On Saturday, Americans learned that Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro had been taken from Caracas by U.S. forces and flown to Manhattan for trial. The most obvious comparison between the ouster of Maduro by the U.S. is the ouster of General Manuel Noriega of Panama. Although the cases of Maduro and Noriega on their faces do look the same, as in a Latin American dictator is engaged in drug trafficking and is wanted by the United States, there are some significant differences between the circumstances that resulted in Operation Just Cause.
Relations between the U.S. and Panama have had a complicated history, and part of this was the control of the U.S. over the Panama Canal, which they had constructed, and the area they owned called the Panama Canal Zone. Starting in the 1960s, agitation for Panamanian ownership of the Panama Canal began, and U.S. leaders began supporting turning over the Panama Canal to improve relations with Latin America. President Gerald Ford endorsed the idea while Jimmy Carter came around to it once he was president. With the signing of the Panama Canal treaties in 1978, the U.S. and Panama had certain treaty obligations, such as the U.S. reserving the right to militarily intervene if neutrality over the canal was violated. Carter had signed the treaty along with Panama’s leader, Omar Torrijos. However, Torrijos was killed in an air crash in 1981, and the power vacuum that followed was resolved by the rise to power of Manuel Noriega. Noriega was never officially the leader, rather he had puppet presidents.
The U.S. and Noriega: From Friends to Foes
Manuel Noriega had a long and complicated relationship with the United States, which began with his recruitment from the Panamanian military to study at the School of the Americas through the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1950s, which trained many anti-communist fighters in the Western Hemisphere. Noriega rose up through the Panamanian military and in 1968, he bet on the right horse when he backed the coup that deposed President Arnulfo Arias for Omar Torrijos. As a reward, Torrijos made him chief of military intelligence. In 1971, the CIA began paying him for intelligence (Graham). In 1981, however, Torrijos was killed in a mysterious plane crash and out of the power vacuum Noriega became the unofficial leader of Panama. He was never president, rather he had figureheads serve his interests as president. The U.S. was initially supportive of Noriega as an anti-communist leader in Panama, and indeed he provided military support for the Contras in Nicaragua. However, the CIA wasn’t his only outside source of income. In 1982, Noriega cut a deal with Pablo Escobar to allow his cocaine to move through Tocumen International Airport. In return, Noriega would get $1000 per kilo of cocaine that reached the U.S. Although the U.S. knew of this arrangement, they valued him for his providing weapons and funding of Contra rebels in Nicaragua. However, what they didn’t know until later is that the CIA wasn’t the only intelligence agency paying him. Despite his anti-communist stance, Noriega was also a double-agent, accepting money from Cuban intelligence in exchange for information on the U.S. He also became increasingly brutal as a ruler, including beheading political rival Hugo Spadafora in 1985. After the president he had rigged the 1984 election for, Nicolas Ardito Barletta, promised an investigation, Noriega forced his resignation. On February 4, 1988, Noriega was indicted in Miami for drug trafficking and money laundering. In May 1989, Noriega again stole the election, much like Nicolas Maduro had in Venezuela in 2024. Noriega afterwards amped up the hostility to the U.S., including stating that the U.S. and Panama were in a “state of war” and with his forces firing on U.S. marines, killing one, and abducting another marine and his wife, brutally beating him and threatening her with sexual assault. Given that Noriega was acting with such impunity there was certainly an existing risk for the neutrality of the Panama Canal.
On December 20, 1989, Operation Just Cause, or the invasion of Panama, was ordered by President Bush. A tremendous amount of American public support already existed for such an action, unlike the sudden operation and capture of Maduro, which came a bit out of left field for most, as prediction markets showed (the success of this however certainly serves to blunt a lot of criticism). The invasion of Panama proceeded quickly, and Noriega fled to the Vatican’s embassy for diplomatic sanctuary. The US forces proceeded to surround the embassy and blast disturbing chicken sounds and numerous songs including “Give it Up” by K.C., “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, and “Panama” by Van Halen as a form of psychological warfare to get Noriega to come out (Myre). Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990 and he was brought to the U.S. for trial.
Noriega was convicted by a Miami jury and sentenced to 40 years imprisonment for drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering. He served 17 years after which he was extradited to France where he was convicted of money laundering in 2010 and then extradited back to Panama where he was imprisoned for murder, corruption, and embezzlement, having previously been convicted in absentia. He died in a Panama City hospital of cancer on May 29, 2017. Some differences that exist between Maduro and Noriega is that although you could say that Venezuela is a national security issue for the U.S. given their relationships with China and Russia and that under Maduro it had become a narco state, there were more clear open hostilities with the U.S. with Panama and the Panama Canal lay in the balance.
References
Graham, D.A. (2017, May 30). The Death of Manuel Noriega – and U.S. Intervention in Latin America. The Atlantic.
The subject of the war powers of the president have again arisen with the Saturday U.S. raid on Caracas and the capturing of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife for trial. President Trump did not invoke the War Powers Resolution, although neither did President George H.W. Bush for his invasion of Panama in 1989-1990. The War Powers Resolution is definitely a subject of discussion, though, for this most notable event and today I am looking into the circumstances of the adoption of the War Powers Resolution.
Clement J. Zablocki (D-Wis.) and Nixon.
By 1973, the U.S. was in the process of withdrawing from Vietnam and many members of Congress were critical of how both Presidents Johnson and Nixon had used their war powers. For the latter, it was when Nixon ordered secret bombings of Cambodia without seeking Congressional consent. In the House, Clement J. Zablocki (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the War Powers Resolution. The measure had bipartisan support as well as drafting, with Paul Findley (R-Ill.) being the resolution’s main author. The resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and bars forces from remaining for more than 60 days. The first body to vote on this resolution would be the House. On July 18, 1973, they voted for 244-170 (D 171-61, R 73-109). The central architect of the resolution in the Senate was Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.), one of the most liberal members of Nixon’s party who had repeatedly been in opposition to the Nixon Administration on Vietnam. He considered the measure as “a critical departure from the past” (CQ Almanac 1973). However, the measure attracted broad support, and a key senator to come out in favor was the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and known conservative John C. Stennis (D-Miss.), who expressed that “It is of the utmost importance to the future of this nation that we not again slip gradually into a war that does not have the moral support and sanction of the American people” (CQ Almanac 1973). However, the measure did not have the support of another prominent figure from the South, a legal authority on the Constitution, Sam Ervin (D-N.C.). Ervin held that the measure was unconstitutional, stating, “Here is a power and a duty which the Constitution clearly imposes upon the President of the United States, to use the armed forces to protect this country against invasion. And here is a bill which says expressly that the President of the United States cannot perform his constitutional duty and cannot exercise his constitutional power to protect this country against invasion for more than 30 days without the affirmative consent of Congress” (CQ Almanac 1973). There was also a small cadre of liberals who opposed the War Powers Resolution as not being sufficiently strong. Thomas Eagleton (D-Mo.) objected to the absence of a provision disallowing the use of intelligence agencies or other actors to engage in hostilities against other nations (CQ Almanac 1973). On July 20th, the resolution was adopted 72-18 (D 50-4, R 22-14), but because it was different from the House version, the measure had to go into conference. October 10th, the equation did not change in the Senate with a vote of 75-20 (D 49-6, R 26-13, C 0-1), still a veto-proof margin. However, original passage in the House had not been veto-proof. This, however, would not remain so as President Nixon’s popularity was declining from the continuing sore on his presidency that was Watergate.
