So, how would a 1960-elected Nixon have handled the Cuban Missile Crisis? Would there even have been one if he’d committed American troops earlier on, turning the Bay of Pigs from a fiasco to a success?
There was no Reagan Revolution? <lol> Dude, it’s so funny that you can’t even admit that the “Revolution” was based upon one thing and did another! Reagan, Bushes, and the periods of Republican control of the Congressional houses was the result of the Revolution. So it existed. It just didn’t do what its adherents thought it would. So what? (And why is this particularly relevant to this thread??)
I strongly disagree. I think Kevin Phillips called this one back in the 1960s. This movement was happening regardless. The reaction to Watergate didn’t really affect this rising tide; it only concealed it for a few years.
For this reason, it’s hard for me to regard any of the 1972-76-80 elections as particularly pivotal. The tide was going to run seriously Republican at some point in there, no matter what. Of course, if the tide had been slowed down a bit more, it might have come too late to sweep Reagan to the Presidency, which would have changed things a bit. (In ways that would have cut both ways, I expect.)
I’ve got to go with 1800 as my first choice. Until the peaceful, voluntary transfer of power between parties actually happened, people really didn’t know for sure that the American experiment wasn’t just a big con game. When Jefferson became President, democracy became real. This time it was right, it worked, and no one had to get guillotined or anything. 
1860 is my second choice. Yes, the Republicans would have won sooner or later, but we’re all damned lucky it was Lincoln who won, rather than one of the Radical Republicans who would have regarded the secessionists as traitors. And that might well have been the outcome if the Republican victory had been deferred to 1864 or 1868. A Civil War that ended in the hangings of a whole lot of leading Southern generals and politicians wouldn’t have cast as great a stain on our nation as our history of slavery did, but it would have added tenfold to the legacy of bitterness that the war left behind anyway in the South.
2000 is my third choice. An election that came down to either a few hundred votes in one state, a bad ballot design in one county by a temporary Democrat, a purging of supposed felons from the voting rolls, or a single vote on the Supreme Court, depending on one’s view of things, took the country in a vastly different direction than it would have if it had come down the other way.
1932 is my fourth choice, behind 2000 only because it’s hard to see how Hoover could have possibly beaten Roosevelt in 1932. The country’s main stroke of good fortune that year was that Roosevelt was the Democratic nominee. Roosevelt didn’t win the nomination until the fourth ballot, so apparently that wasn’t a gimme.
That’s right. Examples of British prime ministers from different parties are not analogous; they’re not heads of state, the monarch is, and the monarchy provides a continuity that the American system does not. That’s why I used both qualifications, “democratic” as well as “peaceful.” The continuity of our system of government depends on the Constitution and not individuals. RT explained it better than I did.
The Adams administration brought to the forefront one of the errors made by the framers of the Constitution, their assumption that the government would function without parties. The partisanship during the Adams administration quickly became vehement and maybe even a threat to American democracy, if the Alien and Sedition Acts were any indication. The democratic system was proven to work in 1800 in a way that had never been tested before.
Edit–or maybe I should say 1801, when Adams left office without a fuss.
DSYoungEsq:
I have to disagree. The Reagan/Goldwater Conservative Revolution may not have been about Carter, but the election of 1980 was totally about Carter. His apparent capitulation on matters of the economy (the infamous “malaise” speech), coupled with the appearance of terrible weakness in foreign policy (Carter did a great job of getting Sadat and Begin to the finish line, but Americans saw, as Billy Joel said, “Ayatollahs in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan”, with no noticeable stronger response than an Olympic boycott) turned Americans very much against Carter. Americans, with the “Cold War” having been a reality of life for the prior thirty-plus years, wanted a leader who seemed interested in winning the so-called war.
If Carter had been somehow able to project confidence domestically and strength internationally, the Conservative movement may well have lost much of its momentum. Instead, a generation of Americans grew up seeing Democrats as a bunch of starry-eyed peaceniks who wouldn’t have the guts to fight for the nation’s interest. Americans wanted a cowboy in the saddle.
But Carter wasn’t an exceptional Democrat for his times in this regard. His weakness was very much his party’s weakness. Eight years later, Dukakis was Carter without the Southern accent. To the extent that 1980 was about Carter, it was also a referendum on Democrats that Republicans, as the sole alternative, were bound to win eventually.
But then how do you explain the fact that when the Cold War ended and people’s pockets felt full again (we had a small recession in the early 90’s, but it was a far cry from the economics of the late 70’s), Clinton got elected twice?
If Reagan 1980 was a resounding rejection of Democratic ideology and policies in general, Bush should have had better numbers in 1992 (even if you credit Clinton’s victories to the vote-draining effect of Perot). Reagan was a response to people who wanted to feel good about themselves and their country again, a need born of Cold War fears and negative cash flow. The therapy having succeeded, they were happy to go back to Democrats and their big-government solutions.
If anything, Bush 2000 (and yes, he lost the popular vote, but even being as close as he was means something) was more of a general Dem rejection than Reagan 1980. (Of course, Gingrich 1994 was the most so, but this thread is about presidential elections.)
You evidently overlooked the term “victorious General”.