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The Twenty-Four-Year Itch Revisited
In a piece posted two weeks ago, “Donald Trump and the Twenty-Four-Year Itch,” I claimed to have seen this movie before more than once: Twenty-four years ago, when Ross Perot led an insurgency, and twenty-four years before that when, as a cub reporter, I covered the George Wallace campaign as it unfolded in Oklahoma. It was my contention, then, and is my contention now that, in American politics, things tend to come apart roughly every 24 years — which is to say, once a generation — when a neglected part of the electorate erupts in fury at our masters in DC.
In the interim, I have found myself musing about the Trump phenomenon time and again, and I am prepared to defend the following hypothesis — that something of the sort has recurred every quarter-century or so in this country now for nearly 250 years.
In 1776, for example, there was a real revolution directed at our masters in London. In 1800, there was, so Thomas Jefferson tells us, a second revolution, when his Republicans ousted the Federalist Party from power. There was another such event in 1824 when Andrew Jackson outpolled John Quincy Adams. That development did not reach fruition until 1828 when he replaced Adams, but the writing was on the wall in 1824. The era in which the grandees of the revolutionary generation dominated American politics was over.
The same thing happened again in the 1850s with the collapse of the Whig Party, the foundation of the Republican Party, and the subsequent collapse of the Democratic Party. It happened again in 1876, and the upshot was the end of Reconstruction. It happened once more in 1896 with the Democratic Party’s repudiation of Grover Cleveland and nomination of William Jennings Bryan. It happened again with the election of William G. Harding in a Republican landslide in 1920 and the Return to Normalcy. And it happened again in 1946 when the Republicans regained control of Congress and passed the Taft-Hartley Act.
I do not mean to suggest that the twenty-four-year itch is the whole story. That, it is not. But it is a propensity, and it reflects the nature of our politics. Back in the 17th century, English observers noticed that — party divisions notwithstanding — there was a tendency for there to be a recurring divide between Court and Country, in which the Court faction, controlling the administration, was denounced as corrupt and the Country faction, then out of office, adopted a virtuous pose. Politics in a parliamentary setting, where there were regular elections, had a propensity for turning on the resentment directed by those out of power and those whose interests had been given short shrift against those in power and those profiting from the conduct of those in power.
We do not use this language. We do not speak of Court and Country, as the English did. But it is commonplace for the party out of power to run against the party in power by charging that those in Washington have forgotten their constituents in the hinterlands. This was the charge lodged by Jefferson and Jackson, by William Jennings Bryan and William G. Harding, and by George Wallace and Ross Perot, and it is the charge being advanced today by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
This charge is, of course, a cliche, and fairly often the voters ignore it. Scratch the outsider and you will find an insider in drag. But roughly once a generation, the voters take this charge to heart — nearly always when a portion of the electorate really has been ignored and stepped on and they get hopping mad.
You and I may not much like Donald Trump. But it is a grave blunder to call him a fascist. He is as American as apple pie. He may well be considerably more vulgar and coarse than Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, George Wallace, and Ross Perot. But guess what! The American electorate is a good deal more vulgar and coarse today than it was when a sizable proportion of our compatriots rallied to these earlier insurgencies.
I wonder what things will look like in 2040. I rather doubt that I will live to see it.
Addendum: Warren G. Harding, not William. My slip, alas.
Published in General
Interesting. (Double check your mentions of President Harding above).
Great post as usual sir!
My concern remains that as an instrument to communicate dissatisfaction with the status quo – a concern and frustration I share though I understand it’s cause – Mr Trump seems like using a hand grenade to kill the snake in your pants. There must be a better way.
And where does Huey Long fit on your timelime? Too early or too late?
William Harding (L not G) was governor of Iowa when Ohio’s Warren was elected president
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_L._Harding
Samuel P. Huntington wrote a book along these lines,
American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony
He called them Creedal Passion periods. A times when the American people would reset to the Founder’s values.
Huey might have been an aberration propelled in part by his exploitation of radio – first in Louisiana, then through his nationwide “Share Our Wealth” broadcast. FDR’s first “Fireside Chat” predated “Share Our Wealth,” but not by much. (The Federal Communications Commission came along not long after that. Hmmm.)
William Harding was a nasty piece of work. He leaned on the immigrant ethnic communities such as those from Denmark and Germany to give up the use of their languages in church and school and conform to the American way. He graciously consented to let some among them use their languages in church if they would come and give him a good reason why it was needed.
He would have made a good fascist.
It is interesting that often the “outside challenger” doesn’t succeed aka Bryan, Wallace, Perot. Let’s hope the case is the same here.
Reminds me of William Strauss and Neil Howe’s “The Fourth Turning”. They have a theory of about every 80 years upheaval that is interesting based on the character of generations. According to their theory, we are in a period of upheaval.
I have to say that to say the phenomenon is not fascist because it is American strikes me as a fallacy. The question of whether or not it is fascist is unrelated to the question of whether it arises from a true strain in the American character.
