for office, they run for it.
Although we take this sort of behavior for granted today, it represents a radical departure from the behavior Americans used to expect and generally get from their presidential aspirants. For close on a century, the prevailing norm was that "the office of president of the United States should neither be sought nor declined."(1) So hardy was this norm that it survived, though not unscathed, the emergence of organized, mass-based political parties, the adoption of universal white male suffrage, and even the break-down of the congressional nominating caucus. Andrew Jackson himself, even as he revolutionized the basis of presidential authority.(2) Dutifully upheld that norm. As he explained to a friend. "I meddle not with elections. I leave the people to make their own President."(3)
Of course, nineteenth-century presidential candidates, Jackson very much included, were rarely as disinterested or passive as they claimed. President Lincoln, for instance, while striking a statesmanlike pose, worked behind the scenes to ensure his reelection. Indeed, according to his secretary of the treasury, William Pitt Fessenden, Lincoln was "too busy looking after the election to think of anything else."(4) Yet in "feigning disinterest." Jeffrey Tulis points out. "candidates exemplified a public teaching that political campaigns were beneath the dignity of men suited for governance, that honor attended more important activities than campaigns" According to Tulis, in the nineteenth century "the tone of campaigns was set by that of governance." Presidents generally did not give partisan or policy-oriented speeches, so presidential candidates were expected to refrain from such undignified behavior also. Today, Tulis observes. "In a striking reversal, campaigns are becoming the model for governing." Those responsible for crafting the electoral strategy are brought in to shape governing strategy. Governance becomes an extension of the campaign. Governing, like campaigning, becomes a perpetual quest for popular support.(5)
Tulis traces this seismic shift in U.S. politics to Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, Tulis notes, was "the first victorious presidential candidate to have engaged in a full-scale speaking tour during the campaign." Wilson, according to Tulis, brought us not only "the rhetorical presidency" but also "the rhetorical campaign." Indeed for Wilson, the two phenomena were necessarily related. "In Wilson's view." Tulis tells us,"the rhetorical campaign was intended ... to prepare the people for a new kind of governance--the rhetorical presidency." Wilson revolutionized not just presidential governance but presidential campaigns.(6)
The stark contrast in candidate behaviors between a Bill Clinton and an Andrew Jackson or a Bob Dole and an Abraham Lincoln reveals the dramatic, revolutionary changes that have occurred in American presidential campaigns. Yet the dichotomy between a nineteenth-century "old way" and a twentieth-century "new way" obscures as much as it reveals. It relies on an overly unified and static version of nineteenth-century presidential history.(7) Moreover, focusing on a single, pivotal presidency, whether that president is Woodrow Wilson or, alternatively, Theodore Roosevelt, slights the gradual evolution in candidate behaviors and expectations that occurred in the latter third of the nineteenth century and the opening third of the twentieth century. Finally, by treating all preside
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