But Thompson fits my OP; he was a Senator.
Why was Rudy Giuliani never nominated or elected; or Newt Gingrich; or Dick Gephardt?
Didn’t Lincoln also have a kind of squeaky speaking voice-one which wouldn’t go over too well on TV? [And quite unlike the one he has on the Disney ride]
Once his record of psychiactric instability gets revealed by oppo research, which it surely would, including his anonymous authorship of “The Suicide’s Soliloquy,” he wouldn’t have a prayer. Can’t have a dangerous manic-depressive nutjob running things, ya know whai’m sane?
Usually when people say that Lincoln couldn’t be elected today, they just mean in the superficial sense of “He was ugly and thus could never run and win in the Age of Television.” Glad we’re digging a little deeper than that.
As to his limited electoral experience, though, yes, I think he could. Lincoln was highly respected in his party by 1860 for his impressive run against Stephen Douglas for an Illinois U.S. Senate seat two years earlier, and for his Cooper Union speech on the Framers’ view of slavery’s expansion to the territories. He was regarded as a moderate on the slavery question, unlike such rivals as William Seward and Salmon Chase. He won the nomination in large part due to backroom manueverings at the GOP convention (in Chicago, his political backyard). Of course candidates in those days didn’t crisscross the country making speeches, but Lincoln was infinitely adaptable as a politician, and I think he could have waged a 2008-style campaign if needed.
His past bouts with depression and his tempestuous relationship with his wife would surely be strikes against him in minds of voters today, though. His sense of humor sometimes struck people as inappropriate; with cameras and microphones stuck in his face 24/7, he’d make some gaffes. As John DiFool noted, his speaking voice was surprisingly high-pitched for such a big guy, and he had a distinct Kentucky backwoods accent that some thought undignified.
BJMoose, the Republicans in 1860 genuinely thought the Presidency was winnable, and they were right. No one thought that Lincoln was a sacrificial lamb.
I, too, can think of no other Presidents other than Arthur and Hoover who had no previous elective experience and weren’t “famous generals.”
Some good reading on the topic: Lincoln by David Herbert Donald; Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin; “How We Got Lincoln” by Peter Andrews (American Heritage, November 1988; available online).
You’re right. I was thinking Van Buren was the New York tarriff office guy, but that was actually Chet Arthur.
I’ll have more after I catch up on the thread. Just wanted to get this correction out of the way.
Other Prezzies who were never governor/senator/veep/generalissimo:
Millard Fillmore (why am I not surprised?). Best he had done was four terms in the House.
James Garfield is an odd situation. He was elected to the Senate just before being nominated for President (on the thirty-third ballot). I don’t know if briefly held his Senate seat or not.
At the risk of turning this into a Bush-bashing thread (which I do not want to see), it’s arguable that his experience as governor of Texas didn’t count for much since, as Molly Ivins often reminded us, “Texas is a weak-governor state”. (If others want to question the political heft of being Governor of, say, Arkansas or Georgia, I won’t object.)
Which brings us to a factor that is relevant to the OP. I am among those who have looked at GWB’s total resume and have found him an unlikely choice to head up anything. If this is so, then how did he get elected? It seems to me that, these days, a significant part of the electorate is giving little regard to candidates political backgrounds. Examples: It is arguable that the ultimate reason Barach Obama is on his way to the White House today is because he delivered one hell of a speech at the convention four years ago. (Some will recall that Mario Cuomo was once ballyhooed for President after a similar performance. On the other hand, Bill Clinton became president despite once having given a thoroughly shitty convention speech. Go figure.) Perhaps Ross Perot is a better example. Here was a guy with no established party behind him who managed to garner something like twenty percent of the vote.
In light of this, I’m inclined to think Lincoln might have a chance today. Apparently he was a good stump-speaker, and his debates with the then-famous Stephen Douglas sure polished his apple. (Ironically - and with deep apologies to Elendil’s Heir - Lincoln’s chances today might ultimately turn on people’s ability to ignore his looks. Sad.)
Not only had Van Buren been elected to several public offices, but he also was one of the prime architects of organized party politics. He could very well be argued to be the father of the Democratic Party.
Arthur, while not a politican of any great merit, had a knack for administration and managment (even if he was a bit lazy. Mark Twain said, “He (Arthur) is the type of man who will never do today what he can put off 'til tomorrow.”) He also felt completely overmatched by the office of president and took a largely hands-off approach letting the government pretty much run itself (which it did without much of hitch).
