American elections from more than 100 years ago may not offer much of a guide for the best digital-outreach strategy or how much money a campaign needs to raise, but the old adage “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is as true for elections as it is for war and peace. The so-called political experts proved this point in 2016 and 2020, looking back only as far as the 1980s to make sense of Donald Trump and the phenomenon of conservative populism. Bob Riel’s Quest for the Presidency: The Storied and Surprising History of Presidential Campaigns in America goes beyond recent headlines to demonstrate that all of us can learn more from the past when thinking about presidential elections and democracy.
Though you won’t find him on television, Riel is a skilled political historian. He surveys the entire history of American presidential elections, 59 in all, to find the big ideas that have traveled down through the generations. His coverage of the 1864 election recalls how many observers, including prominent Republicans, thought that Abraham Lincoln would lose his bid for reelection, but Lincoln of course went on to win. Other examples of such comebacks include the most dramatic of all – Harry Truman’s legendary 1948 reelection victory. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is wrongheaded in the other direction: going into the 1992 campaign, it looked like George H. W. Bush was a lock for reelection, and that Bill Clinton would not be the Democrat nominee, let alone president. These and other instances provide important reminders that it might be too early to write off Joe Biden or any of his potential challengers.
