tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/robert-f-kennedy-63534/articlesRobert F. Kennedy – The Conversation2024-03-13T12:38:35Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250692024-03-13T12:38:35Z2024-03-13T12:38:35ZHopes that Biden will quit his reelection campaign ignore the differences – and lessons – of LBJ and 1968’s Democratic catastrophe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580739/original/file-20240308-16-a0f8xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C5%2C3671%2C2447&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was not a peaceful event.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-sign-over-archway-leading-to-the-international-news-photo/515578006?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s just over six months until Election Day. The president faces a tough fight for reelection. His approval rating has cratered below 40% in the polls, his party is divided over a foreign war, and a bipartisan chorus declares that he’s no longer up to the job. Polls show him running neck and neck with the likely Republican nominee. </p>
<p>Faced with this grim situation, the president decides to put country before his own political ambition and declares he won’t run for reelection.</p>
<p>Joe Biden in 2024? </p>
<p>Nope, it’s Lyndon Johnson in 1968. On March 31 of that year, <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-31-1968-remarks-decision-not-seek-re-election">LBJ shocked the nation when</a>, at the end of a televised address on the Vietnam War, he declared, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”</p>
<p>Today, a chorus of <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2024/0227/Biden-should-drop-out!-No-he-shouldn-t!-Debate-rages">political commentators predict or hope</a> that Biden will follow LBJ’s example. But 2024 is not 1968, and Joseph Robinette Biden is not Lyndon Baines Johnson.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president,’ said LBJ on March 31, 1968.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Divisions over a war</h2>
<p>In 1968, the Democratic Party was deeply divided over the Vietnam War. Despite having deployed over 500,000 troops and suffered over 20,000 deaths, the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/03/the-vietnam-war-part-ii-losses-and-withdrawal/389192/">U.S. seemed no closer to victory</a>. </p>
<p>So-called “<a href="https://news.gallup.com/vault/191828/gallup-vault-hawks-doves-vietnam.aspx">hawks</a>” demanded that the president hold the line in Vietnam or even escalate further in order to achieve total victory. “<a href="https://news.gallup.com/vault/191828/gallup-vault-hawks-doves-vietnam.aspx">Doves</a>” argued that the war was unwinnable and the U.S. should look for a negotiated settlement.</p>
<p>Today, many <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/inside-democratic-rebellion-against-biden-over-gaza-war-2024-02-27/">Democrats oppose Biden’s support</a> for Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, but it’s easy to overstate this division. A recent Gallup poll found that only 1% of Americans cited “war in the Middle East” as <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx">the nation’s top problem</a>. </p>
<p>In contrast, early in 1968, Gallup found that a majority of Americans – 53% – said that Vietnam was the <a href="https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31087737/questions#fdf0b252-9191-417f-89ba-ba32cd16c587">most important issue facing the nation</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, most Democrats remain supportive of Israel. A recent Reuters poll found that 46% of Democrats blame Hamas for the war compared with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-dogged-by-democrats-anger-over-israel-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2024-02-29/">only 22% who blame Israel</a>. </p>
<p>Whatever concerns Democrats might have over Biden, the fact remains that no prominent Democrats have chosen to oppose him for the party nomination. Even leading progressive Democrats like <a href="https://apnews.com/article/bernie-sanders-biden-endorsement-2024-d8f0772b117e2bf83e1062708ea651c0">Sen. Bernie Sanders</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/aoc-endorses-biden-2024-president-democrats-3c722f5ac1bc2c568b6d962d4fe4e2b7">Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> have endorsed Biden. Ocasio-Cortez even went so far as to call Biden “one of the <a href="https://nbcmontana.com/news/nation-world/aoc-calls-biden-one-of-the-most-successful-presidents-in-history-amid-age-concerns-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-2024-election-special-counsel-report-donald-trump-president-white-house">most successful presidents</a> in modern American history.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd of people in a convention hall, with some holding signs that say 'Stop the war.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580744/original/file-20240308-28-p15lv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Bitter differences over the Vietnam War were on display at the 1968 Democratic convention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-new-york-delegation-protesting-against-the-news-photo/51247068?adppopup=true">Washington Bureau/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>After LBJ, no unity</h2>