Majority Leader Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) argued for the resolution, holding that “If the President can deal with the Arabs, and if he can deal with the Soviets, then he ought to be able and willing to deal with the U.S. Congress. That is all we ask of him” (CQ Almanac 1973). Democratic leadership was united in favor, and Republican leadership was mostly united against. The exception was Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-Penn.), thus the foremost opponent in the House was Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.). Ford, less than a year away from being president, expressed his concerns, “We may be a long ways from being out of the woods. I am very, very concerned that the approval of this legislation over the President’s veto could affect the President’s capability to move forward from cease-fire and to achieve a permanent peace” (CQ Almanac 1973). The resolution passed on October 12th 238-122 (D 163-38, R 75-84). President Nixon, as no one doubted he would, vetoed the resolution. Further eroding Nixon’s popularity, however, between final passage and his veto of the resolution, the “Saturday Night Massacre” had occurred, in which Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned after refusing Nixon’s order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus was fired after refusing to fire Cox. Solicitor General Robert Bork ultimately agreed to fire Cox.
The real battle to override the President’s veto occurred in the House, as supporters had more than enough on passage in the Senate to get the resolution through. To achieve an override, eleven opponents of the president had to be lobbied to switch their votes from “nay” to “yea”. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), one of the most left-wing members of Congress, had opposed, stating before the conference report that “I shall vote against this bill because it is patently unconstitutional and gives the President power he does not now have…I fear that it does exactly the opposite of what we set out to do: that is, to prevent the President, any president, from usurping the power of Congress to declare war” (CQ Almanac 1973). Speaker Carl Albert (D-Okla.) and the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action actively lobbied these legislators to switch. Their efforts were successful, as eight did so, including Abzug. The House vote of 284-135 (D 197-32, R 87-103) to override on November 7th was four votes above the threshold needed to override President Nixon’s veto.
In the Senate, with an override now inevitable, a few members switched their votes later that day: Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee and Democrats James Allen of Alabama, Harold Hughes of Iowa, and Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin switched from “nay” to “yea” while Republicans Ted Stevens of Alaska and Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma switched from “yea” to “nay”. The vote was 75-18 (D 50-3, R 25-14, C 0-1). On a side note, the vote on the resolution as reported by Voteview has an error, as Senators Tunney (D-Calif.) and Tower (R-Tex.) have their votes swapped; Tower opposed the War Powers Resolution while Tunney supported. Overall, most of the resolution’s opponents were conservative, but there were some interesting conservative votes in favor on overriding the president’s veto, such as John Ashbrook (R-Ohio), who had run a quixotic primary campaign in 1972 to Nixon’s right, the legendary penny-pincher H.R. Gross (R-Iowa), and John Rousselot (R-Calif.), the only member of the John Birch Society in Congress at the time. In the Senate, conservative Republicans were a bit more unified against with Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) being among the dissenters, but you did have guys like James McClure (R-Idaho) and William Scott (R-Va.) as votes in favor. In another indication of how poorly the Nixon Administration was doing on popularity, among Southern Democrats, a key group that Nixon sought to court support, only Sam Ervin voted against overriding Nixon’s veto.
There have been critics of this resolution, both as being too strong and too weak. Law Professor Robert F. Turner argued in a Fall 2012 journal article that the War Powers Resolution was unwise, unconstitutional, and even resulted in a reduction of American security to the point that it directly contributed to the 9/11 attacks. However, Scott R. Anderson, a fellow of the Brookings Institution, holds that although the War Powers Resolution is imperfect, it was a good undertaking that had a positive result in constraining the executive in getting the US into prolonged wars.
References
Anderson, S.R. (2023, November 9). The Underappreciated Legacy of the War Powers Resolution. Lawfare.
To Agree to the Conference Report on H.J. Res. 542, to Govern the Use of the Armed Forces by the President During the Absence of a Declaration of War. Voteview.
To Override the President’s Veto of H.J. Res. 542, Concerning the War Powers of the Congress and the President Concerning the War Powers of the Congress and the President. Voteview.
To Override the President’s Veto of H.J. Res. 542, to Govern the Use of the Armed Forces by the President During the Absence of a Declaration of War. Voteview.
Turner, R.F. (2012, Fall). The War Powers Resolution at 40: Still an Unconstitutional, Unnecessary, and Unwise Fraud that Contributed Directly to the 9/11 Attacks. Case Western Reserve Journal School of Law, 45(1).
Tariffs have been figuring strongly in recent politics thanks to President Trump’s repeated changes in course throughout the year on the imposition or removal of tariffs and certain decisions surrounding them that have been questionable at best. Trump’s policies on tariffs, although more erratic than Republicans of past, given his positive mention of William McKinley does make me think of the McKinley Tariff of 1890, which was at the time a crowning partisan achievement of the GOP and one that helped bring about swift political consequences.
The 1888 election was very close, but a great success for the Republican Party. For the first time since the Grant Administration, they had achieved unified government, and under the highly capable Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine, they sought to make the most of it. At the forefront of the agenda was the bread and butter of economic Republicanism of the time…protective tariffs. Leading this charge was the popular Representative William McKinley (R-Ohio), known as the “Napoleon of Protection” for his strong advocacy. The Republican Party was at the time strongly unified behind increasing tariffs while the Democratic Party was just as if not more strongly unified against.
A key concept introduced by this legislation was the reciprocal tariff or empowering the executive to raise tariffs on commodities after their addition to the free list to disincentivize other nations from raising their tariffs on these goods. Furthermore, Harrison persuaded the Senate to adopt a provision permitting the president to sign agreements opening foreign markets (U.S. House). These provisions would be upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court as a constitutionally permissible delegation of power in the 1892 decision Field v. Clark.
The initial version of the McKinley Tariff passed 164-142 on May 21st on a highly partisan vote as only three representatives defected: Republicans Hamilton Coleman of Louisiana and Oscar Gifford of South Dakota and Democrat Charles Gibson of Maryland. In the Senate, the bill was managed by Nelson Aldrich (R-R.I.), perhaps the foremost representative of industry in the Senate. On tariffs, in which 138 votes on the subject were held that covered numerous commodities from salt to sponges, the Senate passed the bill 40-29 on September 10th a completely partisan vote. However, there were differences between the House and Senate versions and thus the measure went to conference to resolve them. On September 27th, the House voted on the conference report, which was passed 151-81, with only Republicans Harrison Kelley of Kansas and again Coleman of Louisiana breaking with party. In the Senate, however, there was some more dissent among Republicans, with Senators Preston Plumb of Kansas, Algernon Paddock of Nebraska, and Richard Pettigrew of South Dakota voting against. In its’ final form, this law raised tariffs on average from 38% to 49.5%. Certain commodities were heavily focused on for protective tariffs like manufactured goods such as tin plates to appeal to factories in the East, while wool was jacked up to appeal to the sheep farmers of the rural West. Other tariffs, however, were removed, such as those on sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides, but the president was authorized to raise them should other nations choose to impose on these goods for the United States.
Puck cartoon mocking McKinley.
