The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928

by Michael E. McGerr

In the 1984 presidential election, only half of the eligible electorate exercised its right to vote. Why does politics no longer excite many--of not most Americans?

Michael McGerr attributes the decline in voting in the American North to the transformation of political style after the Civil War. The Decline of Popular Politics vividly recreates a vanished world of democratic ritual and charts its disappearance in the rapid change of industrial society

A century ago, political campaigns meant torchlight parades, spectacular pageants staged by opposing parties, and crowds of citizens attired in military dress or proudly displaying their crafts at well-attended rallies. The intense partisanship of presidential campaigns and party newspapers made political choice easy for people from all walks of life. In the late 1860s and 1870s, however, the rise of liberalism led to a rejection of partisanship by the press and a move towards "educational," rather than spectacular, electioneering. This style then lost out at the turn of the century to the sensational journalism of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, and the "advertised" campaigning of Mark Hanna and other politicians. McGerr shows how these new developments made it increasingly difficult for many Northerners to link their political impulses with political action. By the 1920s, Northern politics resembled our own public life today. A vital democratic culture had yielded to advertised campaigns, an emphasis on personalities rather than issues or partisanship, and low voter turnout.

Genres: History, Politics

322 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Michael McGerr is an American historian working at Indiana University in the History Department, a unit of the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2005 he was appointed the Paul V. McNutt Professor of American History, an endowed professorship at Indiana University. In his career, Michael McGerr has worked at MIT, Yale and Indiana University.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unparalleled look at how political campaigns were conducted and how they changed from the Civil War to the Depression.

Reading this made me realize the disparity between most history writing on political campaigns and most contemporary journalism about them. History writers tend to be interested in the larger policy questions of campaigns, "the battle of the standards," between gold and silver in 1896, or the tariff question in 1888, but it seems that in all times most journalists were concerned with the "horse-race" aspects of them; namely, how the campaign managers were working, which states were for or against a candidate, and how the national committee assisted a candidate. Intellectuals both today and back then disparaged this focus, urging attention be paid only to the "issues," but McGerr makes a good case that how campaigns were conducted is almost as important in the life of the nation as what they are about. Consequently, he offers the only broad history I've read om the evolution of American campaigning strategy.

At first he draws the now familiar picture of old, partisan campaigns, where flag-raisings, barbecues and endless torchlit parades served to gin up interest among the masses and rally each party's base for the big day. But intellectuals, centered in New York and Boston, urged a new "campaign of education," focused on independent voters, "educated men" they called them, instead of the expressive base. In 1876 Abraham Hewitt conducted the first such campaign for the Democratic reformer Samuel Tilden, creating a "literary bureau" to publish and distribute millions of pamphlets and a "textbook" of campaign themes. He even tried to compile a list of all known voters so that he could direct messages specifically to their interests (a dream that continues today). McGerr highlights a number of such unsung heroes of campaigning, such as James Clarkson, who in 1888 brought the Republican party into the "education" game, and Republican George Cortelyou, who in 1904 restricted the old "speaker's bureau" of the national committee and limited the number of pamphlets to focus more on cartoons and the press. As McGerr shows, the "campaign of education" morphed into the campaign of advertising and "publicity." As early as 1900, Roosevelt could say that Mark Hanna had "marketed McKinley like a patent medicine!"

As this quote shows, many concerns about the current state of campaigning are old, though not ageless (the Roosevelt quote reminded me of the book on the "Selling of the President," about the 1968 campaign that claimed Roger Ailes sold Nixon like a "pack of cigarettes). As these new education and advertising tactics came into use, the base and the working class became more and more disenchanted with politics, and voter participation rates fell from mid-80 percent to below 50 in the 1920s. Reformers now bemoaned the "slackers" who forfeited their civic duty by not voting, and conducted intensive studies on "non-voters." Although I'm not sure I agree with McGerr that it was the changing "style" of campaigns that led to this disillusionment (instead of perhaps the other way around), it certainly played a part. Still, in this election season McGerr's book is the best resource to remind us what our campaigns have been like, and how they've changed us.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is exactly the kind of political history I truly enjoy. McGerr's "The Decline of Popular Politics" traces the evolution of political "style" in America from about 1860 through the Great Depression. He outlines three overlapping phases: the spectacular, from the early 19th century through the Civil War; educational, from about the 1870s through the 1890s; and advertising, from the 1900s through today. His book emphasizes the relationship between party apparatuses, the press, and individual voters. While there is some information about electoral outcomes, party positions, etc., the bulk of this book emphasizes how the look and feel of political campaigns changed in the late 19th century.

McGerr traces the changes to political campaigns to class anxiety and a changing economic status. There is not a great deal of discussion in this book about race or gender. Women's suffrage is hardly discussed and the participation of black men is left only occasionally mentioned. These issues are outside the scope of his book, but a more complete account of the changing style of politics should account for the expanded electorate that political parties courted in the early 20th century.

Finally, McGerr suggests that spectacular politics were better able to "spin off" third parties. Men and women raised in rural meetings, pole raisings, and other forms of pre-'educational' politics learned a series of organizing strategies along with party identity. With the consolidation of party power in educational and literature offices or, later, advertising/PR departments, average voters were shut out of the party mechanisms that allow for new organizations.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in media, politics, and political organizing. It is a quick, easy read that includes a great deal of interesting information.