The shadow of the election of 1856

The desire for analytical integrity stymies me.  Long-time readers will know of my political inclinations, but will also know that my conclusions (most of them, anyway, though I try for all) are the result of comparing one choice against the other.  Justice has her scales, and I have mine.

We are now about three months before the election.  Last week's conclusion of the Democratic Party convention yielded the predictable result of Hillary Clinton officially becoming the Democratic candidate for president.  Coming as it did in the week after the Republican Party convention produced the corollary result with Donald Trump, it seemed that the time had arrived for a piece of reasonable analysis that would compare the two candidacies.

The "reasonable" part of that is what has stymied me.

Clinton is a conventional candidate; some will find this comforting, to others it will be disturbing. Trump is unconventional; like the splitting of an amoeba, his unconventionalities multiply, and yet remain oddly similar.  Clinton can expound in wonkish detail on almost any subject under the sun; Trump's grasp of details is ephemeral at best.

But the truth is -- Trump is wildly different, and therefore much more entertaining.  He is the anti-wonk and the anti-factual.  He does not embrace analytical integrity -- at least not publicly -- and so at this stage in the election it would be an exercise in futility to attempt to submit his candidacy to critical analysis.

Emboldened with that epiphany, the encumbrance of analytical integrity has fallen away.  Fortunately, something robust and consequential has taken its place:  It is our old friend History.

Trump might be different, but he has happened before.  Here in the United States of America.  In a presidential election.  Not exactly in the same way, of course, but with startling similarities.  History does not repeat itself, but the same tune can be played by one band at one time and then picked up a hundred years later by another band, adapted for contemporary tastes and played again.

In this case, over a century-and-a-half has passed since the election of 1856.  The nation was politically-split at that time by several domestic social and economic issues.  The electorate and the candidates held polarizing and deeply-felt opinions.  At that time, slavery was the paramount issue.  But there were others.

There were three main candidates for president, and five political parties, in the election of 1856.  James Buchanan, the nominee of the Democrats, won the election with policies that tolerated slavery.  John C. Fremont, the first Republican nominee for president, also was nominated by and supported by the anti-slavery Northern American Party.  Former president Millard Fillmore was the nominee of the American Party and was endorsed by the Whig Party.

While the other political parties had been largely consumed with issues around how to expand, contain, diminish or eliminate slavery, the American Party (originally the Native American Party) had for the prior several years been occupied with promoting an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic agenda, largely in state and local politics and congressional elections.  The goal was to retain, recover and rebuild the purity of America's social structure, mostly by saving it from incoming foreign influences. 

The decade of the 1840s was one of vastly increased immigration into the United States, largely of Irish and German Catholics.  Much of the established Protestant Anglo-Saxon population of the country resented the ways in which the recently-arrived people were changing the nature, appearance and customs of the nation. 

Catholicism, though always present, was now considered by the American Party to be a danger to the republic because of the numbers of arrivals from Europe.  Adding to the apparent danger was the perception that the Pope was executing a secret religious-political agenda, and immigration to America provided him with tools to further that agenda.  The immigrants increased the competition for jobs, too.

Does any of this sound familiar?  If the national and religious identities are changed, does all of it sound familiar?

Despite its populist appeal and rapid growth in adherents, the American Party withered quickly after the election of 1856. It disappeared and was largely forgotten.  Also largely forgotten was the more common name of the American Party, one which was embraced by the party's membership as well as by its opponents.

It was called the Know-Nothing Party.