I expect the impact of Lincoln’s looks would be minimal. It’s not like he was grotesquely deformed. He would, after all, have the efforts of modern day hair stylists and tailors altering his appearance. One assumes that his handlers would also have him schooled in elocution if his speaking voice was as “unpresidential” as claimed.
I think, in fact, that a modern “polished” Lincoln would be hailed for his rugged looks and (in an increasingly fat America) his lean build.
According to the numbers, Lincoln would have won the electoral vote 169-134 even if the other three candidates had merged into NotLincolnTron and gotten their combined votes. He was able to win the electoral vote with about 40% of the popular vote because the latter was so lopsided (he got hardly any votes in the slave states and carried some of the free states by a narrow margin).
I don’t think that would have done it without his election to the Senate, though. (I vaguely recall a thread asking how the current election would look if Jack Ryan had managed to confine his fetishes to convincing Jeri to wear the Seven of Nine suit and firmly inform him that resistance was useless.)
Wasn’t it quite common for speakers at the time to have much higher-pitched voices, though, so as to be heard over crowds? They weren’t speaking for TV and radio, they were speaking for big crowds of people.
And it’s not that he’s ugly, it’s that he’s funny-looking. We’ll elect somebody who isn’t conventionally handsome, but Lincoln had such an unusual face that I doubt we’d go for him now. Not to mention that he was just a deeply weird person. I think we wouldn’t know what to do with his sense of humor. And there’s no such thing as an orator in this day of sound bites.
On the other hand, he was evidently deeply charismatic in person. I imagine all Presidents are, though, even the ones for whom it doesn’t come through on TV - I met George the Elder once, and wouldn’t you think from TV that he’s kind of a cold fish guy? When you’re in the room with him he’s magnetic. When he speaks to you, it’s like you’re the only thing in the world that matters to him and he’s got all day to talk to you (even though there was a Secret Service guy right over his shoulder trying to hustle him along.) So if that’s what a not-very-charismatic President is like, imagine one who everybody says was magnetic?
He wasn’t just lean, man. He’d probably be even taller now with proper nutrition (here’s a picture of him with some soldiers, to put it in proper perspective. The average Civil War soldier was about 5’7) and I’ve read that by the end of the war he was down to 150 or 160 pounds. He was over 6’3. That’s not a lean build, that’s cadaverous.
But would his crazy wife help or hinder him?
Hinder. Her compulsive shopping, jealousy and/or frequently snippy remarks at other prominent men’s wives and daughters, near-derangement after her son’s death, etc., would not have helped him in the least in the 2008 campaign culture (unless you count the pity vote).
Zsofia is right that many of Lincoln’s contemporaries were surprised, on first meeting him, at how charismatic, charming and even handsome he could be. And he was quite the wordsmith - I don’t think he’d have any problem at all cranking out pithy soundbites for TV today; he did it in his own time, after all.
He was painfully thin, especially towards the end of his life. His usual lunch was a glass of buttermilk and an apple. ::shudder::
His excessive thinness was a reult of digestive issues aggravated by the stress of the war and use of quack medicines. Today, he’d be benefitting from modern medical knowledge.
In some respects, I guess we’ll find out in November.
I do think it’s fair to say that Lincoln would be better served by media like television than he was by the contemporary photographic technology, although obviously visual media did not take their current central place in politics in his time. I’m sure he looked his worst in daguerrotype - you can tell looking at those pictures that in real life he would have smiled big and often, and laughed a lot.
As to his medical history:
We wouldn’t elect Lincoln today, and we’d be right not to elect him. I agree with John Mace; the size and power of today’s United States government rightly leads us to demand a greater level of experience. Lincoln was right for his time because of what he said about slavery and how he said it; he wouldn’t necessarily be right for today.
You may be right, but Lincoln proved up to the challenges of running a Federal government vastly larger than any of his predecessors had led. The War and the Treasury departments, in particular, grew tremendously during the Civil War, and Nicolay and Hay, his aides, both remarked at how skillful and efficient Lincoln was in issuing orders, reviewing reports, keeping up with correspondence, making patronage and military appointments, etc., despite having only run a small law office before. Of course, he would have a much larger staff nowadays, which would help.