Books in Brief: The Pulse of Politics: Electing Presidents in the Media Age

The Pulse of Politics: Electing Presidents in the Media Age, by James David Barber (Norton, 342 pp., $14.95). These are grim times for politicos, and for the art they practice before an electorate made wary by the repeated triumph of experience over hope. Professor Barber, seeking the system’s vital signs, has detected a rhythm to our presidential elections. He suggests that, since 1900, campaigns have followed a cycle of conflict, conscience, and conciliation. Hence the 1912 Republican donnybrook set the stage for Wilson’s moralizing four years later, the wreckage of which led to Harding’s banal pursuit of “normalcy” in 1920. The author asserts that candidates out of step with these rhythms or, more recently, unable to exploit them via the electronic media are doomed to failure. He concedes there are occasional exceptions but seems intent upon glossing over the more obvious ones. McKinley’s re-election in 1900 and the Nixon landslide of 1972 hardly fit the professor’s calibration of conflict. Yet, though he sometimes has to stretch elections to fit his theory, few political scientists are capable of honing their subject with such precision of scholarship, style, and wit. As with his earlier The Presidential Character, Barber’s latest thesis will provoke useful debate about a process that continues to fascinate and bewilder us.

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John Luce

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Presidential Election

The Pulse of Politics: Electing Presidents in the Media Age, by James David Barber (Norton, 342 pp., $14.95). These are grim times for politicos, and for the art they practice before an electorate made wary by the repeated triumph of experience over hope. Professor Barber, seeking the system’s vital signs, has detected a rhythm to our presidential elections. He suggests that, since 1900, campaigns have followed a cycle of conflict, conscience, and conciliation. Hence the 1912 Republican donnybrook set the stage for Wilson’s moralizing four years later, the wreckage of which led to Harding’s banal pursuit of “normalcy” in 1920. The author asserts that candidates out of step with these rhythms or, more recently, unable to exploit them via the electronic media are doomed to failure. He concedes there are occasional exceptions but seems intent upon glossing over the more obvious ones. McKinley’s re-election in 1900 and the Nixon landslide of 1972 hardly fit the professor’s calibration of conflict. Yet, though he sometimes has to stretch elections to fit his theory, few political scientists are capable of honing their subject with such precision of scholarship, style, and wit. As with his earlier The Presidential Character, Barber’s latest thesis will provoke useful debate about a process that continues to fascinate and bewilder us.