<p>In contrast, differences over the Vietnam War and other issues led two sitting U.S. senators, <a href="https://features.apmreports.org/arw/campaign68/c2.html">Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota</a> and <a href="https://features.apmreports.org/arw/campaign68/a1.html">Robert F. Kennedy of New York</a>, to challenge Johnson for the Democratic nomination. And despite low name recognition and a shoestring campaign, McCarthy even managed a near upset of Johnson in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/03/12/eugene-mccarthy-vs-lbj-the-new-hampshire-primary-showdown-that-changed-everything/">the New Hampshire primary</a>, held on March 12, 1968. </p>
<p>Given these differences, it seems very unlikely that Biden will seek to follow LBJ’s example by dropping out of the race. And for those who hope Biden will do so anyway, they should be careful what they wish for. </p>
<p>Johnson’s withdrawal failed to unify the party. Far from it. </p>
<p>McCarthy, Kennedy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who joined the race after Johnson’s exit, <a href="https://features.apmreports.org/arw/campaign68/e1.html">fought a bitter battle</a> for the nomination. Tensions exploded during that year’s <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1968-democratic-convention-931079/">Democratic convention in Chicago</a>. </p>
<p>Americans watched on live television as <a href="https://time.com/5377386/1968-democratic-national-convention-protesters/">police brutally beat anti-war demonstrators</a> in the streets outside the convention hall. </p>
<p>Inside the convention, Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut denounced “<a href="https://75.stripes.com/archives/chicago-democratic-convention-68-embodies-clash-over-future-america">Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago</a>.” In response, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley unleashed a torrent of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/25/nyregion/ribicoff-and-daley-head-to-head.html">vulgar, antisemitic comments</a>. <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/680830convention-dem-ra.html">Humphrey eventually won the nomination</a>, but his candidacy was deeply wounded and he went on to narrowly lose the election to Richard Nixon.</p>
<p>Should Biden decide not to run, Democrats might face a similar situation. </p>
<p>There is no obvious candidate to replace him, and the contest to do so would likely inflame Democratic divisions over ideology, gender and race. Furthermore, at this late date, it would be nearly impossible to win the nomination via the remaining caucuses and primaries. </p>
<p>Instead, the Democratic convention, slated for late August in Chicago, would probably end up choosing the nominee, leaving him or her open to criticism that they were selected by party bosses rather than the people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225069/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Klinkner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An unpopular president. A war that’s dividing the country. An upcoming election. What year is it?Philip Klinkner, James S. Sherman Professor of Government, Hamilton CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2055882023-06-02T09:40:07Z2023-06-02T09:40:07ZThe ‘truther playbook’: tactics that explain vaccine conspiracy theorist RFK Jr’s presidential momentum<p>While incumbent Joe Biden is the favoured Democratic pick for the 2024 US presidential nomination, another more controversial candidate is <a href="https://emersoncollegepolling.com/strongapril-2023-national-poll-strong-strongbiden-and-trump-on-track-for-2024-rematch-strong">gaining popular support in the polls</a>. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a self-described <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/us/politics/robert-kennedy-jr-presidential-run-2024.html">vaccine sceptic</a>, announced his candidacy to run for president as a Democrat in <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/05/politics/robert-kennedy-president-democratic-nomination/index.html">April</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13675494231173536">Our new study</a> on the rhetorical techniques used to spread vaccine disinformation partly explains Kennedy’s appeal to voters. We examined the strategies of RFK Jr and American osteopath Joseph Mercola, two prominent members of the “<a href="https://counterhate.com/research/the-disinformation-dozen/">disinformation dozen</a>”.</p>
<p>These 12 anti-vaccine advocates, according to <a href="https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/210324-The-Disinformation-Dozen.pdf">research</a> conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, were responsible for nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook and Twitter during the pandemic. </p>
<p>We analysed their social media profiles, books, documentaries, websites and newsletters from 2021-22, and identified the techniques that comprise what we call the “truther playbook”. These take the form of four enticing promises which figures like Kennedy and Mercola use to give their claims legitimacy and build a loyal following.</p>
<p>These techniques – promising identity and belonging, revealing “true” knowledge, providing meaning and purpose, as well as promising leadership and guidance – feature prominently in Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.</p>
<h2>1. Identity and belonging</h2>
