America at the Ballot Box: Elections and Political History ed. by Gareth Davies and Julian E. Zelizer (review)

Gareth Davies and Julian E. Zelizer have gathered a rich cast of political historians with one main message in mind: presidential elections matter. America at the Ballot Box: Elections and Political Historyseeks to intervene in the trends that favor institutions, policy, or political culture without reference to the quadrennial campaigns. “[W]e feel that the time is now right,” Davies and Zelizer write, “for bringing elections back into the story of American democracy” (p. 5).

This is not the volume for leadership courses currently filling university catalogs. Thankfully, candidates and presidents are not glowing, patriotic heroes here. Rather, elections are gritty and contested, rude and entertaining. These elections are put in their political and social contexts—happening in a world dealing with foreign relations, civil rights, regional conflict, and the ever-evolving question of the American character.

The majority of the thirteen essays closely analyze a single campaign. Some of those that receive the focused treatment are expected—the elections of 1800, 1860, 1980. Others are surprising, such as the showdown between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine in 1884. Sean Wilentz acknowledges, “The presidential race of 1844 does not rank among the most memorable,” before making a persuasive case for remembering the election of dark-horse candidate James K. Polk (p. 36). Wilentz even casts Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney as the nineteenth-century Ralph Nader.

As the essays move chronologically, so the electorate expands and changes. Bruce J. Schulman argues that the 1924 campaign brought about the rise of interest groups that would “compete with and even supplant” party machines (p. 152). The winning Calvin Coolidge succeeded partly by disengaging his image from either party, including the successful use of the “Coolidge Non-Partisan League” (p. 147). Elizabeth Sanders and Meg Jacobs argue for the centrality of women to elections—Sanders regarding 1916 and Jacobs for 1980. Campaigns here take on the character not only of the candidates but also of the voters.

Many of the essays work together to explain the evolution of presidential campaigns from political bosses to mass media spectacle. Kevin M. Kruse’s piece on the 1952 campaign examines the innovative use of television spots to sell Dwight D. Eisenhower to the masses. By 1964, Julian E. Zelizer shows, the “smearlash” of negative television advertising had been perfected with the anti–Barry Goldwater ads, ushering in the era of “productions that tapped into the fears and anxieties of the electorate” (pp. 191, 195).

Two essays look at foreign policy in campaigns across a century. Jay Sexton analyzes the use and abuse of Anglophobia through the nineteenth century. He shows that this fear of England was not merely a post-Revolution tactic but a long-standing political weapon. As the North and the South divided, each “incorporated Anglophobic appeals in their political arsenals” (p. 102). Andrew Preston examines a broader foreign policy story in the twentieth century. Considering campaigns during wars and years on the brink of war, Preston concludes that “America’s policies overseas have been profoundly shaped by electoral politics,” and vice versa (p. 234).

In the final essay, Brian Balogh considers voter-candidate communication. Since 1960, the rise of public opinion polling “provided presidential candidates with an independent guide to voter preferences” (p. 241). However, just as candidates figured out how to listen to individual voters through polling, they also learned how to speak to voters one at a time through direct mail. By the end, Balogh almost pines for the days of middlemen and brokered interest group deals that led to bold agendas rather than “bite-sized policies” that poll well but achieve little (p. 262).

While the essays on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries fulfill the editors’ goal to make elections central to American political history, the omission of twenty-first-century elections is...