Although quite the achievement for the Republican Congress, it went into effect on October 6th, less than a month before the 1890 election, and prices promptly rose in response to the tariffs. The Democratic newspaper skewered the bill, and since the benefits of the tariffs (increase in domestic worker wages and jobs) had little time to take effect while the negative side took effect promptly, this resulted in a surge of disapproval of the Republicans. Eleven days after the tariff took effect, The Cleveland Plain Dealer (1890) wrote, “The consumers are finding out that they are compelled to pay the tax, and that fact will grow daily more apparent. A gentleman walked into a hardware store a few days ago and asked to see some pocketknives. A number were placed upon the show case and prices were given. “Are these McKinley prices?” he inquired. “No,” said the clerk, “but we will be compelled to raise prices. We have been busy and have not made any change in our prices yet, but we shall soon do so.” This is only one of many occurrences of which one hears on the streets, and to offset it all there is nothing but prattle about imaginary tin plate factories and other McKinley air castles”. Such unpopularity contributed a great deal to the utter slaughter the Republicans faced in the 1890 midterms including McKinley himself losing his seat, although his loss was in good part due to unfavorable redistricting. Democrats won the popular vote by 8 points in the House, which produced a gain of 86 seats for them and Republicans sustained a 93 seat loss; they also lost seats to the newly formed Populist Party. The Indianapolis Journal (1890), contrary to The Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote in defense of the tariffs after the election, attributing much of the unpopularity to “falsehoods” propounded about the McKinley Tariff by the “importers’ press”, for instance attributing a price increase in fruits and vegetables to tariffs without mentioning that there were crop failures that produced shortages. Although Republicans continued to be for higher tariffs, they sought to proceed more carefully in the future than they had in 1890, and McKinley would have an astounding comeback, being elected Ohio’s governor in 1891, be reelected in 1893, and then be elected president in 1896. Although a high tariff man, he would embrace the idea of reciprocal tariff reductions, and the Dingley Tariff Act of 1897, although it enacted the highest tariffs on average in American history, would contain a provision permitting the president to reduce duties by up to 20%. McKinley even came around to the idea of reciprocal trade treaties shortly before his assassination.
References
Gould, L.L. William McKinley: Domestic Affairs. UVA Miller Center.
It can be highly tempting for people to say that one state has “always been conservative” or “always been liberal” to explain away party switches. But the reality is that populations shift, political priorities shift, and one party’s policies can go so strongly against a certain state’s interests that their voters move to the other party, even if in the past they had supported much of what their old party stood for. This has been demonstrably true of some states even in modern day. I will present today five examples of states, not in the former Confederacy or New England, which have had considerable evolution in their status.
Henry Clay of Kentucky, whose state and him went from being supporters of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans to being staunchly with the Whig Party.
Delaware
Our last president was the first from America’s first state of Delaware. Since 1992, the state has voted Democratic and since 1996 it has done so by double digits save for 2004. Delaware also now has the distinction of having elected the first member of Congress to identify as trans. The state’s Democratic dominance would have been absolutely unthinkable during the time of the foundation of the Democratic Party itself.
Delaware had been one of the most loyal states to the old Federalist Party, only voting for the Democratic-Republicans in the 1820 election in which James Monroe had no substantive opposition. Delaware was also a reliable state for the Whig Party until 1852, when all but four states voted for Democrat Franklin Pierce. Normally, Delaware voters would be supportive of the economic philosophy that guided both the Federalists and the Whigs; an adherence to Alexander Hamilton’s American System. This being imposing tariffs both for protection of domestic industry and to fund internal improvements for the purpose of expanding national growth. The Whig’s successor party, the Republican Party, would embrace the same. However, Delaware was a tough state for Republicans because it was a slave state. Although slavery was not practiced by most families in the state by the start of the War of the Rebellion, many voters still defended the “peculiar institution” and the political of the power of the state lay with its defenders. During the war, its voters elected Unionist politicians to the House, but its senators were Democratic and defenders of slavery in Willard Saulsbury, James A. Bayard, and George Riddle. From 1865 to 1895 all of its governors were Democrats, and until the 1889 election all its senators Democrats. What changed in Delaware was that more blacks were becoming middle class, thus making the issue of race less salient. What’s more, a certain prominent family moved their operations to Delaware and bankrolled the state’s Republican Party in the du Ponts. Although in 1888, Delaware had voted for Democrat Grover Cleveland by nearly 12 points, an ominous signal of times ahead for the Democrats came in the next election, in which Cleveland won, but by only 1.5 points. This was an election in which incumbent Benjamin Harrison was unpopular and Cleveland scored unexpected wins in states that had consistent records of Republican voting in Illinois and Wisconsin, the former having voted Republican since 1860 and the latter having done so since its first presidential election in 1856. Delaware’s politicians, be they Democratic or Republican, had records of opposition to inflationary currency, and the economic depression as well as the Democrats shifting towards the left by picking William Jennings Bryan, a proponent of currency inflation through “free coinage of silver” (no limits on silver content in coinage), left Delaware cold. McKinley won the state by 10 points in 1896.
The 1896 election kicked off a period of Republican dominance. Until 1936, save for the 1912 three-way election, Delaware voted for the Republican candidate. Henry du Pont and his cousin Thomas were elected to the Senate during this period, and during FDR’s first term, its senators, Daniel Hastings and John Townsend, were the most consistent opponents of the New Deal in the Senate and voted against Social Security. However, FDR’s appeal even penetrated Delaware; Hastings would lose reelection in 1936 and Townsend in 1940. However, in 1948, Delaware would return to the Republican fold in voting for Thomas Dewey. The state would vary in its voting behavior through 1988, and it would go for the Democrat in the close 1960 and 1976 elections. Since 1993, Delaware has had only Democratic governors, and it has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1994 nor to the House since 2008. A big part of the state’s shift towards the Democrats was that from 1990 to 2018, the black population of Delaware increased by 47% (Davis). Since 1964, black voter support for Republican presidential candidates has not surpassed 15%. Delaware does not look like it will turn away from the Democrats any time soon.
Iowa
Admitted to the Union in 1846, Iowa started existence as a Democratic state. In 1848, its voters preferred Michigander Lewis Cass to Whig Zachary Taylor. However, a significant minority of Iowa’s Democrats were staunchly anti-slavery and after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, these people bolted to the newly formed Republican Party. The GOP’s most prominent politician in the latter part of the 19th century and for a few years in the early 20th was Senator William B. Allison, who would be part of the Senate’s leadership during the McKinley and Roosevelt presidencies. Until 1912, Iowa would without fail vote for Republican presidential candidates and would not do so again until 1932. From 1859 until 1926, all of its senators were Republicans, and the 1926 case was because Republicans had split over their nominee, Smith W. Brookhart, who was on the party’s liberal wing. Iowa Democrats made significant headway during the 1930s, with the state even having two Democratic senators from 1937 to 1943. However, the state was moving against Roosevelt and its voters were strongly against American involvement in World War II, preferring the Republican candidate in 1940 and 1944. There was a bit of a surprise when Truman won the state in 1948, something that can be credited to his effective appeals to Midwestern farmers and painting the Republican 80th Congress as bad for their interests.
Iowa nonetheless continued its Republican voting behavior in Republican presidential elections, even though the state’s party saw significant gains in the 1970s, including both Senate seats. In 1988, Iowa delivered a bit of a surprise in its vote for Democrat Michael Dukakis. Indeed, from 1988 until Trump’s victory in the state in 2016, Iowa would be Democratic on a presidential level with the only exception being Bush’s squeaker of a win in 2004. Since 2016, however, support for Republicans has only been increasing. In 2024, Trump won the state by 13 points despite that Seltzer poll. This was the best performance a Republican candidate has had in Iowa since 1972, when Nixon won with 57%.
Kentucky
Kentucky has an even more varied history as a state than Delaware. After it was first admitted, it did, as did all the other states, vote to reelect George Washington in 1792. However, when it came to choosing between Adams and Jefferson, they chose Jefferson and kept doing so up until the foundation of the Whig Party. The Whig Party had as its central founder Kentucky’s Henry Clay, who at one time had been part of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans but had opposed the rise of General Andrew Jackson.