<p>COVID truthers offer their followers access to an exclusive in-group identity. They adhere to a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Manichaeism">dualistic belief system</a> that divides the world into good and bad actors, light and dark forces. For COVID truthers, it is not simply that their opponents have acted through ignorance or error – they frame them as corrupt and evil.</p>
<p>Kennedy’s and Mercola’s social media posts, newsletters and publications frequently frame prominent public figures such as <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Anthony-Fauci-Democracy-Childrens-ebook/dp/B08XQYGC68">Anthony Fauci</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-COVID-19-Lockdowns-Passports/dp/1645020886">Bill Gates</a> as evil elites, or “dark forces” allegedly conspiring against ordinary people.</p>
<p>COVID truthers present themselves in opposition to these corrupt corporations and government institutions. They offer a promising invitation to their followers: join me, and be part of the movement fighting “<a href="https://www.kennedy24.com/honest">the system</a>”. </p>
<p>Kennedy, for example, refers to himself as a resolute <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/welcome-to-the-defender/">“defender”</a> of children and the public. His anti-vaccine activism is framed as a <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/about-us/mercury-vaccines-cdcs-worst-nightmare">noble pursuit</a> aligned with the public good. Similarly, his presidential pledge of honest government is pitched as being “for the people”. </p>
<h2>2. True knowledge and enlightenment</h2>
<p>The spread of disinformation about COVID vaccines has occurred in a society characterised by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1440783319846188">low institutional trust</a>. Figures such as Kennedy and Mercola capitalise on this, appealing to those disillusioned with the government’s official narrative. They present themselves as having access to privileged knowledge and understanding.</p>
<p>They do this by revealing alternative “facts” that contradict the official narrative, and that they claim have been concealed from the public. Some researchers refer to such information as “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315602585-3/messages-beyond-prophecy-contemporary-world-michael-barkun?context=ubx&refId=0d7abade-ce46-45e9-8fad-2209015fe985">stigmatised knowledge</a>”, meaning claims that are not accepted by mainstream institutions.</p>
<p>COVID truthers, as the name suggests, promise to expose, release and reveal the truth, which they claim has been censored by powerful, corrupt organisations. </p>
<p>Kennedy’s presidential bid exists in opposition to what he has <a href="https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1656826863015063552">described</a> as “an incredibly sophisticated system of information control”. He refers to himself as a “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/19/politics/robert-f-kennedy-jr-2024-announcement/index.html">truth teller</a>”, and promises to establish an honest government that will <a href="https://www.kennedy24.com/honest">earn back the trust</a> of the public. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Photo illustration of a woman wearing glasses, with stars and galaxies in her head to represent thinking" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529576/original/file-20230601-29-393zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529576/original/file-20230601-29-393zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529576/original/file-20230601-29-393zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529576/original/file-20230601-29-393zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529576/original/file-20230601-29-393zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529576/original/file-20230601-29-393zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529576/original/file-20230601-29-393zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The truther playbook promises followers ‘true’ knowledge and enlightenment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/thinking-woman-concept-imagination-creative-1553225051">metamorworks/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>3. Meaning and purpose</h2>
<p>COVID truthers provide their followers with meaning, offering a reason to believe in a greater purpose. This can take the form of New Age spirituality, suggesting that humanity is undergoing a “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13537903.2011.539846?journalCode=cjcr20">shift in consciousness</a>”, or a more secular <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13675494211062623">commitment to truth, freedom and justice</a>.</p>
<p>Kennedy frequently deploys the language of social justice in his posts and newsletters, as a rallying call to unite his followers. Most of his early anti-vaccine messaging focused on protecting pregnant women and children from <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/">harmful ingredients in vaccines</a>.</p>
<p>During the pandemic, Kennedy shifted to the topic of <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/scicheck-rfk-jr-video-pushes-known-vaccine-misrepresentations/">medical racism</a> – situating the opposition to vaccine mandates in a broader civil rights agenda. He compared racial segregation to non-vaccination, or what he refers to as “<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-movie-from-childrens-health-defense-medical-racism-the-new-apartheid-premieres-today-301245766.html">the new apartheid</a>”. </p>
