requirements. Two years later, he became Treasury Secretary, and used the office in 2008 to distribute vast sums of money via TARP to banks that had failed to keep sufficient capital to run their business (money that seemed to be transferred almost immediately into the bankers’ bonus pool).
The one thing the 2000 election gave us: the continuation of the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, one of America’s extraordinary virtues.
February 20, 2012 at 4:58 am
ajay
Yeah, add me to the list of people who couldn’t follow this post at all. Especially with stuff like this: “I think the best match of consequential election – where the election itself determined who would go to the White House – to consequential presidency – where the person in the White House really shifted the course of history – was probably 2000.”
As opposed to all those other elections which didn’t determine who went to the White House?
This would be easier to follow if “election” meant “campaign”, or something. And you also have to distinguish between “close elections with big consequences”, like 2000, and “elections where how the election campaign itself was conducted had big consequences”, like, well, I don’t know – much trickier to say.
February 20, 2012 at 7:01 am
kevin
What about 1912?
Say the Republicans don’t succumb to infighting. TR takes the nomination and then, with TR and Taft no longer splitting the majority of the GOP vote between them, Wilson fails to win the White House and TR does. His election, presumably to two terms*, changes the shape of America’s entry into the war and, moreover, the vision of the postwar world. Huge international impact.
Domestically, TR would’ve embraced the bubbling progressive reforms and rise of new social politics during the wartime era that Wilson dismissed as an aberration. He would’ve muted congressional opposition to issues like nationalization of the railroads, labor legislation, social insurance, etc. and the country likely could’ve seen a spate of social legislation like the UK did in 1906-1909.
Coming out of his two successful terms, you wouldn’t have the Harding landslide in 1920, with the elevation of Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Mellon’s disastrous economic policies. Instead, I bet TR would’ve named an heir like Hoover, someone who was fairly conservative on economic matters but nowhere near CC. You definitely wouldn’t have seen the rollback of the progressive tax structure of the war, for sure, and therefore possibly not as much of a runaway bull market in 1928-1929 as a lot of that tax cut money made its way into the market.
Hoover wins re-election in 1924 fairly easily, I think, but then maybe the Democrats finally break the chain — after back-to-back 8-year administrations by TR and HH — and win one in 1928 with … William McAdoo? John W. Davis?
Then when the crash comes, it’s the Democrats who take the blame. You’d have to think having the Civil War and the Great Depression on their heads might doom the party forever. Either it limps along as the party of ruin and rebellion, or more likely, we’d see the creation of an entirely new party out of the ashes — probably a rural-conservative party meant to offset the urban coastal coalition of business interests and progressivism that the Republican Party became under TR and HH.***
*He might have felt the need to step aside after two full terms** in 1916, but I suspect he’d have shared his cousin’s attitude that a looming world war necessitated a third term
**The first being his first full term (1905-1909), the only to which he was technically elected to serve as president.
***If only we had access to an historian who’d written extensively about this period. If only.
February 20, 2012 at 7:07 am
kevin
Oh, and no Wilson, means no Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, no Palmer Raids, and maybe no rise of J. Edgar Hoover’s fledgling FBI?
And no James Clark McReynolds on the Supreme Court either. TR would’ve appointed Brandeis, though, so don’t worry.
February 20, 2012 at 7:55 am
silbey
Yeah, add me to the list of people who couldn’t follow this post at all. Especially with stuff like this: “I think the best match of consequential election – where the election itself determined who would go to the White House – to consequential presidency – where the person in the White House really shifted the course of history – was probably 2000.”
As opposed to all those other elections which didn’t determine who went to the White House?
Eric did mention a distinction in the original post, and how about you tone down the snark a bit?
February 20, 2012 at 8:14 am
Ryan F
I think 1860 becomes a lot more consequential if you include the nominating process as part of the “election.” There was a lot of action, and a lot was up in the air, it was just in April-June rather than November.
February 20, 2012 at 8:24 am
kevin
I think 1860 becomes a lot more consequential if you include the nominating process as part of the “election.”