Kentucky’s issue with sticking with the successor party was the same as Delaware’s: it was a slave state. It remained in the union but its voters were staunch foes of the GOP. Kentucky did not vote Republican until 1896, and did so narrowly, a product of the economic depression and Democrat William Jennings Bryan’s inflationary currency stance. Although this looked like an opening and indeed Republicans had a few successes in electing governors, the state maintained its Democratic character up until 1956, its voters having only seen fit to vote Republican in 1924 and 1928. The 1956 election was quite successful for Dwight Eisenhower and Republicans, including in Kentucky. Not only did the state vote for him, they also voted in two Republicans to the Senate in John Sherman Cooper and Thruston B. Morton. However, their brand of Republicanism was much more moderate than what we see from Kentucky’s GOP today. Republicans followed up their 1956 win with Nixon’s 1960 win of the state. From 1956 onward, Kentucky did not vote for a Democratic candidate for president unless he was from the South. The last time the state voted for the Democrat was Bill Clinton in 1996. Nonetheless, the state party remained strong, and from 1975 to 1985 both of its senators were Democrats. However, this was broken with the election of Mitch McConnell in 1984, and Democrat Wendell Ford retired in 1999. To this day, Ford is the last Democratic senator from the state. This Republican bent is not going away any time soon either; Trump scored the highest margin of victory that any Republican has in 2024, even surpassing Nixon’s 1972 performance. However, Kentucky does still elect Democratic governors, but this puts it in a similar position to Vermont, which is highly Democratic but has happily elected Republican Governor Phil Scott.
New York
New York presents an interesting case as although recently it has voted solidly for the Democrats since 1988, it was at one time a big swing state. Indeed, New York’s vote was predictive of the winner of presidential elections until 1856, when their voters backed Republican John C. Fremont. However, this did not put them firmly in the Republican column. Indeed, Democrats had a strong presence in the state through the political organization of Tammany Hall in New York City. Republicans had a powerful machine as well in the late 1860s to early 1880s under Senator Roscoe Conkling. The electoral vote rich state became a prime target for the parties, and it resulted in Democrats picking people who were for hard currency for their presidential candidates even though their base nationwide was favorable to soft, or inflationary currency. When Democrats picked a New Yorker, they usually won the state. In 1868, they elected former New York Governor Horatio Seymour, and although the Republicans won the election, the Democrats won New York. In 1876, the same was true with their pick of Samuel J. Tilden. However, with the downfall of the Bourbon Democrats and the economic depression of the 1890s, New York voted for Republican William McKinley, beginning an era of Republicans being dominant in the state. These weren’t liberal guys either; at the start of the Harding Administration its senators were William Calder and James W. Wadsworth Jr., both staunchly conservative, with Wadsworth voting against the entirety of the New Deal in FDR’s first and second terms as a representative. However, the status of Republicans was starting to weaken with the gubernatorial elections of Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt and in 1928 even though Republicans fared quite well in that election, Hoover only won the state by two points. New York would vote for Roosevelt all four times and although it would vote for Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948, this was a plurality caused by Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party getting 8.25% of the vote. New York voted for Eisenhower twice, but I would say that its Democratic era began with the election of 1960. I say this because Republicans have only won three presidential elections since then; the 49-state landslides of Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984 as well as Reagan in 1980. It is true that Republicans were still able to elect some governors and managed to hold on to one of the Senate seats for 42 years, but this was because Republicans ran candidates that were far from doctrinaire conservatives. Jacob Javits, who served from 1957 to 1981, was a textbook example of a RINO, and his successor, Al D’Amato, would probably be a bit too moderate for the modern GOP’s tastes. Perhaps Republicans have some reason for optimism in the Empire State; Trump’s performance in 2024 was the best Republicans have had since 1988.
Oregon
You might have trouble believing this, but until Michael Dukakis’ win in 1988, Oregon had voted Republican for president 81% of the time. This included the close 1960 and 1976 elections and before Wilson’s 1912 win, they had only voted Democratic in the 1868 election. The state remained fairly robust for the GOP, even when faced with FDR. Although Roosevelt won the state four times, its senators were Republican for almost the entire time. Oregon’s Charles McNary was the leader of the Senate Republicans! Oregon also had Republican governors for all but six years from 1939 to 1987. However, Oregon Republicans understood that they had to make exceptions here and there on conservatism and McNary was a very moderate conservative. The Eisenhower Administration would challenge Republican rule in Oregon based on its belief in the private sector, rather than the public sector.
In 1954, the bottom began to fall out for the state GOP, and this was due to the Eisenhower Administration’s favoring private development over public development of power. It was in that year that Republicans lost the Congressional seat based in Portland and their senator lost reelection. This would be followed by two more Congressional Republicans losing reelection in 1956. The defeated senator, Guy Cordon, stands as the last conservative to represent Oregon in the Senate. Although for 27 years Oregon had two Republican senators, neither Mark Hatfield nor Bob Packwood could be considered conservatives. Gordon Smith, who represented Oregon from 1997 to 2009, was a moderate.
Although Oregon has had a strong Democratic streak since 1988, it is also true that Al Gore won by less than half a point in 2000, and Kerry won by less than five points in 2004. However, Oregon’s Democratic politics have strengthened since then, and since 2008 the Democratic candidate has won by double digits. Oregon does not look like it will be moving to the Republican column at any time in the foreseeable future.
References
Davis, T.J. (2018, December 30). Young people are changing black politics in Delaware. Delaware Online.
It rather goes without saying that the two parties today are strongly ideologically polarized. The most conservative Democrat is more liberal than the most liberal Republican in Congress, and President Trump has zero thoughts of trying to get even a few Democratic politicians on his side. Indeed, all Senate Democrats and all but two House Democrats backed impeaching him in 2020, one who then switched to the GOP. However, the party systems have changed over the years, and in particular changed significantly after the election of President Roosevelt in 1932. He pursued what has been commonly called the pursuing of Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means, an idea spelled out by progressive Herbert Croly in 1909. The Democratic Party as established stood for the policies and principles of Andrew Jackson that were inspired by the policies and principles of Thomas Jefferson. I will also be including the Whig platform here for contrast, but the Democrats are the central focus.
The following language was in all Democratic Party platforms from 1840 to 1856:
“1. Resolved, That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitution, and the grants of power shown therein, ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the government, and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers.
2. Resolved, That the constitution does not confer upon the general government the power to commence and carry on, a general system of internal improvements.
3. Resolved, That the constitution does not confer authority upon the federal government, directly or indirectly, to assume the debts of the several states, contracted for local internal improvements, or other state purposes; nor would such assumption be just or expedient.
4. Resolved, That justice and sound policy forbid the federal government to foster one branch of industry to the detriment of another, or to cherish the interests of one portion to the injury of another portion of our common country—that every citizen and every section of the country, has a right to demand and insist upon an equality of rights and privileges, and to complete and ample protection of person and property from domestic violence, or foreign aggression.
5. Resolved, That it is the duty of every branch of the government, to enforce and practice the most rigid economy, in conducting our public affairs, and that no more revenue ought to be raised, than is required to defray the necessary expenses of the government.
6. Resolved, That congress has no power to charter a national bank; that we believe such an institution one of deadly hostility to the best interests of the country, dangerous to our republican institutions and the liberties of the people, and calculated to place the business of the country within the control of a concentrated money power, and above the laws and the will of the people.
7. Resolved, That congress has no power, under the constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states, and that such states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts by abolitionists or others, made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.
8. Resolved, That the separation of the moneys of the government from banking institutions, is indispensable for the safety of the funds of the government, and the rights of the people.
9. Resolved, That the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned in the constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty, and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the democratic faith; and every attempt to abridge the present privilege of becoming citizens, and the owners of soil among us, ought to be resisted with the same spirit which swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute-book.”