<p>In a direct call to action, Kennedy’s newsletters invited followers to “unite to create a better world”, and reminded them of the importance of “seeking justice and spreading the truth”. He made explicit analogies to the civil rights movement, <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/support/once-in-a-generation-opportunity/">telling supporters</a>: “We won a revolution before, we can win it again.” </p>
<p>Similar messaging appears in his presidential campaign, which calls on supporters to “<a href="https://www.kennedy24.com/">join the movement</a>”, “<a href="https://www.kennedy24.com/spread-the-word">spread the word</a>”, and “<a href="https://www.kennedy24.com/liberties">restore our rights</a>”.</p>
<h2>4. Leadership and guidance</h2>
<p>COVID truthers proffer order and security in a world that feels disorderly and insecure. They speak to the institutional distrust many people feel towards “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-scandal-that-should-force-us-to-reconsider-wellness-advice-from-influencers-117041">the establishment</a>”. </p>
<p>Kennedy’s campaign contrasts the power of corrupt government institutions, corporate cronyism and nefarious media elites with the powerlessness that the disenfranchised public feels. As a consequence, he positions himself as an incorruptible leader with the capacity to “<a href="https://www.kennedy24.com/">clean up government</a>”, <a href="https://www.kennedy24.com/liberties">restore civil liberties</a>, and speak truth to power.</p>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>The success of the truther playbook in spreading anti-vaccine discourse during the pandemic demonstrates the popular appeal of belief and emotion in the current political climate. Filings with charity regulators show that revenue for Kennedy’s organisation more than doubled in 2020, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/how-rfk-jr-built-anti-vaccine-juggernaut-amid-covid-4997be1bcf591fe8b7f1f90d16c9321e">to US$6.8 million</a>. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-lies-and-post-truth-in-politics-a-philosopher-explains-130442">current post-truth era</a>, where opinions often triumph over facts, influencers and celebrities can achieve authority. By framing their opponents as corrupt and evil, and claiming to expose this corruption, COVID truthers can successfully encourage others to join their movement.</p>
<p>And, as Kennedy’s campaign is now demonstrating, these rhetorical techniques can be used to promote populist politics just as much as anti-vaccine content.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>COVID truthers use four enticing promises to gain a loyal following.Stephanie Alice Baker, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, City, University of LondonChris Rojek, Professor of Sociology, City, University of LondonEugene McLaughlin, Professor of Criminology, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1316342020-09-17T11:28:45Z2020-09-17T11:28:45ZPresidential campaigns take flight in the age of the coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343620/original/file-20200624-132405-j0pk80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C53%2C2901%2C2196&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A crowd greets Sen. John F. Kennedy at Logan Airport in Boston on July 17, 1960, after he became the Democratic nominee for president.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-john-f-kennedy-exits-the-plane-at-logan-airport-in-news-photo/695691496?adppopup=true">John M. Hurley/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The coronavirus pandemic has reshaped the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, limiting the number of rallies and in-person appearances of the candidates. </p>
<p>When candidates do venture out, a familiar form of campaign transportation, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/mccain090299.htm">the campaign bus</a>, is likely to remain grounded, as tight quarters make social distancing nearly impossible.</p>
<p>Until recently, candidates have relied primarily on social media to reach voters. But this medium and campaigning from home – or <a href="https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/david-shribman/2020/03/29/David-M-Shribman-Return-of-the-front-porch-campaign/stories/202003290024">from your front porch, as Warren Harding did in 1920</a> at the end of another pandemic – cannot sufficiently substitute for in-person contact with voters.</p>
<p>Aircraft have played a role in U.S. presidential campaigns for decades. As an <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/history/bednarek_janet.php">aviation historian</a> attentive to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=x0uLSdn_hFUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Janet+Bednarek&ots=oAixWmnHMr&sig=_vXztQ6Gdb6jFD66ohilI6JvIBg#v=onepage&q=Janet%20Bednarek&f=false">the evolution of the general aviation sector</a>, I think the pandemic has increased their importance in 2020, forcing <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/joe-biden-spent-more-on-private-jets-in-3q-than-2020-democratic-rivals.html">candidates to make more strategic use of aircraft</a> as the quickest and safest way to campaign. </p>
<h2>Campaigns take flight</h2>