Our fascism, FDR, was moderate, as our problems, as bad as they were, were of a different order of magnitude to Germany and Italy. But we’ve been fixing that with a steady drift toward the corporate state. Obama was a giant step forward and Hillary will be as well. We are threatened by fascism, we see it in the streets, in the embrace of Alinsky, which is pure fascist tactics, but it’s not so brutal and violent because we start out with the corporate state and don’t have to foist it on the population. We’re seeing push back from anti fascists.
Well, then, this should be the big one, ‘cuz it’s been 240 years.
There is an American populism. It has never been fascist in character — no brownshirts, no fascist salutes, no uniforms at all. Just lots of anger and a conviction that the establishment in Washington is taking advantage of us. Let me add that our populism is rarely rational, but it is not an entirely bad thing. Washington does take advantage.
We don’t have brown shirts, we have red hats. We do have fascist salutes accompanied by loyalty oaths. Just because similar movements in the past have not gone this far does not address the question of whether this movement is fascist.
There is nothing fascist about the Trump phenomenon. What we have is a demagogue who has touched a nerve. That has happened hundreds of times in American history. There is no organization, no party, no totalitarian platform. This is silly.
Let’s add, no attempt to subvert public order or the laws. Not even the rhetoric has anything to do with fascism. The man may say crazy things now & again, but that is nothing to do with it. Most crazy stuff that has nothing to do with fascism!
Paul, I just accidentally deleted a comment that linked to a large number of writers, including historians who are experts on fascism, saying that Trump is either a flat-out fascist or a prot0-fascist, partial fascist, or something similar. Here’s one on PJMedia. Here’s a yes and no one by the historian. The president of Mexico called him a fascist. Oh, and here’s Ross Douthat back in December saying that one of the main reasons to not call him a fascist was that he had not yet won a primary. You may disagree, but you cannot dismiss the argument as one without serious advocates.
It used to be the left that brought up fascism at every turn. Now, to some extent thanks to Mr. Goldberg, it’s the right that does it. There is nothing that’s ok about this sort of talk! Outside of the partisans treating each other’s hero-politicians as monsters worth a world war–there’s rhetoric for you!–it only betrays a lack of political ability. It’s as though things could not be wrongheaded, foolish, or dangerous, or even evil without being fascist.
We live in a world where people get an education, apparently, precisely to become incapable of seeing what’s in front of their eyes & thinking about it, instead of applying abstract concepts wherever some popular or unpopular opinion says that they should.
This is easiest to recognize whenever people start arguing about elements & similarities, as though there’s no such thing as a thing. Its particular character is unimportant. The only thing that matters is some aspect or part that alarms or attracts them!
Trump is a crass, populist, reality TV star, he will not be a particularly good President.
I think your choice of words “fascist movement” is not useful. This is separate from Trump is a fascist. By claiming a fascist movement you are claiming that 40% of Republican Primary voters( or at least a significant portion of them) want to do away with our form of government and replace it with a Strongman. Is that really what you think? Without voters advocating for this, there is no “movement” there is just Trump.
In the last few weeks I have now heard that Trump is a fascist who will throw out our Constitution and Representative Republic ( a necessary component of fascism), thus ending life as we know it. He will also cause the next Great Depression, thus ending life as we know it. The good news is we won’t care about any of this because we will be too worried about the nuclear war Trump started.
Seriously it is possible for someone to be an awful choice for President without leading to the end of America or the End of the World.
I don’t think people have ever wanted to do away with their form of government and replace it with a strongman. They always want a particular strongman, and they want him to take control of their current government. In other words, they don’t choose Fascism. They choose Mussolini, and he gives them Fascism.
I could be mistaken about that, but there may be data from the 1930s that would inform us.
In the United States, it wouldn’t take overturning our present form of government to institute a strongman. A lot of that has happened already. In fact, if you look at the number of Ricochet posts about presidential administration (and supreme court appointments) vs legislation, you might suspect that people are already resigned to rule by a strongman. If you look at the number of Ricochet posts about what Trump would do compared to the number of posts about what the legislature should do, you might suspect that people are already resigned to rule by a strongman, and that we are now just arguing about which strongman.
I’ve noticed a 36 year cycle of realignments in national politics. The latest would have been in 2004 but 9/11 delayed it. Wonder how this works with the 24 year cycle.
I won’t call Trump a fascist but I do think he represents a European “rightist” model that has nothing to do with American conservatism. Sanders is also a European style event.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The Washington establishment in both parties is only concerned about it’s own political power. It has always been concerned only with it’s own political power. It will always be concerned only with it’s own political.
As it was in the Beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end, Amen.
The reason we have “uprisings” every 24 years is that the establishment never wavers from it’s course of screwing the public in whatever ways it can get away with.
If the establishment wants to avoid “uprisings”, all it needs to do is treat the people as citizens, not serfs.
Define “serious”. People call everyone a fascist nowadays, usually with no clue as to what it really means.
I think that’s Rahe’s point. I think it’s right.
But it’s okay to call Trump a Fascist. Because #NeverTrump.