Thoughts of the 2016 Campaign and Horace Greeley…
So one of my earliest political memories is sneaking down the stairs as a nine-year old to see if John F Kennedy was going to win the 1960 Presidential election.I have followed politics ever since. I could rattle off a litany of my favorite politicians. The majority of them are Democrats i.e Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, etc, But through the years there were Republican politicians that I respected like Everett Dirksen, Nelson Rockefeller and Edward Brooke, hell although I despised the man at the time I can say the Richard Nixon even did some things that can be admired.
So it’s is unfathomable to me, that US politics has sunk so low that Donald Trump can run for President. Face it the man is totally unqualified. Yet he appeals to a large segment of the US populace. ‘why?? . Is it simply because he is a political outsider or is it the bigotry he espouses? Certainly the core of his support is the older white male voter But really folks what would happen if this egomaniac did become President. I cringe at the thought, even though as an older white male his election wouldn’t impact me as much as it would others. Except for the end result when the world blows up!
The only other Presidential candidate that I can think of who is similar to Donald Trump is Horace Greeley, Yes the same person who said :”Go West Young Man!”
The Presidential Campaign of 1872 – U S Grant versus Horace Greeley
In 1872, Greeley, was the editor of the New York Tribune and the candidate for the Liberal Republican party. Greeley was among the leaders of the Liberal Republican Party The party was led by some of the nation’s leading members of the regular Republican Party, who were feed up with the corrupt Grant administration. Other the leaders of the party were: Charles Frances Adams , Lincoln’s Minister to England, Carl Schurz U.S. senator from Missouri and Supreme Court Justice Salmon P Chase.
At the Liberal Republican Party’s convention held in Cincinnati none of the potential candidates could win a majority of delegate votes. On the sixth ballot though the delegates started to turn to Greeley and he became the party’s nominee.
The choice of Greeley was a shock to most people. From Presidential Campaigns by Paul F. Boller
Greeley, for all his intelligence, sincerity, idealism and journalistic aplomb, was erratic, crotchety, unpredictable and thoroughly incompetent in the art of politics.About all one could say of him as a candidate was that he was a national celebrity…..
…. Lyman Trumbull feared that the nomination would be drowned in a wave of laughter.; the Illinois State Journal called it a huge joke on the nation; and the New York Times declared that if “any one man could send a great nation to the dogs that man is Mr. Greeley” One reporter there had been “too much brains and not enough whiskey” at the Cincinnati convention.
Sound like anyone we know?? The Democrats did not field a candidate in this election but chose instead to adopt both the Liberal Republican platform and candidate. Many in the party thought this was a mistake…..duh! Georgia ‘s Alexander Stephens said that the choice between Grant and Greeley was.a choice between “hemlock and strychnine”! For some today that’s like the choice between Trump and Clinton.
The Election Results
So we all know how the election ended. Grant won, even with a his negative baggage. During the campaign, he was called a crook, drunkard, ignoramus, dictator, swindler and “utterly depraved horse jockey. But in the ended Grant carried 31 out of the 37 states and won 286 of the 349 electoral votes. The popular vote ended with Grant winning be 763,000 votes.
After the election Greeley said… “I was the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office”. This statement wasn’t actually true other candidates had suffered worst defeats.
Greeley’s wife had died just before the election and at that time he told a friend. “I am not dead, but i wish I were”. Soon after the election Greeley wrote “Utterly ruined beyond hope, before the night closes its jaws on me forever, to say that, though my running for President has placed me where I am, it is not the cause of my ruin”. Greeley was committed to a private sanitarium for mental patients not long after writing that statement. He died three weeks later. Greeley died before the voting of the Electoral College in February of 1873. This resulted in the Democrat electors giving Greeley’s votes to his running mate Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz-Brown, as well as, several other Democrats.
Final Thoughts
So I guess, this isn’t the first time that a man totally politically inept and unqualified has run for President. We can only hope that the election ends in a similar fashion. I do hope though, that Mr. Trump escapes the personal tragedies suffered by Horace Greeley. Well, maybe he could be ruined, rather than the country!!
Remember that statement at the beginning of this post about the world blowing up……From Daily Kos:.Trump asked 3 times in a national security briefing why can’t we just use nuclear weapons! Be afraid! Very afraid!
Featured Image: An 1872 portrait of Greeley, by J.E. Baker
