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Introduction

The following term paper was written for my US History class in 2003. The argument that the paper presents is still relative today.

Abstract

            Analyzes four close presidential elections and offers for consideration the idea that America’s enemies view close elections of the popular vote as opportunities for attack. Hypothesizes the explanation that Americans tend to forget that every four years, they participate in a non-violent coup; a change in government. Describes similarities between the four exampled elections which validate the argument that our enemy’s perception of us during these moments is that we are vulnerable to attack. Concludes that Americans should make preparations to defend themselves against future enemy attacks coincidental to close presidential elections.

U.S. Presidential Elections: An Analysis of Close Elections and Enemy Perceptions

           Every four years the people of the United States participate in presidential elections. We tend to forget that our presidential elections are a form of non-violent change in government; a kind of bloodless coup in the eyes of the world. To our enemies, both foreign and domestic, this is perceived as a period of weakness. We are considered to be especially vulnerable to attack when an election result is close because it is at this time that the largest number of citizens are divided and upset with each other and our government. The election loss of a party’s candidate to the opposing side and the knowledge that the opposing side’s agenda (platform) will be put into effect for the next four years is fertile ground for unrest and dissent. It is at this time that our enemies may choose to attack our country. Although we experience a separation and ‘pulling apart’ as a nation during presidential elections, Americans are a resilient people. We believe in our way of life and have demonstrated our ability to bend with the stresses laid at our feet by burying our differences and coming together during times of crisis. Our enemies don’t understand this quality and as a result, underestimate us as a people and as a nation.

           Four close United States Presidential elections held in the years 1940, 1948, 1960 and 2000 reflect events that, while appearing to be different by the examples of the circumstances surrounding them, have a historical similarity relative to our enemy’s perceptions of us.

           Three of the four examples have countries as our enemies; Japan, North Korea, and the Soviet Union. The fourth example is unique because there is no apparent affiliation with a country. They are an organized group of terrorists; militant Islamic extremists calling themselves the Al-Qaeda, under the leadership of Usama bin Laden, the wealthy son of a royal Saudi family.

1940 Wendell Wilkie v. Franklin D. Roosevelt

1948 Thomas Dewey v. Harry S. Truman

           The inauguration of Harry S. Truman took place on January 20, 1949 and at 4:00am, June 25, 1950, seventeen months later, the communist country of North Korea invaded the free Republic of South Korea, and the United States as part of a joint UN action went to war to stop communist aggression (Evanhoe).

1960 Richard Nixon v. John F. Kennedy

           John F. Kennedy was photogenic, telegenic and had a lot of charisma. He charmed the voters and used nationwide television coverage, to sway them. This was the first presidential election with televised debates and they were widely viewed by Americans. Richard Nixon was prepared to debate, but he was not prepared to sell himself on camera; the television make-up they attempted to use to cover up his ‘perpetual 5:00 shadow made his face look pasty. He was recovering from an infection that had hospitalized him for two weeks (Davis 441). What the American public saw in Nixon was a sickly looking man sweating profusely. His clothing was the wrong color for television and his gray suit blended into the background scenery. Kennedy, on the other hand, had a great smile and carried himself well in front of the camera.

           Dirty tricks in politics refer to underhanded methods that tend to sabotage a candidate’s character in order to sway a voter’s opinion. They were rampant in this presidential election on both sides.  Both candidates had underworld connections and money to influence them. The Kennedy camp was on the verge of releasing a story that Nixon had regularly attended parties with prostitutes at the home of his friend Bebe Rebozo in Florida when they discovered that Kennedy had been a visitor too. FBI director, J Edgar Hoover, who had the dirt on everyone, slipped the Nixon campaign several files on Kennedy’s sex life including the rumor that he had been secretly married prior to his marriage to his current wife; Kennedy was a Catholic and this would have been devastating to him. With both sides having the dirt on each other much of this information never reached public light until many years later. A lot of fear and voter concern existed regarding electing a Catholic to the presidency in a predominantly Protestant country. Americans did not want the specter of church (the pope) dictating to the state. The threat of compromising the Constitution’s separation of church and state was used by the Nixon campaign to create voter doubt. President Eisenhower, who was a popular president, may have helped the Kennedy campaign with his facetious response to a reporter who asked him what major decisions Nixon had been a part of during his eight years as Vice-President, “If you give me a week, I might think of one” (Davis 441). That answer may have had a negative effect on the 100,000 plus voters who may have been undecided at the time but had been leaning toward Richard Nixon.

