JMU profs share encyclopedic knowledge
Then Sen. Barack Obama campaigns at JMU on Oct. 28, 2008.
Presidential
campaigns have urged voters to "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow,"
"Don't Change Horses in Mid-Stream," "Like Ike" and
"Keep Cool with Coolidge." They have declared: "It's the
Economy, Stupid," "Back to Normalcy," "America Needs a
Change" and "Stand Up for America."
Campaign
communication has coursed through the years via deeply partisan newspapers to
whistle-stop train tours to fireside chats to social media.
From the time of
George Washington, who drew from his sense of duty to accept reluctantly the
role pressed upon him as the first president of the United States of America,
to the hard-fought and often downright nasty contests since 1788, the campaigns
for the highest office in the land have generated a treasure-trove of stories,
facts and statistics.
To provide a
resource to manage so much information and to analyze each of the 56 campaigns
that led to the elections of Presidents Washington through Barack Obama, three
James Madison University political science professors have combined their
knowledge of U.S. presidential campaigns to publish a three-volume encyclopedia,
just in time for party conventions and the general election.
"Presidential
Campaigns, Slogans, Issues, and Platforms: The Complete Encyclopedia" by
Drs. Robert N. Roberts, Scott J. Hammond and Valerie J. Sulfaro is a mammoth
revision of a 2004 encyclopedia cowritten by Roberts and Hammond for the
Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., also the publisher of the current volumes.
"The new encyclopedia is more up to date, of course, with sections on the
2004 and 2008 campaigns," Roberts said. "We've also added much more
material on campaign issues, a lot more breadth and depth."
Sulfaro, who
teaches political behavior, political parties, and elections and serves as the
political communication coordinator for JMU's Department of Political Science,
expanded the work from 2000 onward, including major analysis of issues such as
immigration and race, women's equality, environmental policy and foreign
policy.
"I'm
interested in political theory," Hammond said, "and Bob is a pundit.
Analyst is better."
"I'm
technically a pundit," Roberts said, which he and his cowriters define as
"a term to describe an individual who provides political commentary and
predictions in print and electronic media outlets" in an encyclopedia
entry on the word.
Campaigning for
the White House changed substantially in the 20th century. Earlier, "the
presidential candidates did not really run their own campaigns. We forget
that," said Roberts. "The whole idea of a candidate running his own
campaign apart from the party is fairly new," adding that Dwight
Eisenhower's campaign, which was run by the Republican Party, is a late
example. "The parties ran their campaigns because the parties were
essential in terms of getting out your vote."
Now, the authors
argue, people are not as identified with parties per se. "They're more
identified with issues the parties back. That's a big change," Roberts
said.
While we bemoan
the negative tone of modern presidential campaigns, the encyclopedia is chuck
full of examples to what Roberts describes as "a lot of terribly negative
campaigning, particularly in the 19th century. "It was much worse and we
don't perceive that. The 19th century was just brutal."
"People
accused other people of murder," Hammond added. "The attacks were
much more personal. They would attack the candidates' character."
Roberts points
to the Campaign of 1884 as his pick for the nastiest presidential race. As
recapped in the encyclopedia: "Lacking significant policy differences
separating the two nominees from the major parties, the campaign between
Democrat Grover Cleveland, the eventual winner, and Republican James G. Blaine
decays into a mudslinging brawl, becoming one of the nastiest campaigns in
American history."
"Cleveland
had become governor of New York based on the 'Grover the Good' campaign,"
Roberts said. "It came out that he had allegedly fathered a child out of
wedlock – he admitted the child could have been his – that became a huge
issue." Meanwhile, Blaine was dogged by serious allegations of wrongdoing
in the railroad scandal, the same situation he faced in the 1876 presidential
campaign.
"The slurs
were often done by party faithful or surrogates, rather than by ads,"
Roberts said. Chants of "Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa?" and "Blaine,
Blaine, James G. Blaine, the Continental Liar from the State of Maine"
were just part of the campaign hoopla that included untoward remarks about
Roman Catholics uttered by a member of the clergy who introduced Blaine prior
to a campaign speech.
"There are
no ground rules on what people bring up," Roberts said. "It's always
been this way."
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Aug. 29, 2012
