Almost President (4 page)

The call for unity is not pabulum. America is still a comparatively young nation. The American experiment still seems fragile, which is why our entire political system is designed to marginalize radicalism, forge consensus, and prevent sudden shifts in public policy that might threaten our unity. “That which unites us as American citizens is far greater than that which divides us as political parties,” Stevenson said in his 1952 concession speech. Perhaps campaigns and media coverage seem to focus on trivial issues or personalities because we subconsciously worry that larger issues featuring sharp ideological division, such as slavery in 1860, may stir passions that could become too strong to absorb the disappointment of defeat.

Having only two major, relatively equal, ideologically centrist political parties also helps maintain national unity, but this may be changing. Where forty years ago, both parties had liberal and conservative wings, there has been a realignment in which the Republican Party is now essentially conservative and the Democratic Party essentially liberal. Whether this increased ideological divide will alter the concession ritual remains to be seen, but polling shows many Americans base whom they vote for as president on who they believe can bring America together.

After validating the result, the second element of the concession speech is the loser's explanation of what his campaign was all about. As Paul Corcoran, a scholar who has studied concession speeches, put it, “The rhetorical challenge is to pronounce one's own defeat as a chapter of honor in the nation's history, to put a brave face on failure, transforming defeat into a semblance of victory.”

Sometimes, a losing candidate has been so closely identified with a single issue that he declares that while his campaign did not win, the campaign advanced the cause. In 1972, McGovern, whose campaign was based on promising a speedy end to the Vietnam War, told his supporters that the campaign had “pushed this country in the direction of peace,” adding, “If we pushed the day of peace just one day closer, then every minute and every hour and every bone-crushing effort in this campaign was worth the entire effort.”

When there is no overriding issue on which a campaign was based, the losing candidates have often offered a laundry list of causes for which they promise to keep fighting. This particular rhetorical device has been especially prevalent in more recent campaigns where modern telecommunications demands instant analysis under circumstances not conducive to introspection. Prior to the age of television and radio, candidates had at least a few days to assess the meaning of their candidacy.

In a slower age, having issued the customary congratulatory telegram, candidates would develop a major post-election address, often around the theme that voters would soon realize the error of their choice and make amends at the next election. In a post-election speech in 1904, Alton Parker said of the Republican victory, “Before long the people will realize that the tariff-fed trusts and illegal combinations are absorbing the wealth of the Nation. . . . When that time comes, and come it will, the people will return to the Democratic Party for relief.” Al Smith offered a similar sentiment in 1928, while referring to the Democratic Party as “the democracy.” If “the cause of Democracy was right before the election, it is still right, and it is our duty to carry on and vindicate the principles for which we fought.” And William Jennings Bryan philosophically noted that the burden of proof after an election is then on the ruling administration. Of McKinley's victory, he said, “If his policies bring real prosperity to the American people, those who opposed him will share in that prosperity. If, on the other hand, his policies prove an injury to the people generally, those of his supporters who do not belong to the office-holding class, or to the privileged classes, will suffer in common with those who opposed him.”

Concern about a campaign's legacy is probably why modern losing candidates focus on how their campaigns involved the young. Until the ascendance of the “youth culture” concept in the second half of the twentieth century, losing candidates rarely mentioned their youthful supporters in their concession remarks. Then, in 1972, McGovern, not coincidentally a college professor, said, “If we have brought into the political process those who never before have experienced either the joy or its sorrow, then that, too, is an enduring blessing.”

Before McGovern, except for a brief mention by Smith in 1928 (during another decade that catered to the young), no losing candidate singled out his youthful supporters for recognition. Since then, concession speeches have had a trace of the high school commencement address. In 1984, Walter Mondale offered a “special word to my young supporters this evening . . . in every defeat is to be found the seeds of victory,” while Michael Dukakis, who became a college professor after his defeat, advised his young supporters in 1988 to consider a career in the “noble profession” of public service because “there is nothing you can do in this world more fulfilling and more satisfying than giving yourself to others and making a contribution to your community and your state and your nation and your fellow citizens.”

In 2004, John Kerry borrowed a rhetorical device first used by Ronald Reagan during the latter's “State of the Union” addresses, singling out individuals for recognition to illustrate a broader point. In Kerry's case, his concession speech cited young supporters—very young supporters—he had met during the campaign. To demonstrate his influence upon those who would govern America in future generations, Kerry singled out a six-year-old boy who had raised $680, “a quarter and a dollar at a time,” selling campaign paraphernalia, and an eleven-year-old girl who formed a group called “Kids for Kerry.” This led humorist Jon Stewart to observe, “I know why [Kerry] lost . . . you have to be eighteen to vote! Why are you going after the six-year-olds and the eleven-year-olds?”

Recent losing presidential candidates have also paid homage to Reagan's acknowledged mastery of political communication in the third distinct portion of the concession speech. Virtually all have adopted Reagan's trademark conclusion to most major addresses: “God bless America.” Since 1984, from Mondale to McCain, every losing presidential candidate, except Dukakis, has ended his concession speech with “God bless America,” and only George H. W. Bush provided even a modest variation on the phrase, ending his address with “May God bless the United States of America.” Before Mondale, no losing candidate had ever concluded his concession speech with “God bless America.”