           The role of organized crime in this election has sparked interest in current day investigators of that election. It was known that gangster Sam Giancana shared a mistress with JFK, he had bragged that Kennedy “wouldn’t even be in the White House” without his organization’s intimidation at the polls in Illinois. Illinois had 27 electoral votes and if Nixon had won those votes instead of Kennedy, Kennedy’s 303 tally would have dropped to 276 and Nixon’s would have jumped from 219 to 246. Kennedy needed 269 electoral votes (half of the 537 available rounded up) to win outright. If Illinois had gone to Nixon, it would have narrowed the margin and made the difference of seven electoral votes. Fifteen electoral votes had been placed with other candidates. Although members of the Electoral College are duty bound to vote their plurality (vote for the candidate who had the most popular votes in their state), some did not. Nixon could have challenged the results of the popular vote in some states where the count was very close, such as in Hawaii’s, demanding a recount, but he chose not to challenge and the results stood.

           In this election, the main issue was the Soviet Union’s high economic growth rate in comparison to the United States’. The Soviets were expected to overtake the American economy by 1984 (Wikipedia 1960).  Americans were mortally afraid of communism, considering it to be the single greatest threat to their existence as a free society. The USSR was a nuclear power and the fear of a nuclear war was ever-present. The voters were momentarily caught up in the circus that Kennedy and Nixon created with the election campaign, and voted with their emotions rather than the issues that each presented as their party’s platform. The youthful charisma of John F. Kennedy helped him win the election. His political savvy and knowledge of the Electoral College system helped him more by winning the states that had the largest electoral votes. Richard Nixon won more states than Kennedy, but captured fewer electoral votes. The Electoral College votes decide presidential winners rather than the popular vote (Renka). With this win by Kennedy, the Democrats took control of the presidency for the first time since 1952. Back then, Truman had finished his second term of office and Adlai Stevenson, a Democrat from Illinois failed to beat Dwight David Eisenhower, a Republican from New York.

           When John F. Kennedy was administered the Oath of Office on January 20, 1961, his words brought inspiration to a country desperately needing guidance from its leaders….

           "Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world…  Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’ – a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself…. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country." (Kennedy)

           Three months later the Bay of Pigs Incident occurred. It was a failed covert CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) planned invasion of Cuba using exiled Cubans designed to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro and demonstrate to the world our country’s committed support in fighting communism everywhere. The plan was prepared under the former Eisenhower/Nixon leadership, and had been placed on hold by the CIA pending the new leadership’s authorization for action. Kennedy allowed the plan to proceed with the requirement that no American personnel should participate in the actual invasion. Our troops watched from a distance as CIA trained Cubans were slaughtered by Castro’s army because of the inept intelligence gathering of the CIA. There were American casualties; four members of the Alabama Air National Guard in the employ of the CIA were killed, but the American government never acknowledged their existence or their connection to the operation (Davis 448-449).

           This fiasco appeared to confirm to the world that the United States was weak. The Soviets, under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, had been secretly arming Cuba with nuclear missiles. Cuba is located less than ninety miles off the Florida coast. Our spy plane reconnaissance flights produced undisputed photographs of the missiles. This led to the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 which brought us to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. After showing the photographs to the American people and the rest of the world on television, President Kennedy quarantined Cuba using a naval blockade and readied a full-scale invasion of the island. Khrushchev sent ships to break the quarantine. But, in an eleventh-hour back room agreement, Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the nuclear warhead missiles in exchange for our promise not to invade Cuba.