These principles were strongly consistent, as opposed to the Whig Party, which although they had principles (protective tariffs, funding internal improvements), they weren’t spelled out fully until their 1852 platform, and indeed specifics are not spelled out at all in their 1848 platform! The Whigs also sought to completely avoid the issue of slavery, a position which the events of the 1850s proved was untenable. The Democratic Party strikes me as the more programmatic party of the two, and indeed they were the dominant party from its creation until the 1860 election. They stood for concrete principles they placed in every platform, while the Whigs were the collection of opposition to the Democrats, and once its great standard-bearer and founder, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, died in 1852, they didn’t last much longer. The language of the Democratic Party indicates a strong belief in the role of states rather than the federal government, although the issues they care about from that perspective are ones that are seen as benefiting the privileged and powerful. The states, thus, were supposed to serve as a check against them per Democratic philosophy. Tariffs assisted the industrial private sector and often did so at the expense of the rural South, which would face retaliatory tariffs on their exported cotton and tobacco. Thus, the language in opposition to sectional legislation and policies benefiting one industry while harming another. The funding of internal improvements (bridges, roads, canals) were for the purpose of advancing commerce, something that Democrats of the time thought should be confined to states. President Andrew Jackson’ veto of the continuing of the Second Bank of the United States was seen as a heroic act by Democrats as a blow against the economically privileged, hence the language of a “concentrated money power”. The language on slavery was for the purpose not only of continued Southern support but also for preservation of the union. Now for the Whigs…
The 1844 Whig Platform
The first Whig platform was mostly non-specific on policy although they did spell out that they supported a protective tariff and spreading out the proceeds of sales of public lands to the states. Democrats did mention and oppose the latter in their 1844 platform.
The 1852 Whig Platform
I skipped to the 1852 platform because I already mentioned the barren 1848 platform. The 1852 platform actually comprehensively spells out what the Whigs believed, and sadly, when they issued the strongest statement of their beliefs they got creamed, only winning the states of Kentucky, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Vermont. They did embrace the Compromise of 1850, Henry Clay’s last, as it was the hope that this would prevent disunion. The platform they did the best on was the 1848 platform, and this was because of the popularity of General Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican-American War, a war the Whigs had opposed. This, in addition to President Pierce’s signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, was the death of the Whig Party, as opponents of slavery in both the Whig and Democratic parties became galvanized to form a new party…the Republican Party. And did this realignment ever bring together former opponents: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Vice President Hannibal Hamlin were both Democrats before 1856, and President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens were both Whigs before 1850. These are the principles espoused by the Whigs:
“First: The Government of the United States is of a limited character, and it is confined to the exercise of powers expressly granted by the Constitution, and such as may be necessary and proper for carrying the granted powers into full execution, and that all powers not thus granted or necessarily implied are expressly reserved to the States respectively and to the people.
Second: The State Governments should be held secure in their reserved rights, and the General Government sustained on its constitutional powers, and that the Union should be revered and watched over as the palladium of our liberties.
Third: That while struggling freedom everywhere enlists the warmest sympathy of the Whig party, we still adhere to the doctrines of the Father of his Country, as announced in his Farewell Address, of keeping ourselves free from all entangling alliances with foreign countries, and of never quitting our own to stand upon foreign ground, that our mission as a republic is not to propagate our opinions, or impose on other countries our form of government by artifice or force; but to teach, by example, and show by our success, moderation and justice, the blessings of self-government, and the advantages of free institutions.
Fourth: That where the people make and control the Government, they should obey its constitution, laws and treaties, as they would retain their self-respect, and the respect which they claim and will enforce from foreign powers.
Fifth: Government should be conducted upon principles of the strictest economy, and revenue sufficient for the expenses of an economical administration of the Government in time of peace ought to be derived from a duty on imports, and not from direct taxes; and in laying such duties, sound policy requires a just discrimination and protection from fraud by specific duties when practicable, whereby suitable encouragement may be afforded to American industry, equally to all classes, and to all parts of the country.
Sixth: The Constitution vests in Congress the power to open and repair harbors, and remove obstructions from navigable rivers, and it is expedient that Congress shall exercise that power whenever such improvements are for the protection and facility of commerce with foreign nations, or among the States–such improvements being, in every instance, National and general in their character.
Seventh: The Federal and State Governments are parts of one system, alike necessary for the common prosperity, peace and security, and ought to be regarded alike with a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment. Respect for the authority of each and acquiescence in the just constitutional measures of each, are duties required by the plainest considerations of National, State, and individual welfare.
Eighth: That the series of acts of the Thirty-first Congress, commonly known as the Compromise or Adjustment (the act for the recovery of fugitive slaves from labor included,) are received and acquiesced in by the Whigs of the United States as a final settlement, in principle and in substance, of the subjects to which they relate; and, so far as these acts are concerned, we will maintain them, and insist upon their strict enforcement, until time and experience shall demonstrate the necessity of further legislation to guard against the evasion of the law, on one hand, and the abuse of their powers on the other–not impairing their present efficiency to carry out the requirements of the Constitution; and we deprecate all further agitation of the questions thus settled, as dangerous to our peace; and will discountenance all efforts to continue or renew such agitation, whenever, wherever, or however made; and we will maintain this settlement as essential to the nationality of the Whig party and of the Union.” (American Presidency Project).
Although the Whigs died off, many of their policies would be pushed by the Republican Party, which embraced the protective tariff and passed the National Bank Act in 1863, establishing a series of national banks with a unified currency, and contemporary Democrats have fully embraced Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends and some state Democratic parties distance themselves from Jefferson and Jackson by renaming their dinners to “Kennedys-King” (after JFK, RFK, and MLK) dinners, figures who are far more relevant to the thinking of Democrats today than Jefferson and Jackson and whose legacies are unburdened by slavery.
References
1840 Democratic Party Platform. American Presidency Project.
Perhaps the most famous people in the United States to have made the jump from actor to politician are Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Donald Trump is not primarily an actor, rather he was the host of The Apprentice and has had numerous film cameos and TV appearances. Rather, he is a celebrity businessman turned politician. All of them identify or identified as Republicans during their political careers. The first actor, however, to make the jump from actor to Republican politician was John Davis Lodge (1903-1985).
To be perfectly clear, Lodge’s family background set him up to be a politician. After all, he was descended from multiple families that produced politicians. The Lodge family, for instance, was one of the most prominent early families of Boston, and both his grandfather and older brother, Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. and Jr., were both prominent and influential politicians. Although Lodge studied law at Yale and became a lawyer, the call of Hollywood had him drop his lucrative legal practice. Naturally handsome, he would appear in numerous films from 1933 to 1940. Lodge later recalled his time in Hollywood, stating that he had known Ronald Reagan although never acted in the same film with him, explaining, “We were involved in different aspects of acting. I was leading man for Marlene Dietrich, and I acted with Katharine Hepburn in ‘Little Women,’ and I played Shirley Temple’s father in ‘The Little Colonel’” (Folkart). By the way, does this not look like a movie star to you?
During World War II, Lodge served as a lieutenant and lieutenant commander in the Navy, acting a liaison between the American and French forces. He served with distinction, being awarded the rank of Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre with Palm by Charles de Gaulle (National Governors Association). In 1946, a political opportunity opened up when Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut’s 4th Congressional district decided not to run for reelection after the death of her daughter. This was an excellent year to be a Republican, and they won majorities in the House and Senate as well as had a complete sweep of the state’s House delegation.
Congressman Lodge
Lodge was without doubt a moderate Republican, as opposed to being among the conservative Old Guard. He sided with Americans for Democratic Action 40% of the time, and his DW-Nominate score was a 0.063, which indicates centrism. While in Congress, Lodge supported income tax reduction, the Taft-Hartley Act, aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan, reducing the power of the Rules Committee to bottle up legislation, and public housing. Although the 1948 election was more difficult for Republicans, he won reelection by 12 points, easily the best performance among the state’s House Republicans. Lodge was also one of the strongest Republican internationalists, opposing foreign aid reductions and supporting Point IV aid to poor nations. Although he supported amendments weakening rent control, he supported extending it in 1950. That year, he opted not to run for reelection to run for governor against incumbent Chester Bowles, and campaigned against him as extremely left-wing (Krebs). Bowles in turn was dismissive of him, publicly regarding him as merely an actor. This was a political error as numerous retired actors lived in Connecticut (Folkart). The election was close, with Lodge winning by two points with a plurality of the vote. Had the votes for the Socialist candidate gone to Bowles, he would have won the election.