<p>The use of airplanes in <a href="https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/the-first-presidential-flight-2901615/">presidential campaigns has evolved from something so daring</a> – even death-defying – that it made headlines, to a convenient, necessary tool. </p>
<p>Today it’s the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-emerges-with-a-low-tech-coronavirus-strategy-masks-and-distancing-but-no-testing/2020/06/07/983ee122-a75a-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html">safest way for candidates to travel</a> – not simply because of aviation’s safety record but due to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/us/politics/trump-campaign-coronavirus-tulsa.html">dangers candidates face amid the pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>With the Great Depression hanging over the 1932 presidential election, New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt believed the country would respond to bold leadership. His campaign hatched a plan to break with protocol and <a href="https://fdrlibrary.wordpress.com/tag/democratic-national-convention/">accept the Democratic presidential nomination in person</a> – and in dramatic fashion. </p>
<p>Working with American Airways, Roosevelt’s secretary, Guernsey Cross, arranged to <a href="https://www.faa.gov/about/history/people/media/Ford_Trimotor.pdf">charter a Ford Tri-Motor</a>, a standard commercial aircraft of the early 1930s, to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qtCRa7bCz3oC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=roosevelt+flies+Ford+Tri-motor+from+Albany+to+Chicago&source=bl&ots=Wk-aA_SwJd&sig=ACfU3U2qZ5K36Irxc-1ihYkE_K-xc5zyng&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAzq-rjpPqAhWCSjABHVdVCP0Q6AEwC3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=roosevelt%20flies%20Ford%20Tri-motor%20from%20Albany%20to%20Chicago&f=false">fly the governor from Albany to Chicago</a>. During a year when only <a href="https://www.centennialofflight.net/essay/Commercial_Aviation/passenger_xperience/Tran2.htm">474,000 Americans traveled via commercial aircraft</a>, the flight captured media attention.</p>
<p>The plane took off at about 8:30 a.m. on July 2, 1932, and after stops in Buffalo and Cleveland arrived in Chicago at 4:30 p.m., two hours behind schedule due to bad weather. Roosevelt used the time to work on his speech. That evening he <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-democratic-national-convention-chicago-1">accepted the nomination in person</a> and <a href="https://fdr.blogs.archives.gov/2012/09/06/found-in-the-archives-42/">promised Americans a “new deal.”</a></p>
<p>Roosevelt’s flight, however, did not immediately lead to more presidential air travel. Although First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt would use aircraft extensively, air travel was considered too risky for the president. FDR would not fly as president until 1943, when he used a military aircraft to travel to the Casablanca Conference in Morocco, to attend <a href="https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/the-first-presidential-flight-2901615/">a crucial strategy meeting with Winston Churchill</a>.</p>
<h2>Private planes gain prominence, come under fire</h2>
<p>Presidential air travel was well established when, during the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy <a href="https://www.bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/campaigning-by-private-jet">became the first candidate to use his own private aircraft – a Convair CV-240 – to campaign</a>.</p>
<p>It’s probably an exaggeration to argue that the plane – dubbed “Caroline” for his young daughter – provided Kennedy with his margin of victory in the hotly contested race, <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/convair-240-caroline">as claimed by The Smithsonian</a>.</p>
<p>But it did allow Kennedy to travel <a href="http://sandiegoairandspace.org/collection/item/caroline-jfk-campaign-aircraft-collection">more than 225,000 miles and campaign more efficiently</a>. And since then, presidential candidates have made extensive use of private aircraft during their campaigns. Most campaign aircraft are chartered or owned by the campaign. </p>
<p>There was nothing particularly controversial about campaigning with private aircraft until the 2008 financial crisis. As the nation plunged into the Great Recession, <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/autoshow/2008/11/19/congress-members-criticize-auto-executives-corporate-jet-travel/">automobile industry CEOs came under fire for using corporate aircraft</a> to fly to Washington, D.C. for congressional hearings focused on the huge bailout packages the industry had received from the government. Intense public backlash led to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/business/25jets.html">a drastic market downtown for corporate jets</a>. That backlash might explain <a href="https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/obama-take-campaign-to-the-rails-in-pennsylvania/">Sen. Barack Obama’s 2008 Whistle-Stop campaign train tour</a>, where he chose an historic mode of presidential transportation over the newly controversial one.</p>