2000 Al Gore v. George W. Bush

           The fourth close presidential election took place when Republican George W. Bush ran against Democrat rival Vice-President Al Gore in the year 2000. President Clinton had finished two-terms in office and during his last four years had succeeded in reducing the moral integrity of the office and transforming the world view of the White House into that of a bordello. Clinton testified during a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him by former employee, Paula Jones, that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinski, an intern at the White House, whose own testimony described in detail what it meant to not have sex with her. Apparently, oral sex was not sex according to President Clinton’s definition. Congress attempted to impeach Clinton for perjury, but failed.

           Clinton’s Vice-President, Al Gore, was a moral man and faithful to his wife. He had the Democratic Party’s support to right the wrong that Bill Clinton had inflicted on the Party. George W. Bush was from Texas, which led the nation in Capital Crime executions. He was not soft on crime. He attempted to convince Americans that he was representative of the typical American family man, although his daughters were twice arrested during his campaign for purchasing alcohol while being underage. His father, George H. W. Bush, was a former U.S. President from 1988 to 1992, losing a bid for a second term in office to Bill Clinton.

           In this election, the state of Florida carried the swing votes for the Electoral College. Florida’s voter outcome, it appeared, would decide the presidency.

           The governor of Florida was his brother, Jeb Bush. Katherine Harris was the Secretary of State for Florida, and she was in charge of managing the election process for the state. She was appointed to the Secretary of State position by Jeb Bush. Additionally, she was a G.W. Bush delegate during the Republican National Convention. Katherine Harris was Bush’s state campaign co-chair for Florida. Her activities went far beyond the normal activities of a state chairwoman. She was a presence on the Bush campaign in January, traveling with Jeb and 138 other Floridian Republicans as they flew from Miami and Tallahassee to New Hampshire on a leased Boeing 727 to campaign for Jeb’s brother in his primary campaign against Arizona Senator John McCain. Her participation brought serious questions about her partisanship in light of her authority over the Florida election controversy that ensued (Tapper). 

           The 2000 Presidential election was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that the decision made by the Florida Supreme Court to allow a time extension for recounting ballots in Florida was questionable and as a result, threatened Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Florida Supreme Court decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of George W. Bush with instructions to the Florida Court to explain their decision to allow the ballots to be recounted in constitutional terms. Time ran out for Florida vote counters (Boyer 1006).

           As a result of this reversal of the Florida Supreme Court ruling, Al Gore was defeated by George W. Bush in a state where the candidate’s brother was the governor who had appointed the election manager who had the option to allow, but refused to allow a time extension for a recounting of ballots by hand in districts that had communicated counting problems with the automated counting machines (broken machines, hanging chads, etc). The final count for Florida showed Bush winning Florida by 537 votes (Wikipedia 2000).

           Following the election, several studies were made of the electoral process in Florida by Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties with disturbing findings that have motivated election reform in many states.

• There were allegations of impropriety by Jeb Bush and his appointee, Katherine Harris, because of his relationship to a Presidential candidate and because of her dual roles of Republican campaigner and overseer of the election process.

• There were a number of overseas ballots missing postmarks or filled out in such a way that they were invalid under Florida law, but had been included in the count anyway because a poll worker filled some of them out. The largest group of overseas ballots were military ballots, which the Republicans argued to have accepted.

• Some 179,855 ballots were not counted in the official tally. These were ballots that were mistakenly filled out. In some counties the voting machines would return the ballot and allow voters to try again, while in other counties, the reject mechanisms were disabled, which only gave voters one chance to mark the ballot correctly. It was found that as a general trend, the reject mechanisms were disabled in predominantly African-American and Hispanic counties.

• The television news media called the state for Al Gore around 9:00pm EST, while voters in the western panhandle part of the state (which is in the Central Time Zone) were still voting, potentially depressing the voter turnout. This region of the state is mostly Republican.

