A “Change” Will Do You Good

It would be hard to find a presidential campaign in American history that has used the mantra of “change” to the extent that Obama and McCain are using it this year. Obama has described himself as a change agent since he announced his candidacy in early 2007. McCain, the so-called “maverick,” used the Republican convention to separate himself from the Bush administration and initiate a new era of reform.

“Change” is a relatively new idea in American presidential politics. It was rarely a theme in pre-1900 presidential campaigns. Many of these early campaigns revolved around the character of the candidates. In 1800, for example, the supporters of John Adams attacked Thomas Jefferson for not upholding orthodox Christian beliefs. Twenty-eight years later Adams’s son, John Quincy Adams, criticized his opponent Andrew Jackson for marrying a woman whose divorce to her previous husband was not final.

Other early American presidential campaigns focused less on “change” and more on hot-button issues such as slavery, tariffs, or the gold standard. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln campaigned to preserve the Union. Four years later, with the Civil War raging, he convinced Americans not to “change horses in the middle of the stream.”

But during the twentieth century many presidential candidates began to run on “change” platforms even if they did not use the word. Most of them were progressives or liberals.

In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt said he would bring an end to 12 years of Republican leadership and get the country out of the Great Depression with his “New Deal for the American People.”

John Kennedy’s “New Frontier” was also based on “change.” While his opponent in the 1960 election, Richard Nixon, sought to maintain the “peace and prosperity” of the Eisenhower years, Kennedy wanted to “get American moving again.” In 1992, Bill Clinton’s “New Covenant” was a movement for change after 12 years of Reagan-Bush leadership.

Conservatives, as might be expected, have seldom been advocates of change. In 1920, Warren Harding ran on a platform of returning to “normalcy” after World War I. In 1968 Nixon campaigned on the promise of “restoring law and order.”

Yet every now and then a Republican like McCain gains a reputation as an advocate of reform. McCain’s hero, Teddy Roosevelt, railed against corporate power. Conservative Barry Goldwater’s failed 1964 bid for the White House was an attempt to bring change to America by ending the New Deal programs of FDR.

Ronald Reagan sought to restore America’s strength in the world and revive the woeful economy he would inherit from Jimmy Carter. This was an approach to change that was quite different from the liberal progressive tradition of reform, but it was change nonetheless. During the 1980 presidential debates, Reagan asked the American people if they were better off now than they were four years ago.

In 2008, Barack Obama has a better claim on the “candidate of change” title. Like many liberal progressive before him, his campaign has gained momentum by doggedly critiquing what many Americans believe to be a troubled Bush administration and pointing the country in a new direction.

McCain, despite all of his reforming rhetoric, will have a harder time convincing Democrats and Independents that he is the change candidate. Over the next two months he will be haunted by his pro-Bush voting record. The McCain of 2008 is not the “maverick” of 2000.

Obama claims the “change” mantle of the liberal tradition. McCain fits the Roosevelt mold. It is now up to the American people to decide if the progressive claims of both candidates will really bring the kinds of reforms that they have promised.