<p>By 2012, however, memories of the 2008 controversy had faded and candidates again used <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/business/05road.html">private jets for campaign travel</a>. <a href="https://www.avgeekery.com/eight-notable-presidential-campaign-aircraft-changed-speed-politics/2/">Mitt Romney leased a 1990 MD-83</a>, while his running mate, Paul Ryan, utilized a 1970 DC-9-32. Both aircraft, bearing the slogan “Believe in America,” debuted at <a href="https://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/01/mitt-romney-flies-u2s-plane-paul-ryans-aircraft-is-as-old-as-he-is/">a campaign rally in Lakeland, Florida</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343780/original/file-20200624-133013-147h4xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supporters cheer as Donald Trump flies away on his plane after a campaign event in Wilmington, Ohio on Nov. 4, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-cheer-as-republican-presidential-candidate-news-photo/621188962?adppopup=true">Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But perhaps the most visible use of a private aircraft in a presidential campaign came with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-boeing-757-airliner-trump-force-one-private-jet-2016-11">Donald Trump’s use of his own Boeing 757</a> in the 2016 presidential race. </p>
<p>Trump used the plane, emblazoned with his name, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-there-it-is-moment-trump-wows-fans-by-using-air-force-one-as-a-campaign-prop/2018/11/04/4c36f61e-e043-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html">a backdrop at campaign rallies</a>. The plane, thus, not only allowed him to travel easily and extensively, but it also helped him promote <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/politics/donald-trumps-aging-air-fleet-gives-his-bid-and-his-brand-a-lift.html">his personal Trump brand</a> at every campaign stop. </p>
<h2>Safety during the pandemic</h2>
<p>Though <a href="https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput">commercial aviation has witnessed a small recovery</a> since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, private aircraft have reemerged as the safest way to travel. They permit greater control over passengers and make social distancing easier. Both Air Force One and private aircraft have featured prominently in the 2020 presidential election.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Both candidates are in their <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-older-people-more-at-risk-of-coronavirus-133770">seventies and at greater risk from infection</a>. The Secret Service will continue to take <a href="https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/trump-to-take-flight-on-air-force-one-for-first-time-since-march-on-trip-to-arizona/19084997/">precautions to keep President Trump safe on Air Force One</a>. And Biden’s campaign can more easily enforce health guidelines on a private plane, especially protocols on masks and social distancing. Although the Biden campaign has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-campaign-plane-history-trump-clinton-obama-2020-8">decided against leasing a dedicated campaign plane</a>, when necessary – <a href="https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/photos-scenes-from-joe-bidens-visit-to-kenosha-on-thursday/collection_417c6b5a-8adc-52ae-a750-6578ab7154d7.html#1">such as for his recent trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin</a> – Biden can and undoubtedly will make use of private aircraft.</p>
<p>The 2020 presidential election began amid stay-at-home orders, with President Trump and Joe Biden largely confined during the first few months. As Trump and Biden seek to get their messages out in the final weeks of the campaign, both will use aircraft when necessary and in what they determine to be the best interests of their respective races for the White House.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Bednarek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though air travel has boosted presidential campaigns for decades, the 2020 pandemic has underlined the importance of aircraft as the quickest and safest way to campaign.Janet Bednarek, Professor of History, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1263932019-11-26T14:06:06Z2019-11-26T14:06:06ZJimmy Hoffa disappeared – and then his legacy took on a life of its own<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303034/original/file-20191121-112971-10pgrgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C22%2C2950%2C2002&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jimmy Hoffa waves to delegates at the opening of the 1957 Teamsters Union convention in Miami Beach, Florida.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hoffa-Search-Chronology/06e32ce7f7a240c794d79fd531a52778/7/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the Teamsters Union, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/01/archives/hoffa-is-reported-missing-police-find-his-car.html">disappeared</a>.</p>
<p>He’d gone to a restaurant in suburban Detroit apparently expecting to meet a couple of mafia figures whom he had known for decades. He’d hoped to win their support for his bid to return to the union’s presidency. A few customers remembered seeing him in the restaurant parking lot before 3 p.m. </p>
<p>Sometime after that he vanished without a trace.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Desperate_Bargain.html?id=O27hAAAAMAAJ">FBI has long assumed</a> that Hoffa was the victim of a mob hit. But despite a decades-long investigation, no one has ever been charged with his murder. His body has never been found.</p>
