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Fascinating Politics

The McKinley Tariff

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.

Retrieved from

https://millercenter.org/president/mckinley/domestic-affairs

The McKinley Tariff of 1890. U.S. House of Representatives.

Retrieved from

https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-McKinley-Tariff-of-1890/

The Victory of Misrepresentation. (1890, November 7). The Indianapolis Journal, 4.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/321737007/

To Adopt the Report of Comm. on Conference on Bill H.R. 9416. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/51-1/h414

To Agree to the Conference Report on H.R. 9416 (26 STAT. 567, 10/1/1890), a Bill Reducing the Revenue and Equalizing Duties on Imports. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/51-1/s383

To Pass Bill H.R. 9416. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/51-1/h184

To Pass H.R. 9416. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/51-1/s364

Up Go the Prices. (1890, October 17). The Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1075890829/

Fascinating Politics

Henry Carey: Lincoln’s Economist

For a long time there has been a debate about what side of an issue the late Abraham Lincoln would be on; in the 1930s numerous New Deal politicians expressed their belief that Lincoln would be on their side with some Republicans asserting that Lincoln would have done things differently than FDR. While we can never be totally what Lincoln’s social views would be in different times given that his changed over the course of his life, including on civil rights, there is a bit more certainty on economic issues, and on this question, there are two Henrys who can help us answer this question, both who greatly influenced Lincoln. The first is Henry Clay, the much-admired founder and three-time candidate of the Whig Party for president. The second is a considerably less known figure but one who shines light on Lincoln’s economic views in Henry Carey (1793-1879), a major advocate of the “American School” of economics who is largely forgotten today but was quite prominent in his day.

The American School of Economics

Carey did not start off as an economist, rather as a businessman in the publishing industry, but the Panic of 1837 inspired him, at the age of 44, to study economics. He was something of a gadfly in the world of economics in his day, as British economists were overwhelmingly on the side of pure lassiez-faire, and this is where Carey was initially. However, he was persuaded by economic crises in the 1830s and 1840s that this approach fell short. Carey would start arguing in 1848 that free trade served to benefit the British empire (indeed its most prominent advocates were from Britain) and that the United States should at that stage as a nation be developing its home markets and achieving economic independence (Cowan). Thus, he would argue for tariffs to help develop the nation and build up American industry so they could compete fairly with Great Britain, a more powerful nation than the US in his time. Carey would also argue that tariffs were a mutually beneficial policy as they helped both the profits of industry and the wages of labor (Cowan). He was also a critic of economists David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, and wrote against their views in this three volume Principles of Social Science (1858-1860). On Malthus, he wrote that he “teaches that a monopoly of the land is in accordance with a law of nature. Admiring morality, he promotes profligacy by encouraging celibacy. … Desirous to uplift the people, he tells the landowner and the laborer that the loss of the one is the gain of the other. His book is the true manual of the demagogue, seeking power by means of agrarianism, war and plunder” (Levermore, 562-66). In the late 1850s, Carey blamed tariff reductions passed and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce for the Panic of 1857, and some historians have shared his judgment. Carey was also an opponent of unions as an instrument of collective bargaining, regarding the tariff as the proper mechanism for wage growth. However, Carey was supporting tariffs for the US based on its present conditions. He hoped for a future in which the nations of the world could trade without tariffs, writing, “Of the advantage of perfect free trade there can be no doubt. What is good between the states ought to be good the world over. But free trade can be successfully administered only after an apprenticeship of protection. Strictly speaking, taxation should all be direct. Tariff for revenue should not exist. Interference with trade is excusable only on ground of self-protection. A disturbing force of prodigious power pre- vents the loom and spindle from taking and keeping their proper places by the plow and harrow. When the protective regime has counteracted the elements of foreign opposition, obstacles to free trade will disappear and the tariff will pass out of existence. Wars will cease; for no chief magistrate will dare to recommend an increase of direct taxation” (Levermore, 570).

Carey was the lead editor on articles regarding political economy for Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune from 1849 to 1857. At that time, another economist contributed from abroad who wrote under a pen name, this other economist being none other than Karl Marx. Marx considered Carey, a staunch opponent of socialism, to be the only notable American economist and also his ideological rival, considering himself to be engaging in “hidden warfare” against him through his work for the Tribune (Marx & Engels, 78-79). Indeed, Marx even thought that Carey’s philosophy was the central impediment to a communist revolution in the United States.