• 57,700 voters were incorrectly listed as felons on a ‘scrub list’ and thus their votes were not counted. In some cases, the alleged felonies were dated several years after the election and the vast majority of the listed were not felons. These persons were disproportionately Democrats of African-American and Hispanic descent.

• The result of the Florida U.S. Presidential race was so close that some Democratic Party Officials argue that one county’s hard-to-use ballot may have unfairly decided the presidency. This was in reference to the now infamous ‘butterfly’ ballot of Palm Beach County. The punch marks for the candidates go down the center of an open ballot where candidates are listed on the outer edges of both pages, like an open book. The Democrats were listed second in the left hand column, but punching the second hole down in the center actually casts a vote for Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate listed on the right side column (Wikipedia 2000).

            At 9:00pm on December 13, in a nationally televised address, Gore conceded that he lost his bid for the presidency. He asked his supporters to support Bush, saying, “This is America, and we put country before party.” During his speech, Gore’s family and Joe and Hadassah Lieberman stood quietly nearby.  George W. Bush became President-elect and began forming his transition committee. Bush tried to reach across party lines and bridge a divided America, stating that “The President of the United States is the president of every single American, of every race and every background.” Bush took the Oath of Office on January 20, 2001.

           Eight months later, foreign terrorists commandeered three American commercial airplanes from American Airlines and United Airlines within the borders of this country and crashed them into targeted structures; the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., killing thousands. A fourth commercial airplane owned by American Airlines, was also commandeered as it left Pennsylvania, but the passengers having called friends and relatives on their cell phones realized their plight and sought to overpower the hijackers who crashed the plane into the ground without reaching their unknown target, although speculation was that it was headed for the White House itself.

           The world believed that America was weak after the election of 2000. Some of our enemies believed it strongly enough to strike a blow against us and chose September 11 as the date for carrying that out. They believed that attacking us when we were divided as a nation would create confusion and chaos and that, over time, would cause the collapse of our economy and our government. It’s ironic that September 11 is also representative of the number we use when calling the Emergency Operator on our telephone lines. When there’s an emergency, people are instructed to call 911.

           Every four years we broadcast our vulnerability to the world. Our enemies watch our elections and ask themselves, “Will this be a close election year, and if it is, will this be a good year to carry out an attack?” We should prepare to defend ourselves and count on the high probability that we may experience an enemy attack after future elections where the popular vote is close.

Works Cited

Boyer, Paul S., et al., The Enduring Vision,   Vol. 2: From 1865 5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2004)

Davis, Kenneth C. Don’t Know Much About History  1st ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2003)

Evanhoe, Ed The Korean War; The UN Offensive  http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/brochures/kw-unoff/unoff.htm

Kennedy, John F., Inaugural Address January 20, 1961 (John F. Kennedy Library Foundation) 12 December 2002, 10 December 2003  http://www.jfklibrary.org/j012061.htm

Kirkendall, Richard S., Indiana University, “Biography of Harry S.Truman,”(Grolier, 2000)            http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/bios/33ptrum.html

Renka, Russell D. “1960 Kennedy v. Nixon Election, The” 23 February, 2003  http://ustudies.semo.edu/ui320-75/Course/presidents/kennedy/1960%20Election.htm

Tapper, Jake “The Woman Under Fire” 13 November 2000, (Salon Media Group, 2003) 10 December 2003 http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/13/harris/index.html

United States Department of Navy Naval Historical Center, Pearl Harbor Raid, 7 December 1941—Overview and Special Image Selection (15 January 2001), 13 December 2003 http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/pearlhbr.htm

Wikipedia “U.S. presidential election, 1940,” Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 10 Dec 2003, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election%2C_1940

Wikipedia “U.S. presidential election, 1948,” Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 10 Dec 2003,             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election%2C_1948

Wikipedia “U.S. presidential election, 1960,” Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 10 Dec 2003,             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election%2C_1960

Wikipedia “U.S. presidential election, 2000,” Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 13 Dec 2003,             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election%2C_2000