Governor Lodge
Lodge was the first governor for which the four-year term applied. Previously, Connecticut governors had served two-year terms. This gave him time to enact some measures, such as enhancing unemployment and worker’s compensation, increasing funds for education and the construction of public buildings, as well as the construction of the Lodge Turnpike (National Governors Association). However, the latter is often regarded as the reason behind his loss of reelection in 1954 to Abraham Ribicoff by just over 3,000 votes. After his loss, Republicans would have a tough time winning gubernatorial elections over the next forty years. Until 1994, the only time in which Republicans won the governorship was Congressman Thomas J. Meskill’s 1970 win.
Ambassador Lodge
Like his brother, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., John was a friend of President Eisenhower, and he was tapped to the post of Ambassador to Spain. In this capacity, he played a role in the increasing normalization of relations between the US and Franco, serving until 1961. In 1964, Lodge attempted to revive his electoral career by running against Democratic Senator Thomas J. Dodd. Although he was far from being a Goldwater Republican, Dodd’s combination of domestic liberalism and anti-communism on foreign policy played well and Goldwater at the top of the ticket dragged down his campaign. Dodd won reelection by nearly 30 points, with Lodge only outperforming Goldwater by 3 points. Lodge did not run for political office again, but Republican presidents continued to find use for him. In 1969, President Nixon called him back into service as Ambassador to Argentina, a role he served in until 1973. Lodge’s last role would be as President Reagan’s Ambassador to Switzerland, serving from 1983 until his resignation in 1985. On October 29th, he delivered a speech at the Women’s National Republican Club in New York City but after he finished, he suffered a heart attack and was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Clare’s Hospital.
References
ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.
The history of Congressional pushback against the Supreme Court for taking the side of the federal government over the states has a much more significant history than simply beginning with the Southern reaction to Brown v. Board of Education (1954). It was also the Supreme Court’s rulings that brought on the Tidelands Controversy after the discovery of oil off the California coast, the Supreme Court hindering the ability of states to enact anti-subversive laws, and it was a Supreme Court decision that resulted in Congress affirming insurance regulation as a state function.
In 1942, the Justice Department sued the South-Eastern Underwriters Association, a group of fire insurance companies in six Southern states, for allegedly being in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The South-Eastern Underwriters Association contested the suit on the grounds that insurance did not fall under federal jurisdiction, and they seemed to have a solid precedent to cite in Paul v. Virginia (1869), in which the court unanimously ruled that insurance regulation was the purview of the states. As the case was pending, 35 state attorney generals announced their opposition to insurance being under federal jurisdiction (Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 1). This was a different Supreme Court, however, and it ruled 4-3 in United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association (1944) that the insurance industry was covered by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 as they found insurance to be a form of interstate commerce. This overruled the Supreme Court precedent of Paul v. Virginia (1869), which ruled insurance was not interstate commerce and thus its regulation was the jurisdiction of the states. This decision was yet another Supreme Court move in maximizing what was interpreted as interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court had in 1942 gone rather far with the interpretation in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) when they ruled that even activities that have indirect impact on interstate commerce count as interstate commerce. The insurance decision attracted widespread opposition in Congress.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatton W. Sumners (D-Tex.) stated, “I do not propose to yield to the Supreme Court and destroy the greatest democracy in the world…I call upon Congress to assume its responsibility” and Representative Walter C. Ploeser (R-Mo.) charged that “power-hungry politicians” were trying to control the insurance business and that it would fall under the regulatory burdens of the Office of Price Administration (Springfield Weekly Republican, 6). Representative Francis Walter (D-Penn.) sponsored House Resolution 422 in response, which would make clear the Congressional intent that insurance be regulated by states. He condemned the court as having not only overturned a 75-year precedent but also having “contemptuously ignored the intent of Congress” and asserted that the insurance companies had been following the laws of their states (Springfield Weekly Republican, 6). There were, however, representatives who defended the Supreme Court’s ruling in Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.) and Jerry Voorhis (D-Calif.). They expressed opposition to Congress undoing a Supreme Court ruling and Celler held that proponents of this measure were portraying the insurance industry as “pure as the driven snow” and accused insurance companies of playing a “heads I win, tails you lose” game with rate-fixing under federal and state regulations (Springfield Weekly Republican, 6).
On June 22, 1944, the House passed Walter’s resolution by a vote of 283-54 (D 118-51; R 165-1; P 0-1; AL 0-1). The Roosevelt Administration opposed efforts against this decision, but Congress was in an increasingly rebellious mood, evidenced by them overriding his vetoes of the Smith-Connally Act in 1943 and the Revenue Act of 1944, the latter the first time Congress ever overrode a presidential veto of tax legislation. However, the measure didn’t advance to the Senate that year, and the bill would have to wait until the next session. This bill, sponsored by Senators Pat McCarran (D-Nev.) and Homer Ferguson (R-Mich.) was one of the first priorities of the 79th Congress, and it again passed on a strong bipartisan basis, 315-58 (D 150-56; R 165-0; P 0-1; AL 0-1) on February 14, 1945. The Senate followed up two weeks later, passing the bill 68-8 (D 35-8; R 31-0; P 1-0) on February 28th. The vote far beyond the margin of President Roosevelt to veto, he signed the measure into law on March 9th. Interestingly, there was a revision to this law in recent years. In 2020, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act that subjected medical and dental insurance to federal anti-trust regulations in response to rising healthcare costs, and it was signed by President Trump on January 13, 2021.
P.S.: My 2022 content is going to be archived come Tuesday.
References
House Exempts Insurance Firms. (1944, June 29). Springfield Weekly Republican, 6.
Trump is president for a second time, and while there hasn’t been anyone with his exact last name in Federal office before, there was an oddly named fellow named Philadelph Van Trump (1810-1874), although unlike Trump he was never a Republican.
The mid-19th century was a strange time in American politics. Before the existence of the Republican Party the major rival of the Democratic Party was the Whig Party. The Whigs were a broad coalition of politicians who had come together in opposition to President Andrew Jackson and his groundbreaking use of executive power. Indeed, in 1850 you could find Abraham Lincoln in the same party as Alexander Stephens, who would be vice president of the Confederacy. However, over time the differences within this coalition only grew. The most vital of these issues was of slavery, with an increasingly intractable divide between “conscience Whigs” and “cotton Whigs”. Van Trump started in the Whig Party and in 1852 he participated in last Whig National Convention, which nominated General Winfield Scott. However, the Whigs tried too hard to appeal to everyone and thus ended up having little appeal; the ticket only won the states of Massachusetts, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vermont, a result that, with the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, spelled the death of the Whig Party. Many Whigs flocked to the rapidly growing American (“Know Nothing”) Party, as did Van Trump, and in 1856 he ran for governor of Ohio on the American Party ticket. However, this made the gubernatorial race three-way, splitting the Democratic vote and resulting in the election of Republican Salmon P. Chase. In 1860, Van Trump strongly supported the Constitutional Union Party’s ticket which ran John Bell for president and Edward Everett as vice president. The platform was maintaining the union but leaving slavery alone. Van Trump’s movement between parties is one way in which he actually was similar to current President Donald Trump, as Trump has in the past been in the Democratic Party as well as in the Reform Party for when he was running for that party’s nomination for president in 2000.