Carey was a supporter of Abraham Lincoln and upon his election to the presidency, he served as an economic advisor to both him and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. He helped draft Republican tariff bills, including the Morrill Tariff of 1861 and was influential in getting the National Bank Act of 1863 adopted. Carey was a consistent supporter of greenbacks, supporting both the Legal Tender Act of 1862 (which along with distribution of greenbacks unbacked by gold or silver and achieved the Whig goal of a unified national currency) and postwar currency inflation. The former got the support of the Republican establishment as an emergency measure for the war, but the latter was opposed as the Republican establishment was fundamentally conservative on issues of economics and finance. Whether Lincoln would have heeded Carey had he lived I think is an open question. On one hand, he was influenced by Carey in numerous facets of policy, but on the other hand, shortly before his death he had tapped Hugh McCulloch as Secretary of the Treasury, who pursued a policy of contraction of greenbacks. Would Lincoln have sought to rein in his own Secretary of the Treasury or heeded his advice?

Influence Today?

Although Henry Carey is a figure who is generally seen as a modern conservative’s go-to economist, Professor Adam Rowe, writing for Compact Magazine, argues that Henry Carey is an explaining figure for Trump’s tariffs. If Carey has any influence, this is a full circle back to the earliest days of the Republican Party.

References

Cowan, D.A. (2022, September 8). Henry C. Carey’s Practical Economics. The American Conservative.

Retrieved from

Henry C. Carey’s Practical Economics

Henry Charles Carey. New World Encyclopedia.

Retrieved from

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henry_Charles_Carey#google_vignette

Levermore, C.H. (1890). Henry C. Carey and his Social System. Political Science Quarterly, 5(4), 553-582.

Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1975). “Notes”. In Ryazanskyaya, S.W. (ed.). Selected Correspondence. Translated by Lasker, I. (3rd edt.). Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers.

Retrieved from

Click to access selected-correspondence.pdf

Rowe, A. (2025, March 4). The Thinker Who Explains Trump’s Tariffs. Compact Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-thinker-who-explains-trumps-tariffs/

Fascinating Politics

John Davis Lodge: The Original Actor to Republican Politician

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.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Folkart, B.A. (1985, November 2). Ex-Envoy John Davis Lodge Dies. Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-02-fi-1333-story.html

Gov. John Davis Lodge. National Governors Association.

Retrieved from

John Davis Lodge

Krebs, A. (1986, May 26). Chester Bowles is Dead at 85; Served in 4 Administrations. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Lodge, John Davis. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/5740/john-davis-lodge

Fascinating Politics

Philadelph Van Trump: The OG (Sorta)

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.

Retrieved from

https://digitaledition.orlandosentinel.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=b606cbd0-ad77-47b3-8f1a-168c2a042077

Roseboom, E.H. & Weisenburger, F.P. (1961). A history of Ohio. Columbus, OH: Ohio Historical Society.

Van Trump, Philadelph. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/9636/philadelph-van-trump

Fascinating Politics

Cabinet Nominations That Lost a Senate Vote

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.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-31-mn-1492-story.html

Kelly, R. (2017, February 7). A Nap Got in the Way of the Last Tied Cabinet Vote in the Senate. Roll Call.

Retrieved from

https://rollcall.com/2017/02/07/a-nap-got-in-the-way-of-the-last-tied-cabinet-vote-in-the-senate/

List of Donald Trump nominees who have withdrawn. Wikipedia.

Retrieved from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_nominees_who_have_withdrawn

Presidents Have Failed 8 Times to Win Cabinet Confirmations. Deseret News.

