Initially, candidates for President “stood” for election—they did not “run” for the office—so they would not be accused of being too ambitious for power. In 1789 and 1792 George Washington had no opponent and was selected unanimously by the electoral college without campaigning.
Since 1796 there have been contests between candidates belonging to different political parties, and for many years the party managers did the campaigning while the candidates remained at home. In 1840 William Henry Harrison took a short “tour” but did not discuss issues or seek votes. In 1844 James K. Polk began the custom of sending “letters” to his supporters on issues such as the tariff, though he did not make speeches on political subjects. In 1852 Winfield Scott became the first candidate to campaign. By 1860 it was expected that the candidate who trailed would campaign: Stephen Douglas campaigned throughout the South and Midwest while Abraham Lincoln stayed home in Springfield, Illinois.
In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes began the practice of responding to his party's nomination with an “acceptance letter” that dealt with the candidate's position on the issues. He confined himself to a “front porch” campaign, in which supporters would visit him, and his discussions with them would then be reported by the wire services and appear in newspapers. Hayes later advised James Garfield to “sit cross-legged and look wise until after the election,” something his successor managed to do quite well on his farm in Mentor, Ohio. That election, in 1880, started the custom in which the challenger campaigned while the incumbent seeking reelection remained at home. In 1892 Grover Cleveland held a “notification” ceremony before thousands of his supporters in New York's Madison Square Garden, but he did not take to the campaign trail.
In the 19th century there usually was no need for a popular Presidential candidate to campaign: in 1896 Democrat William Jennings Biyan went to 27 states, made 600 speeches to 5 million people, and got crushed by Republican William McKinley, who ran a front-porch campaign. In 1904 Theodore Roosevelt thought it improper for an incumbent President to go on the campaign trail. Instead, he wrote hundreds of letters to party leaders, making patronage appointments to secure their support. He won by the greatest landslide since 1832 yet hardly ever left his home in Oyster Bay, New York.
The first incumbent President to stump for votes was William Howard Taft in the election of 1912. He made an 18,000-mile, 400-speech tour. His Democratic opponent, Woodrow Wilson, also toured the nation, making this the first election in which both major-party candidates campaigned.
Just as candidates began to take to the campaign trail, their speeches were eclipsed by new ways of communicating with voters. In 1916 Wilson used newspapers, magazines, billboards, and motion pictures in his campaign for reelection. In 1924 Calvin Coolidge began the use of radio in campaigns when he spoke to more than a million listeners. In 1928 Alfred E. Smith used the radio to reach 8 million people, though his strident speeches could not keep him from being crushed by Herbert Hoover. In 1932 Hoover, in turn, was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who broadcast a series of radio “chats” to the voters from his Hyde Park, New York, home.
Perhaps the greatest victory on the campaign trail was won by Harry Truman in 1948, who did it the old-fashioned way, speech by speech. In April, when surveys snowed only 30 percent of the public approved of his Presidency, pollsters did not give him a chance. Fifty leading campaign analysts predicted that Republican Thomas E. Dewey would win by 376 electoral college votes. Truman boarded a train named the Ferdinand Magellan and traveled 31,000 miles, delivering 271 speeches. The press started referring favorably to Truman's “whistle stop” campaign. Truman struck hard at the “Do-Nothing 80th Congress.” “Give 'em hell, Harry,” a supporter yelled out in Seattle. “I'm going to give 'em hell,” he responded. His opponent, Dewey, aboard the Victory Special, rode 16,000 miles, made 13 major speeches, and briefly spoke on 43 other occasions. Ahead in the polls, Dewey spoke in generalities, telling a crowd in Arizona, “Our future lies before us.” Referring to the Grand Old Party, the nickname of the Republicans, Democrats said that “GOP With Dewey leading it means Grand Old Platitudes.” On election night–despite the Washington Post's forecast that he would lose, Truman told his aides that he had won, then went to bed. He awoke the next morning and received Dewey's concession telegram. When he returned to the capital, a sign on the Washington Post building said, “Mr. President, we are ready to eat crow whenever you are ready to serve it.”
In 1952 Dwight Eisenhower pioneered the use of television commercials. “Eisenhower answers Mr. and Mrs. America” was a series in which the candidate answered questions from a moderator. “To think that an old soldier should come to this,” Eisenhower lamented between takes. He also made several 30-minute speeches on issues, which went over with the audience like lead balloons, but he defeated his Democratic opponent handily.
By the 1960s political TV commercials dominated Presidential campaigns. Candidates used private polls to find positions on issues that would demonstrate their leadership qualities to the electorate. John F. Kennedy, for example, used surveys conducted at the state level in his 1960 campaign to emphasize issues that would enhance his image as a leader ready to move the nation forward. “Issues are only a means to establish personal qualities with voters,” Republican media adviser Robert Teeter later observed. By the 1970s, candidates were using focus groups of voters to pretest campaign commercials. Groups of voters, gathered in small settings, would preview speeches and commercials: themes that appealed to them would be retained; those that fell flat would be dropped.
Candidates experimented with new ways to reach the voters. The network campaign commercials of the 1960s gave way to commercials geared to specific states in the 1970s and to particular racial and ethnic audiences in the 1980s. In the 1980s, 30-second attack commercials and quick “sound bites” were combined with sentimental ads such as Ronald Reagan's “Morning in America.”
In the 1992 election voters did not respond to carefully crafted commercials, which seemed too slick and contrived. Radio and television stations participated in the Adwatch and Truth Test public service programs, in which they scrutinized advertisements for “fairness,” making attack advertisements more of a liability than an asset. Appearances on staid network news programs gave way to appearances on television talk shows and entertainment programs such as “Arsenio Hall” (on which Bill Clinton played the saxophone) and “Larry King Live” (on which Ross Perot made his campaign announcements). In these forums candidates seemed more spontaneous, and voters felt they could make a judgment about character.
Increasingly, voters have used the Presidential debates to obtain information about candidates. More than one-third of the electorate usually waits until the debates are concluded before deciding for whom to vote.
To reach voters concerned primarily about issues, candidates prepared short books, such as Clinton's Putting People First—A National Economic Strategy for America and George Bush's Agenda for American Renewal, which were distributed free to voters who called toll-free telephone numbers. Campaigns also established computer “bulletin boards” to reach voters who subscribed to on-line information services.
See also Campaign financing, Presidential; Caucuses, Presidential nominating; Caucuses, congressional; Dark horse, Presidential; Debates, Presidential; Federal Election Commission; Nominating conventions, Presidential; Primaries, Presidential; Ticket
Sources
- Paul F. Boiler, Jr., Presidential Campaigns, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
- Clifford W. Brown, Jr., Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox, Serious Money: Fundraising and Contributing in Presidential Nomination Campaigns (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
- James E. Campbell, American Campaign: U.S. Presidential Campaigns and the National Vote (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000).
- Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
- Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising,
3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). - Elizabeth Kolbert, “Test-marketing a President”, New York Times Magazine, August 30, 1992.
- Richard M. McCormick, The Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
- Keith Melder, Hail to the Candidate: Presidential Campaigns from Banners to Broadcasts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).
- Eileen Shields-West, The World Almanac of Presidential Campaigns (New York: World Almanac, 1992).
- Gil Troy, See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (New York: Free Press, 1991)