That’s another discussion entirely, but a good one — there were a number of elections in which one party seemed likely to take the White House, and the internal fight was important.
If Al Smith had taken the Democratic nomination in 1932, the Democratic response to the Great Depression would’ve been much more pinched. If Bob Taft had won the Republican nomination in 1952, the GOP in the 1950s might’ve embraced — and enacted — the same conservatism Goldwater pushed in 1964.
1976 looms large here with alternate histories for both parties. Imagine if Reagan pulled off the challenge to Ford that year and wound up in office for the worst of stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis? Or if Scoop Jackson had taken it for the Democrats?
February 20, 2012 at 8:57 am
ajay
I think 1860 becomes a lot more consequential if you include the nominating process as part of the “election.” There was a lot of action, and a lot was up in the air, it was just in April-June rather than November.
Indeed…
February 20, 2012 at 9:37 am
jim
I think Kevin’s 1912 counterfactuals are too optimistic.
Let’s assume TR wins in 1912. He keeps Leonard Wood on as CSA and Stimson as Secretary of War (Stimson was sort of a Roosevelt man, anyway). The buildup of US Army capabilities that Wood and Stimson had started proceeds apace. TR enters the War earlier and the Army is ready to send men to Europe earlier … and they get slaughtered. Imagine American troops being used as reinforcements during the Somme. Now what happens? Conscription? A reduction in the American role? Does TR even get reelected?
Counterfactuals are risky things.
February 20, 2012 at 11:00 am
kevin
Hmm, that’s a fair point, Jim.
I was thinking mostly in terms of avoiding Wilson’s utopian plans in the postwar world and directing his energies to what, as Dan Rodgers suggested in Atlantic Crossings, seemed like a real embrace of the social politics of the era. But you’re surely right that TR would’ve gotten America involved in the war much earlier, with much greater loss of American life and prestige.
If so, then perhaps TR doesn’t get re-elected, or maybe he does by a mustache whisker and then slogs on through a second term. But either way, then, the Democrats would take office on an isolationist platform, with all the complications that would bring. American entry into WWII might have been inevitable, but the preparation for the war would’ve been much, much different if the American experience in WWI had been more traumatic.
February 20, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Western Dave
I’m with those who think 1844 is probably the champ in this. Had Clay and his allies carried NY (oh so close!), it’s a whole different timeline. I’m a big fan of the Hietala argument that Polk’s dual campaigns in N and S (and subsequent actions to only fulfill Southern campaign promises or over-reach them – All Mexico!) are the beginnings of the Civil War. A Clay victory = the possibility of gradual emancipation as the end of westward expansion made the future of slavery less obviously viable and profitable.
February 21, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Main Street Muse
Though I still think 2000 ranks as the most consequential election, I’m also going to point to 1980 as a huge game changer as well. Cannot imagine another 4 yrs of Carter. I know that in the WSJ article, Reagan’s impact is diminished because it took until 1994 or so for the GOP to gain a majority in the house. The article fails to mention that Democrats could not regain the presidency until they became so conservative as to abolish welfare as we knew it.
Reagan completely changed how we look at the role of government – it became the problem not the solution. He banished the word “liberal” from the political landscape – turning it into a political curse. He turned the State of the Union address into a parade of people used to help tell his story. And when Reagan told a story, facts were never essential. He gave us the Laffer Curve and “supply side” economics. He slashed taxes while increasing spending in defense. As the GOP has grown increasingly conservative in the years since Reagan, so, too, have the Democrats. The Reagan revolution truly transformed America – in ways that we are still reeling from today.
February 21, 2012 at 7:31 pm
andrew
What about conequential vice presidential elections? (Harrison/Tyler)
February 22, 2012 at 4:23 am
erubin
I would interpret the question as the “standard deviation” of the country’s progression, properly weighted according to the probabilities of one victory over another assessed, say, one year before the election. I say this only because I’m studying this kind of stuff in quantum mechanics and it has infected my brain.