During the War of the Rebellion, Van Trump was a staunch opponent of President Lincoln and the Republicans. From 1862 to 1867, he served as a judge of the court of common pleas, commanding a lot of respect in this role for acting as he saw fit under the law even under threat of imprisonment. As the newspaper The Stark County Democrat described in his obituary, “His career as a Judge was a marked one, and perhaps no jurist ever more completely commanded respect of the bar. He was profoundly learned in the law, possessed iron firmness and the greatest suavity. The celebrated kidnapping case of Dr. [E. B.] Olds came before him, but he fearlessly enforced the law, although surrounded with bayonets and himself threatened with military arrest and imprisonment. But for the hasty intervention of the Supreme Court, he would have imprisoned Gov. [David] Tod under the kidnapping act” (DiBacco). For context, Dr. Olds was considered among the leading Copperheads of Ohio, or those who wanted a peace agreement with the Confederacy for an amicable break. Governor Tod had recommended him for arrest for his activities, which were regarded as siding with Confederates, and he was himself arrested for kidnapping briefly until freed by the Supreme Court (Roseboom & Wisenburger, 190-192). His efforts at higher judicial office met with little success, as he thrice lost elections to the Ohio Supreme Court. Instead of again seeking a post on the court, in 1866 Van Trump ran for Congress and won in the at-the-time Democratic 12th district.
Congressman Van Trump
During his time in office, Van Trump not only opposed the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson but also delivered a speech against it in Congress. As a member of the Committee on Railroads, he was a consistent opponent of the Republican policy of generous land grants to railroads. Van Trump was also consistently against high tariffs, an economic bread and butter policy of the GOP at the time. However, during his time in office he developed heart disease, and he did not seek reelection in 1872. Van Trump’s DW-Nominate score was -0.591, or one of the most liberal per that system in his time. He did not live long in retirement, dying on July 31, 1874. Van Trump also has a rather interesting connection to Washington State, where I live, in that his son, Philemon Beecher Van Trump, was the first person to document climbing Mt. Rainier in 1870.
Van Trump was different in many ways than current President Trump, and yet another one of those was in his riches. As his obituary in The Stark County Democrat read, “he died comparatively poor because he was too generous to accumulate wealth” (DiBacco).
References
DiBacco, T.V. (2018, May 4). The other Trump in history. Orlando Sentinel.
In 1930, Senator Frank Greene died during an operation, and selected to succeed him by Governor John E. Weeks was Frank C. Partridge, a personal friend and longtime presence in Vermont politics. The following year, however, there was to be an election to finish out the term, and prominent attorney Warren Austin (1877-1962) of St. Albans was persuaded to challenge Partridge, announcing shortly before the end of 1930. Although incumbency is often an advantage, in Partridge’s case it was not; he had to attend to the Senate while Austin was free to campaign across the state, delivering 60 speeches (Mazuzan, 130). Austin’s age was also to his advantage as he was 15 years younger than the 68-year old Partridge, and he won the Republican nomination for the election to finish the late Greene’s term. In 1931, winning the Republican nomination was tantamount to election, as Vermont was the Wyoming of its day in Republicanism.
Austin became a quick study of the Senate, and he thought there was some room for procedural change, namely that his fellow senators had too much room to bloviate (Mazuzan, 130-131). He voted like a traditional Republican, with a wariness of a largesse in federal government, spending, and the powers of the executive. This translated to a strong opposition to FDR’s New Deal, with him voting against all major “first 100 days” legislation except the Economy Act. As Austin wrote to his mother, “I am very apprehensive of the arbitrary powers which are being placed in the hands of one man” (Mazuzan, 131). Austin was opposed to measures he saw as intruding on states and localities as well as on individuals, and saw this in the New Deal. In particular, Austin strongly opposed the cancellation of air mail contracts based on ultimately unsubstantiated charges of fraud and collusion, writing “However unfortunate may seem the material and intimate results of the cancellations of the air-mail contracts and the acts which have succeeded that, the poignancy of the event was the grave and serious doubt excited in the minds of men and women of the purpose of the “New Deal” which is neither Republican nor Democratic. Is it an emergency policy? Or is it a permanent departure from free institutions and a surreptitious establishment, without the knowledge or consent of the people of ideas of government which are in conflict with the breeding, the traditions, and the settled purpose of the American people” (Mazuzan, 134). However, the politics of old were under increasing fire, even in Vermont. Austin’s opponent for reelection in 1934 was Fred C. Martin, FDR’s IRS collector for the state, who ran as a New Dealer and challenged Austin’s record as well as touted areas of Vermont that were assisted by New Deal programs. In a portend of Vermont’s future, this message got a lot of traction, particularly in the state’s western portion. In response Austin touted Vermont’s traditions, regarded the administration as pushing “foreign doctrines and socialistic ideas”, and asserted that there was a need for an independent voice from that of the Roosevelt Administration (Mazuzan, 138-139). Although the election result of Austin winning reelection was “business as usual”, he only won with 51% of the vote, and three western counties had voted for Martin. He would not change his ways for the most part in his next term on domestic issues and in 1935 he voted against Social Security. Only seven other senators either voted or paired against. In 1937, Austin would participate in the drafting of the Conservative Manifesto, a ten-point document proposing alternative policies to the New Deal that emphasized private enterprise and state as opposed to federal authority (Moore). In 1939, he was elected assistant minority leader and would serve as acting minority leader while Oregon’s Charles McNary was running for vice president.
Foreign Policy
Austin was well-versed in dissent, but this dissent was not confined to the ruling Democratic Party. Unlike most of his Republican colleagues before World War II, Austin was an internationalist. In 1935, he had voted for the US joining the World Court (one of FDR’s few policy defeats in his first term), and this debate largely portended the internationalist/anti-interventionist divide. Austin would vote for repealing the arms embargo in 1939, vote for the peacetime draft, be the Senate’s strongest supporter of Lend-Lease, and support permitting merchant ships to enter belligerent ports. He was even one of two Senate Republicans to oppose an amendment to the Lend-Lease bill striking aid for the USSR. He was interestingly at odds with his new colleague George Aiken both from right and left, as Aiken was significantly more liberal than him on domestic policy but was opposed to FDR’s foreign policy before World War II and more willing to permit age-based deferments to the draft. Austin strongly supported the creation of the United Nations, but kept national sovereignty in mind when he voted for the Connally Reservation, which excludes domestic disputes from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. During the 1940s, Austin also moderated somewhat on domestic issues, for instance supporting retaining the National Youth Administration in 1943 and his support (albeit limited) of wartime price control. On August 2, 1946, Austin resigned from the Senate as President Truman announced his appointment as Ambassador to the United Nations. Austin’s DW-Nominate score was a 0.106, which seemed to strongly reflect his internationalism given that his record was mostly oppositional to the New Deal.
UN Ambassador
As Ambassador to the UN, Austin became known as a forceful advocate of the West as a cold warrior. During this time, he allegedly gaffed, “I hope Arabs and Jews will settle their differences in a truly Christian spirit”, but his assistant who was present held that what Austin was communicating was that as a Christian he would be impartial towards Muslims and Jews regarding the creation of Israel (Traveling for History). In 1951, Austin presented to the United Nations Security Council a Soviet submachine gun found in possession of captured North Korean troops to demonstrate that the Soviets were providing arms to them.
He served until two days after the end of the Truman Administration, with President Eisenhower picking another New England internationalist who had served in the Senate to replace him in Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
Austin retired from public service after and was forced to curb his activities after suffering a stroke in October 1956. He died on December 25, 1962. Times have changed much in Vermont since he left office in 1946. For instance, his old Senate seat is held by none other than Bernie Sanders, a marked contrast to Austin’s anti-New Deal politics.
President John Tyler, whose nominees were most rebuked by a vote of the Senate.