Two scholars who analyzed major presidential addresses from 1933 to 1981—a total of 229 presidential speeches—found that the phrase “God bless America” was used only in a speech Nixon gave on the Watergate scandal in 1973. Since Reagan took office in 1981 through 2007, these scholars analyzed another 129 major presidential speeches, 49 of which concluded with “God bless America.” So routine is its usage that the scholars who analyzed the phrase concluded it was just a form of “religious . . . branding” with no more depth of meaning than an advertising slogan like Nike's “Just Do It” or Coca-Cola's “The Real Thing.” A speechwriter for President Carter, who seldom invoked God despite being one of the most religiously observant of modern presidents, agreed that “God bless America” has become so shorn of meaning that it is just shorthand for “the speech is over now,” and is “the political equivalent of ‘Have a nice day.'”

Before “God bless America” took hold, the norm was not to mention God in a concession speech, though there were exceptions. Stevenson, in his 1952 concession, said, “We vote as many, but pray as one . . . we shall move forward with God's guidance toward the time when His children shall grow in freedom and dignity in a world at peace.” Compared with Stevenson's eloquence, simply ending a speech with “God bless America” sounds trite and theologically lazy.

While a higher percentage of Americans regularly attend church today than at any time in our history—62 percent today compared to 45 percent one hundred years ago and just 20 percent at the time of the American Revolution—we have lost the ability to have a serious discussion about religious faith in the public square. The use of “God bless America” now seems to serve the different purpose of reinforcing the concept of American “exceptionalism”—the widely held belief throughout American history and today that America has a divine mission in the world—without making any real effort to explain why we are an exceptional people.

While every nation likely believes that it has a special destiny, as the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Russel Nye noted, “No nation in modern history has been quite so consistently dominated as the United States by the belief that it has a particular mission in the world, and a unique contribution to make to it.” The simple expression of “God bless America” becomes a very safe way for the politician to tap into our national yearning for a sense of purpose.

Admittedly superficial, the invocation of “God bless America” or any reference to the divine in a concession speech, when considered alongside the “deeply embedded” national belief in a divine destiny, allows the losing candidate to subtly suggest that the election was an expression of divine will, not just the popular will. The candidate and his supporters are consoled by the belief that victory was denied, not because of any fault of the candidate or error in the cause, but because defeat at that moment serves some inscrutable higher purpose.

Given the stakes involved and the martial language used in our presidential elections, it is not surprising that some, such as the historian John R. Vile, suggest we consider the concession as a form of military surrender or even a funeral oration.

Just as after a war, the public wants peace after a presidential campaign. They hope that politicians will emulate that most famous surrender in American history, when Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia yielded to Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. Despite the bitterness accumulated during four years of civil war, chivalry reigned. Lee acknowledged his defeat, Grant offered generous terms, and Lee told his soldiers to fight no more, but to go home and be “good citizens.” Voters expect no less at the conclusion of a political squabble: The loser's dignity is left intact, both sides are praised for their valiant behavior, generous terms and words are offered, and the losers foreswear future conflict so that they may work together for the good of the nation.

Generosity and magnanimity is easier for the winner. The loser, after all, has suffered a devastating disappointment. The exhausted losing candidate is aware of what his candidacy has meant to millions of supporters, and that he has let them down. For many losing candidates, defeat means not only the end of what may have been a lifelong quest, but also the end of a career in public service. Hubert Humphrey called losing to Nixon “the worst moment of my life,” adding that he felt “so empty . . . I could cry.” George McGovern said, “There are some things that are worse than losing an election. It's hard to think what they are on Election Day.”

Psychologists tell us that it is important for those who experience loss to be able to articulate their emotions in order to place the loss in perspective. Yet, this is the opposite of what we expect our losing candidates to do. So the emotions are masked, sometimes by nothing more than civility, other times with humor. Adlai Stevenson, after losing to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, used an anecdote so well received that McGovern repeated it twenty years later. Losing a presidential election, Stevenson explained, reminded him of a story told by his fellow Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, about “the little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”

Humor is for public consumption; privately, candidates are more likely to be hurt and angry. When Henry Clay lost to his archenemy Andrew Jackson in 1832, he confided to a friend, “Whether we shall ever see light, and law and liberty again, is very questionable.” Walter Mondale, who lost to Ronald Reagan in 1984, reportedly asked McGovern, who had lost a dozen years before, when losing stops hurting. “I'll tell you when it does,” McGovern replied.

Losing candidates do not brace themselves for the possibility of defeat. “I never conceded to myself . . . or anybody else that that election couldn't be won,” said McGovern, even though he was crushed in his landslide loss to Richard Nixon. “At two o'clock in the morning on election day, I was still campaigning.” No matter what the polls have said, the candidates maintain the hope that they will surprise the pundits and pull off an upset, as President Harry Truman did in 1948. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush received only 38 percent of the popular vote, but “when you are in the bubble,” one of his aides said, “you feel the momentum and the crowds are lively and you know in the outside world you're behind, but in the inside world you're thinking, ‘This is going to be 1948 all over again.'”

It is not surprising then that the concession speech can resemble the five-step process psychologists have identified for those coping with grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Some have even feigned relief that they have avoided the burden of the presidency. They are, of course, lying. Bryan insisted to reporters, who marveled at his equanimity, that, despite his loss to William McKinley in 1896, he “went to bed happy” on election night. But a friend who observed him that evening instead saw a man summoning all his strength to conceal his emotions, and later wrote, “It is a terrible thing to look upon a strong man in the pride of youth and see him gather up in his hands the ashes of a great ambition.”

This sense of finality (which Bryan avoided by running for president twice more) can make the end of an unsuccessful campaign seem a type of death. In a traditional funeral, it is usually obligatory to display the body, although in the case of a concession speech it is the corpse who gives the eulogy (and who, like Bryan, prays for a possible political resurrection).