Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History (History)

by John Dickerson

Publisher: Twelve, reprint edition (July 11, 2017)

Paperback 464 pages

          “The newspaper wars of the 1790s, in which Callender enlisted, were ferocious. ‘The golden age of America’s founding was also the gutter age of American reporting,’ writes historian Eric Burns. Papers were partisan, not impartial, and editors attacked each other in the street. Editors cursed each other with prolixity, and backwards running sentences. They seemed to have the typesetting equivalent of  unlimited minutes when it came to using insulting synonyms found in the thesaurus. Their enemies were ‘depraved’, ‘worthless’, ‘vile’, ‘intemperate’, and ‘wicked’. Accusations of drunkenness were frequent (and accurate) as were charges of corruption and debauchery.”

          That was describing the presidential race between Jefferson and Adams, only the third in this country’s history.

          This book is collection of stories from various campaigns from both centuries of America’s existence. From the “corrupt bargain” that saw John Quincy Adams into the White House, denying Andrew Jackson the prize; to the immortal “Dewey Beats Truman” moment where, once again, the pollsters were overwhelmingly wrong in their predictions; to the disastrous Dukakis in a tank photo shoot. 

          The book puts the 2018 election into perspective. We all might remember it as a particularly vicious election with both sides painting the other as sub-human monsters intent on only evil, but surprisingly it was not the bloodthirsty election in American history. They have all been particularly brutal in one form or another, with character assassinations on both sides. At some point nearly every candidate since 1952 has been accused of racism and thus by extension anyone who follows him must be a racist as well.

Very similar to the 2016 upset

          For instance, the first incumbent to call his opponent a Nazi was Harry Truman, only a few years after W.W. II. Grover Cleveland had a sex scandal involving an illegitimate child he fathered and then refused to marry the mother as she was a “person of intemperate habits”- that means she was a crazy whore only good for a pump and dump. Cleveland was able to overcome this and become president. Both of the presidencies of Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison were popular uprisings of the common man against the snotty elites who felt they were owed the election (sound familiar anyone?). In fact, the rise of Jackson was more telling than one might think. It occurred on the eve of male suffrage (you didn’t realize there was such a thing did you?) where all men were given the vote. Previous to that, only men who owned property were eligible.

          I think we get the idea of old presidential elections as austere affairs, with educated up-right men debating points of interest in a polite manner. This primarily comes from old time television where, due to censorship, it was presented as such. In reality, each one has been incredibly wild, scandal packed, and emotionally charged.  In addition, biased reporting by news outlets has nearly always been the rule, rather than an exception.

Author Jon Dickerson, host of Face the Nation

          Keep in mind however that the author’s bias is showing. He seems to have no problems categorizing republicans in a bad light, or adding ad hominem slurs, but always shies away from writing anything negative about Democrats. Their “downfall” always seem to be the result of dirty tricks, not gross mismanagement, corruption, and plain old dumb ideas.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.