I think it’s too soon to argue that the 2000 election was the most consequential, but I’d unhesitantly say it should be considered. It essentially came down to a coin flip and had a dramatic net impact on the economy, fiscal policy, the environment, civil liberties, and perception of the U.S. abroad. While we’re being counterfactual, I think we’d have to project the election’s implications forward to today. Without George W. Bush, we almost certainly wouldn’t have an Obama presidency (whose impact I feel is underestimated on this blog). Today’s Republican party would also likely not be in such complete and hilarious disarray. Politics are volatile, but Bush’s presidency may well have triggered the death of the Republican party (if that phrase needs a qualifier, add: “as we know it”). If that holds true, I dare anyone to say it wasn’t consequential.
I’ll leave it to the historians to sort out the older elections, on which I’m not qualified to comment.
February 22, 2012 at 6:49 am
kevin
What about consequential vice presidential elections?
The shift from Wallace to Truman in 1944 looms large here, I think. Both foreign policy and domestic politics in the postwar era would’ve looked dramatically different.
February 22, 2012 at 7:07 am
eric
I think this is right. In the primary sources, it’s hard to overestimate the sense of a major shift in policy and attitudes on Roosevelt’s death.
February 22, 2012 at 7:13 am
eric
Equally, though, the same sources show ho much of a divisive figure Wallace had become and how widely mistrusted.
February 22, 2012 at 7:41 am
ajay
The shift from Wallace to Truman in 1944 looms large here, I think. Both foreign policy and domestic politics in the postwar era would’ve looked dramatically different.
For “consequential vice presidential elections”, the obvious ones are going to be the ones where the VP later became president. Who was the alternative to LBJ? Symington? Jackson?
How would Hamlin have done if he hadn’t been replaced by Andrew Johnson?
February 22, 2012 at 9:43 am
eric
That’s true with at least one exception; the Burr election and subsequent conspiracy.
February 22, 2012 at 10:52 am
kevin
For “consequential vice presidential elections”, the obvious ones are going to be the ones where the VP later became president.
I don’t mean to be snarky, but is there any other kind? Is there a consequential vice presidential selection in which the VP did not later become president, either through elevation due to death of the president or through election in his own right?
I suppose you could say there are elections in which the outcome pivoted on who was in the ticket’s second spot — say LBJ swinging Texas in 1960 — but most of the ones I’m thinking of are ones where the VP later became president, like LBJ.
February 22, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Ralph Hitchens
Very good choice — really, the only one. Western expansion, the Civil War, etc. — driven by events tending toward inevitability regardless of who was elected. Not true in 2000. I have to assume Gore would have extended the Clinton tax rates and eschewed an invasion of Iraq. From my days in the intelligence community back in the 1990s I have a strong impression & the testimony of some insiders that VP Gore was a keen customer of intelligence who approached things with an open mind. On 9/11 he knew immediately who was responsible and would not have been swayed by the bogus evidence of an Iraqi connection. So we would only be tied down in one long war, and not facing huge deficits.
February 23, 2012 at 4:38 am
ajay
I don’t mean to be snarky, but is there any other kind? Is there a consequential vice presidential selection in which the VP did not later become president, either through elevation due to death of the president or through election in his own right?
Yes, in general “important VPs” are important because they later become president. But one obvious exception comes to mind – Dick Cheney.
(Another one might be George I Bush; how much power did he have in the later years of the Reagan presidency, when the Alzheimer’s had really started to bite?)
February 27, 2012 at 9:01 pm
Stephen Frug
1844: I take it the argument is that had Clay not moderated his position on Texas, he’d have carried New York, been elected and Texas would have remained an independent republic. But carry that on a few years. California still achieves statehood; Lincoln finds it even easier to win in 1860; Texas joins the Confederacy in 1861 and we’re back in our own timeline.
There was a sustained and interesting argument to the contrary in JAH a while ago — an article called “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise” by Gary J. Kornblith. A lot of fun, and a rare example of actual alternate history in an academic history journal. It’s on JSTOR for those with access:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3659792
If you buy Kornblith’s argument, then 1844 certainly trumps.
SF