Success and Succession

[stoutfellow]

I'm still reading Skowronek, and I've just stumbled over a passage that has me a bit confused. I understand, I think, what the author is saying; I just don't see how he arrives at the conclusions he offers. I'd appreciate any thoughts or explanations from the better-informed. (This means you in particular, oilhistorian!) Details under the cut.

One of Skowronek's theses is that one of the major factors influencing the scope of action of a new president is whether he was elected in opposition or in affiliation to the existing regime. In the former case, the president is freer to make major changes, as he is in no way committed to the general acceptibility of the status quo. I find this plausible, but then Skowronek starts to flesh it out.

Opposition or affiliation points up some qualitative differences at work in the political dynamics of presidential leadership. Of the fourteen presidents who have been elected twice, only four - Madison, Monroe, Grant, and McKinley - were affiliated leaders¹. As Madison and Monroe predate the rise of a competitive party alternative and Grant gained reelection with a significant portion of his opposition under force of arms, there would seem to be even less to this list than first meets the eye. If we alter the question a bit, the facts are more striking still. The seven elected presidents who voluntarily withdrew from reelection campaigns were all affiliated leaders: Polk, Buchanan, Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson.

The footnote reads as follows:

The reelected presidents whom I am counting as opposition leaders are Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.

(This was written before Clinton's reelection.) Here's what puzzles me. I'll admit that the definition of opposition/affiliation may be more subtle than this, but the first approximation has to involve the party affiliations of the president and his immediate predecessor. Given that, first off, how is McKinley, a Republican, an affiliated leader? His immediate predecessor was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat. (Is the fact that Cleveland had been repudiated by his own party at the 1896 convention, in favor of the populist wing led by Bryan, somehow relevant here?) Second, what of Polk? It's true that John Tyler, his immediate predecessor, was a Democrat, as was Polk, but he had been elected Vice-President (and thence ascended to the White House) on the Whig ticket. Polk's campaign platform, in any case, was an explicit repudiation of the Harrison/Tyler presidency, on - among other things - the issue of expansionism. (The annexation of Texas and the settling of the US/British border in the Pacific Northwest were major campaign issues.) If Tyler's being a Democrat is relevant, why isn't the same true of Andrew Johnson? A strong case could be made, I think, that Grant's election was a repudiation of Johnson's policies, if not of Lincoln's.

Can anyone make sense of this?

Comments

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

Skowronek obviously views opposition/affiliation as both a policy construct and a party construct, with the emphasis on policy.

Cleveland was a Goldbug (pro-gold, pro-bank, pro-industry) in a Silverite party. It explains why he was elected in the first place (he was the only Dem elected after the Civil War until TR's third-party campaign split the GOP in 1912) and why the Dems repudiated him at the height of the Populist movement. McKinley was a Goldbug's Goldbug.

Tyler ran on the Democrat ticket in 1840 because he loathed the Jacksonian nationalism of Old Hickory and his close friend Martin Van Buren. (Yes, my students always seem puzzled by that -- it's like a fiscally conservative Republican voting for a Democrat because they don't like George H. W. Bush's tax increases.) Polk, BTW, was known as "Young Hickory" b/c he was both Jackson's personal secretary and his protege. Tyler is a VP candidate b/c the Whigs are hoping to attract Southern votes with him while he's hoping to hurt the Jackson wing of the Democratic Party.

As for Grant: Andrew Johnson was a nationalist opposed to states' rights. While he wasn't a Republican, he was committed to the Union. Grant, while a Republican, wasn't a Radical Republican intent on punishing the South during Reconstruction.

The reelections of Clinton and George W. Bush also seem to support Skowronek's thesis: both were elected in opposition, both were reelected.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that does clarify things. Nitpick: in paragraph 3, I assume you mean "Tyler ran on the Whig ticket...".

The Polk case still bothers me. If Tyler loathed Jacksonianism and Polk was Jackson's protege, shouldn't that make him an opposition leader? Or was Jacksonianism still ascendant despite Harrison/Tyler?

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

Yes, I meant the Whig ticket.

Remember, party affiliation in US politics isn't as strong as in parliamentary systems. Polk represented the nationalist wing of the Democratic Party. Tyler represented the states' rights wing. Polk was a westerner, though -- just like his mentor, Jackson. Tyler was an Easterner. The East/West divide is as important, if not more important, than the party divide and right up there with the slavery issue in 19th century US politics. Tyler is complex. He swapped parties to blunt Van Buren within the Democratic Party, but once he was President, he thoroughly opposed all Whig initiatives -- to the point that the Whigs, led by John Quincy Adams, actually tried to impeach him. He may have been an opponent of Van Buren in 1840, but by 1844 he had more in common politically with his former party than with his new-found partners in the Whigs.

Jacksonian democracy was not just the rise of the demos. It was also the rise of the West. Lincoln would ride that into the White House just 4 years after the GOP formed. Had New York's Seward won the nomination in 1860 instead, the Republicans may well have remained a minor third party.