At first, the people president-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate after being sworn in seemed like the sort of picks you’d expect, Marco Rubio for Secretary of State or Elise Stefanik for Ambassador to the UN. However, three of his recent announcements have provoked shock, doubt, and opposition. These are Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, RFK Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Tulsi Gabbard for National Intelligence Director. Gaetz has been a bomb-thrower in Congress for Trump and has made many enemies in the GOP for his leading role in the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), not to mention there was a House Ethics Committee report due to be released on his personal conduct before his resignation from the House. Kennedy has had a history of expressing many views that are out there, but most notorious have been his anti-vaccine stances. Furthermore, his personal record regarding marital fidelity makes Donald Trump look like a saint by comparison. Gabbard has in the past expressed support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has previously repeated Russian propaganda surrounding the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. These announcements have certainly given some who would otherwise be supporting Trump nominations pause. Leading Senate Republicans have pledged that Trump’s nominees will go through the regular Senate vetting process as opposed to recessing the Senate thereby allowing Trump to install his cabinet for a maximum of nearly two years without Senate scrutiny. Believe it or not, only nine people have ever been rejected for a cabinet post by a vote of the Senate.
The first cabinet nomination in the history of the United States to be rejected was none other than Roger B. Taney, who would be most known as chief justice from 1836 until his death in 1864. Much like Trump is proposing to do, Andrew Jackson used a recess appointment to confirm Attorney General Taney as Secretary of the Treasury. However, as Treasury Secretary Taney was Jackson’s point man for the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, which included advising transferring funds out of the bank and into state banks and authored a lot of President Jackson’s veto message (Encyclopedia Britannica). In retaliation, the Senate rejected continuing him in this position 18-28 in June 1834.
John Tyler’s Nominees
John Tyler has the dubious distinction of having the most cabinet nominees rejected by a vote of the Senate, with four getting rejected. This is certainly a least in part attributable to him considered by his party to be a rogue president. Indeed, him assuming the presidency instead of simply serving as acting president was considered questionable in his time, and some saw him as illegitimate. Yet, this precedent stuck. As a Whig, Tyler was dissenting on a lot of Whig policy, including vetoing restoring the Second Bank of the United States and vetoing two tariff increases. The defeated were Caleb Cushing for Secretary of the Treasury (who was voted on three times as Tyler stubbornly resubmitted his nomination twice), David Henshaw for Secretary of the Navy, James M. Porter for Secretary of War, and James S. Green for Secretary of the Treasury. The defeats of these candidates can broadly be attributed to President Tyler’s unpopularity.
Henry Stanbery
In 1866, the Senate confirmed Henry Stanbery as Attorney General for the Johnson Administration without fanfare or drama. However, relations between the Senate and Stanbery soured. He had backed President Johnson’s Reconstruction policy that gave no focus on rights for freedmen, and he had helped draft Johnson’s veto message of the first Reconstruction Act and on March 12, 1868 he resigned his post to join the defense team for President Andrew Johnson in the Senate’s impeachment trial. After Johnson was acquitted by one vote, he renominated Stanbery for his old post. The Senate, however, wasn’t having it, and his nomination was rejected 11-29 on June 2nd.
Charles B. Warren
In 1925, President Coolidge nominated Charles B. Warren to replace Attorney General Harlan F. Stone, who had been confirmed to the Supreme Court. Something to be understood about the Republican Party at this time was that although conservatives were strongly in the majority in the party, there was a staunch progressive wing and this wing in particular had clout in the Senate as they were able to team up with Democrats to oppose many policies of the Republican administrations of the 1920s. Warren was seen as too friendly to business interests, especially the “sugar trust”. The vote on this was going to be close, and Vice President Charles G. Dawes was going to be needed. Dawes thought he had time to take a nap at the Willard Hotel as he was told by the Senate leadership that a vote wouldn’t be held that day. However, the Senate abruptly decided to proceed to the vote…while Dawes was napping. Although Dawes was awoken and rushed to the Capitol to cast the tie-breaking vote, it was too late by the time he had arrived, as a senator had changed his mind to opposition with the vote failing 39-41. However, when the vote was held again on March 16th, it was rejected 39-46. President Coolidge was quite put off indeed by his vice president. This is also the last time that the Senate ever voted to reject a president’s nominee when the president’s party was in control.
Lewis Strauss
This rejection is the one that certainly has had the most public attention lately, given that it figured in the film Oppenheimer. Indeed, Strauss’s role in pushing of Oppenheimer out contributed to his defeat. However, there were other factors. Strauss’s competence was not in question, rather it was his polarizing personality that had become clear when he was a member and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission…while he had the full confidence and friendship of President Eisenhower, he made numerous enemies. Time Magazine (1959) described the variance of the views on him thusly, “Strauss, by the extraordinary ingredients of his makeup, is one to arouse superlatives of praise and blame, admiration and dislike. In the eyes of friends, he is brilliant, devoted, courageous and, in his more relaxed moments, exceedingly charming. His enemies regard him as arrogant, evasive, suspicious-minded, pride-ridden, and an excessively rough battler”. One of these enemies was Senator Clinton Anderson (D-N.M.), who led the charge against Strauss’s confirmation. Anderson made sure that committee hearings on Strauss went on for weeks, and he admitted that this was a strategy, “I thought if the committee members saw enough of him, he would begin to irritate them, just as he has me” (Time Magazine). Another factor was that Strauss, a staunch conservative, had repeatedly worked against public generation of power, supporting instead private industry. Although his nomination survived in committee by a vote of 9-8, this did not translate to confirmation, especially not in the strongly Democratic Senate. Strauss was rejected on a vote of 46-49, with 15 Democrats in support, and 2 Republicans in opposition. Strauss’s high level of defensiveness, an insistence on addressing every point of contention instead of admitting to a few errors, also harmed his nomination (Time Magazine).
John Tower
In 1989, President Bush nominated John Tower to serve as Secretary of Defense. Tower had served in the Senate from 1961 to 1985 as the first Republican to represent Texas since Reconstruction, and he had become an expert on national defense, serving as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee from 1981 to 1985. He had also served as the lead negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the USSR and chaired the Tower Commission on Iran-Contra, which had issued a strongly critical report of the Reagan Administration. Tower was not known to suffer fools, and this made numerous senators on the Democratic side less than sanguine about his nomination. However, an unexpected opponent of his nomination came to testify before the Senate in Heritage Foundation’s Paul Weyrich. Weyrich opposed his nomination on the grounds of his moral character, stating, “I have encountered the senator in a condition lacking sobriety as well as with women he was not married to”, and adding to this Tower’s second wife, Lila Burt Cummings, alleged “marital misconduct” in her divorce filing (Los Angeles Times). The nomination became a highly partisan issue, and on March 9, 1989, Tower was rejected 47-53, with three Democrats (Dodd of Connecticut, Heflin of Alabama, and Bentsen of Texas) voting for, and one Republican voting against (Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas). The odd man out in support was Dodd, who although he denied it, it seems likely that he had Tower’s vote against his father’s censure in 1967 in mind. Tower’s defeat by vote of the Senate is the only one to have happened at the start of a president’s time in office.
I find it possible that the Senate rejects one Trump nominee in a vote, but more likely that a far more common event occurs: the nomination is withdrawn, either by Trump or the nominee him or herself. Indeed, there is a long list of announced nominations that were withdrawn during the first Trump Administration, including Andy Puzder for Secretary of Labor and Patrick M. Shanahan for Secretary of Defense. Count on some of those rather than a series of dramatic Senate rejection votes.
References
Conservative Tells of Seeing Tower Drunk: Senate Panel Hears Activist Oppose Defense Nomination. Los Angeles Times.
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 