Retrieved from

https://www.deseret.com/1989/2/24/18796378/presidents-have-failed-8-times-to-win-cabinet-confirmations/

Roger B. Taney. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-B-Taney

The Administration: The Strauss Affair. Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6827665/the-administration-the-strauss-affair/

Fascinating Politics

Epic Fail! The Literary Digest’s Poll of the 1936 Election

We are now one week away from yet another election which is called the “most important of our lifetimes”, and the third election in which Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. Many observers, myself included, are regularly checking polls and even trying to be so bold as to predict outcomes. The first election that featured Trump, 2016, was the greatest upset in American political history since Truman defeated Dewey in 1948. The worst example of average polling being off was Wisconsin, in which Clinton, per the RealClearPolitics polling average, was up by 6.5, but Trump won by 0.7. None of the latest polls had put Trump on top, including the Republican firm Remington Research, which found Clinton at 8 points ahead. In fact, none of the polls from August until Election Day had Trump up. In the case of 1948, however, polling ended two weeks before the election. The 1936 poll by The Literary Digest, however, takes the cake. The magazine The Literary Digest issued a presidential straw poll every election year, and this had been predictive of the winner since 1916. Yet, their 1936 poll projected Republican Alf Landon as the winner with 57% of the vote and 370 electoral votes. As anyone with even a cursory knowledge about American history should know, we have not had a President Landon. Landon actually only won 37% of the vote and 8 electoral votes; only the voters of Maine and Vermont (they were very different states back then!) saw fit to vote out FDR. The Literary Digest had predicted 1916, which merits credit as it was a close race, but the others were landslides. All this, however, begs the question: how did this publication blow an even bigger landslide? Let’s look at their methodology.

The Literary Digest conducted one election straw poll per year, and they used three lists as sources: phone numbers, drivers’ registrations, and country club memberships (Emory Oxford College). For 1936, they contacted 10 million people for their survey, and from this they got 1,293,669 people who supported Landon and 972,897 people who supported Roosevelt. This approach had multiple methodological problems. The first, the conventional story, is that The Literary Digest had failed to account for the class polarization that came with the Roosevelt Administration…Americans in previous elections had voted more similarly based on class. Many working-class Americans in the North voted Republican in the past elections, and while the 1920s prosperity was part of it, they also supported the GOP’s high tariff platform, a mainstay as old as the party’s 1856 platform. However, FDR’s New Deal programs were highly appealing to many Americans going through hard times, while many in the upper strata had the luxury to think more about FDR’s growing political power as a source of peril and his policies were coming greatly out of their pockets. That the wealthy were overrepresented among those who had telephones, vehicle registrations, and country club memberships should go without saying.

Thus, wealthy people were way overrepresented in the straw poll, as they were disproportionately represented in their opposition to FDR. However, subsequent research pointed the finger at a much more important factor, the response rate to the poll. 10 million people had been sent the poll, but only 2.4 million responded! This constitutes a mere 24% response rate, which is sufficiently low to make the poll worthless. Substantially compromising the class narrative is that a majority of Americans who had telephones and vehicle registrations also supported Roosevelt (Lusinchi). Rather, it was people who were opposed to Roosevelt who had much stronger motivation to respond to the poll. This research partially debunked this traditional narrative, holding that the poor response rate to the poll was sufficient to produce the off result and that the overrepresentation was a secondary factor.

The error was so catastrophic that The Literary Digest folded in 1938. But with the demise of the magazine was the elevation of the Gallup poll. George Gallup was one of the pollsters who got 1936 right, and through his polling predicted an FDR win, albeit with 54% of the vote (PBS). Gallup had nonetheless managed to get the correct outcome by polling a representative sample of 3,000 people as opposed to The Literary Digest’s sample of 2.4 million people. This case illustrates the value of solid methodology in polling. We will not see an error of this magnitude in the polling averages of these races, and it is doubtful we will get something like 2016, which I regard as a black swan event.  

References

2016 Wisconsin: Trump vs Clinton. RealClearPolling.

Retrieved from

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2016/wisconsin/trump-vs-clinton

Famous Statistical Blunders in History: Literary Digest, 1936. Emory Oxford College.

Retrieved from

https://mathcenter.oxford.emory.edu/site/math117/historicalBlunders/

George Gallup and the Scientific Opinion Poll. PBS.

Retrieved from

https://www.pbs.org/fmc/segments/progseg7.htm

Landon in a Landslide: The Poll That Changed Polling. History Matters.

Retrieved from

https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/

Lusinchi, D. (2016, January 4). “President” Landon and the 1936 Literary Digest. Social Science History, 36(1).

Retrieved from

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-science-history/article/president-landon-and-the-1936-literary-digest-poll/E360C38884D77AA8D71555E7AB6B822C