Who
should read Fred Lucas’s book, Tainted by Suspicion? Folks
whose knowledge of Aaron Burr comes primarily from a milk commercial,
individuals who think Benjamin Harrison was one of the Beatles, and
especially moderately informed voters who labor under the illusion that there
once was a golden age of political decorum in the United
States. Indeed, even history buffs are likely to
discover a plethora of new facts and perspectives by perusing Lucas’s analysis
of The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential
Elections -- specifically the elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, 1888, 1960, and
2000.
“Historiphobes” should be pleased to know that Lucas, a
veteran White House correspondent, doesn’t overwhelm readers with unnecessary
facts and generally focuses attention only on relevant details.
Most folks will easily cover one or two elections in a single
sitting -- without the twin dangers of drowning in mind-numbing minutiae or
being starved with cartoonish oversimplification.
For
each contested election Lucas provides a succinct portrait of the primary
candidates, issues, and campaigns -- descriptions that belie any notion of a
kinder, gentler era of political discourse. Indeed, on the whole,
one could easily conclude that modern campaigns are less vicious than their
19th century predecessors. In 1876, for example,
Democrats chanted “Tilden or blood” when it appeared the supporters of
Rutherford B. Hayes were going to string together enough disputed electoral
votes to overturn what appeared to be a Tilden victory -- a victory achieved,
one must add, with the help of KKK vote suppression in the South.
Fortunately, Tilden was more politic than his most ardent supporters,
especially since both he and Hayes (subsequently known as “Rutherfraud”) were
ready to end Reconstruction.
The
election of Jefferson in 1800 stands out from the others as it represents the
nation’s first transfer of power from one fledgling party to another -- a
transfer accomplished peacefully despite palpable distrust of the man Federalist
partisans denounced as an atheist with sympathies for a French Revolution that
only recently had produced a bloody “Reign of Terror.” These fears
led some members of the House of Representatives to consider Aaron Burr a
preferable alternative to Jefferson when both received the same
number of electoral votes for President. Lucas clearly explains
the reasons for this Constitutional crisis and points to a little-known player
who helped avoid a rupture that would have threatened the existence of the young
republic. In addition, Lucas offers insights into Aaron Burr’s
political life that adds a degree of complexity to the simple portrait of Burr
as the unprincipled person who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and sought to
become Emperor in the Louisiana territory.
Twenty-four years later, Andrew Jackson, principal
founder of the Democratic Party, was willing to wait till 1828 to capture the
Presidency that eluded him in a four-way race where he received a plurality, but
not a majority, of electoral and popular votes. Lucas describes
the relevant ins-and-outs of the perfectly legal decision by the House of
Representatives to award the Presidency to John Quincy Adams. This
decision, however, was denounced as a “corrupt bargain” by
Jackson supporters when another contender in the
Presidential race, Henry Clay of Kentucky, was named
Adams’s Secretary of State. Old
Hickory’s successful 1828 campaign began promptly
when he was nominated by the Tennessee state
legislature in 1825. So much for the idea that only modern
campaigns seem interminable.
Older folks are probably familiar with the chicanery that
occurred during the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race. While Lucas provides
a few specific examples of election fraud in Kennedy’s favor, he’s doubtful they
changed the ultimate outcome of the election. This is certainly a debatable
point since, as Lucas notes, Kennedy carried
Illinois by a mere 9,000 votes and
Texas by 46,000. A little-recalled
aspect of the 1960 election that Lucas also explores involves the
Alabama ballot that was split between five Democrat
electors pledged to Kennedy and six unpledged electors who ultimately voted for
Virginia Senator Harry Byrd. Given this split, it’s plausible to
argue that over half of the Democratic vote in
Alabama wasn’t for Kennedy. Thus,
Nixon, at least according to Congressional Quarterly, actually won the
national popular vote by 60,000. Perhaps the most significant
detail in Lucas’s account of the 1960 election is Nixon’s patriotic reason for
not contesting the vote. Such a legal battle amid the Cold War
would send the wrong signal to nations about
America’s democratic system.
Lucas’s discussion of the 2000 Bush-Gore election
provides a detailed but readable summary of the litigation in
Florida and concludes that, as in all the other
cases, nothing was stolen. He emphasizes that while the Supreme
Court split 5-4 in favor of stopping the Florida
recount, it was a 7-2 vote that rejected the hand counts taking place in only
four select Democratic counties, with varying standards. Lucas
also notes that Bill Daley, son of the Chicago mayor
whose political machine cranked out phantom votes for Kennedy in 1960, was a
prominent member of Gore’s legal team. On the other side, of
course, was Florida Governor Jeb Bush, George W’s brother.
A
“what if” chapter concludes each election analysis. What if Gore
had been President? What if Grover Cleveland had won in 1888
instead of Benjamin Harrison? (That election was never formally contested but
was included because Cleveland won the popular, but
not the electoral, vote.) Citing various historians and
journalists, Lucas illustrates how widespread opinions are on these what-if
questions. He thus adds to Yogi Berra’s observation, “It’s tough
to make predictions, especially about the future,” the fact that it’s also very
hard to make predictions about the past. I feel safe, however, in
predicting that anyone who reads Tainted by Suspicion will be wiser for
the effort.
