Election technology in American presidential campaigns during the first half of the XIX century
Tatiana Alentieva, PhD, Professor Kursk State University
Abstract
The article analyzes election technologies during presidential campaigns (1828-1860). For their candidate political technologists formed a positive image, invented a bright slogan, used wide variety of means: demonstrations, meetings with voters, concerts, torchlight processions, trips around the country, activization of the party press, political advertising. They invented negative nicknames, spread rumors and gossip, used war cartoons, created negative images. The use of contrasting us/other was actively involved in the promotion. They wanted to discredit the enemy, to apply «dirty insinuations» regarding his personal life. The voting and counting of votes allowed fraud of all kinds. Politicians strengthened the system of distribution of state posts on the principle of personal loyalty (spoil system) in the framework of the two-party system: Whigs/Democrats and Democrats/Republicans. In the period of the «Jacksonian democracy» the myth of the «log cabin» was formed. It was about the origin of the presidential candidates of the people’s bottom. Such statements about the proximity of the candidate to ordinary voters were common. The political rhetoric of Jacksonians permanently tied the success of their candidate with the interests of the people. The demands to struggle against privileges and monopolies of all kinds dominated among pre-election slogans. In the discourse of politicians of the XIX century the concepts of freedom, property, public goods began to alternate with new ones, reflecting the spirit of the time: democracy and popular sovereignty, the good of the people, the rights and freedoms of the individual. The Republican party, that emerged in 1854–1856 and replaced the Whigs, really found slogans, that not only reflected the spirit of the time, but related on the mentality of Americans developed since the colonial times and during the War of independence, which was based on the powerful basis of the idea of Freedom. The slogan «Free land, free people, free labor» was close and understandable to most Americans.
Keywords
History of the United States, XIX century, presidential elections, electoral technology.
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