<p>Yet even though his physical remains are missing, Hoffa lives on in our collective cultural consciousness.</p>
<p>Martin Scorsese’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Irishman</a>” is only the latest film to offer a fictionalized version of Hoffa’s story. Before that there was Sylvester Stallone’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077531/?ref_=nv_sr_8?ref_=nv_sr_8">F.I.S.T.</a>” (1978), Danny DeVito’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104427/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Hoffa</a>” (1992) and the made-for-TV movie “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085252/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">Blood Feud</a>” (1983).</p>
<p>He’s been the subject of countless true crime books, most famously Charles Brandt’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qPF0PgAACAAJ&dq=i+heard+you+paint+houses&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDo47HnP7lAhUlwVkKHRPiBloQ6AEwAnoECAAQAg">I Heard You Paint Houses</a>.” He inspired <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701151/trivia">an episode</a> of “The Simpsons.” And he crops up in tabloids such as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=a-4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=hoffa+living+in+argentina&source=bl&ots=UVkTmWJrpl&sig=ACfU3U1-NuSbBYkxOkPZ3qLIsSXAuHgNZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7heG05IDmAhWmxFkKHR0WAlgQ6AEwCXoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=hoffa%20living%20in%20argentina&f=false">Weekly World News</a>, which claimed to have found him living in Argentina, hiding from the vengeful Kennedys.</p>
<p>Ever since I started researching and writing on <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Corruption_and_Reform_in_the_Teamsters_U.html?id=LkVKPwAACAAJ">the history of the Teamsters</a>, people have asked me where I think Hoffa’s body is located. His story, I’ve learned, is the one aspect of labor history with which nearly every American is familiar. </p>
<p>Hoffa’s disappearance transformed him from a controversial union leader into a mythic figure. Over time, I’ve come to realize that Hoffa’s resonance in our culture has important political implications for the labor movement today. </p>
<h2>The rise and fall of the ‘Teamsters Teamster’</h2>
<p>Hoffa became a household name in the late 1950s, when Robert F. Kennedy, then serving as chief counsel for the <a href="https://themobmuseum.org/blog/robert-f-kennedys-crusade-mob-part-2/">Senate Rackets Committee</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rSNQceRJ_0">publicly grilled him</a> about his mob ties.</p>
<p>While other witnesses avoided answering questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment rights, Hoffa, the newly elected leader of the nation’s largest and most powerful union, adopted a defiant stance. He never denied having connections with organized crime figures; instead, he claimed these were the kinds of people he sometimes had to work with as he strengthened and grew his union in the face of employer opposition. He angrily dismissed any allegations of corruption and touted the gains his union had won for its membership. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa, left, listens to testimony during the Senate Rackets Committee’s hearings on allegations of corruption in the union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-Columbi-/fa8c98afbae5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/8/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/17824432/struggle-get-hoffa">verbal sparring</a> between Kennedy and Hoffa became the most memorable part of the hearings. </p>
<p>To the benefit of big business, it turned Hoffa into a menacing symbol of labor racketeering.</p>
<p>But to his union members, it only enhanced his standing. They were already thrilled by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1958/11/09/archives/why-they-cheer-for-hoffa-the-boss-of-the-teamsters-has-emerged-from.html?searchResultPosition=1">contracts Hoffa had negotiated</a> that included better pay and working conditions. Now his members hailed him as their embattled champion and wore <a href="https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1960ca-hoffa-the-teamsters-teamster-campaign">buttons proclaiming</a>, “Hoffa, the Teamsters Teamster.” </p>
<p>His membership stayed loyal even as Hoffa became the target of a series of prosecution efforts. </p>
<p>After becoming attorney general in 1961, Kennedy created a unit within the Department of Justice whose attorneys referred to themselves as the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1995/01/14/walter-sheridan-dies/2137398d-9a73-4423-9cf7-8da24eef860b/">Get Hoffa Squad</a>.” Their directive was to target Hoffa and his closest associates. The squad’s efforts culminated in convictions against Hoffa in 1964 <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Out_of_the_Jungle.html?id=a69CD1IRlpYC&source=kp_book_description">for jury tampering and defrauding the union’s pension fund</a>. Despite that setback, Hoffa’s hold on the Teamsters’ presidency remained firm even after he entered federal prison in 1967. </p>
<p>When he finally did leave office, Hoffa did so voluntarily. He resigned in 1971 as <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-04-08-0104080311-story.html">part of a deal to win executive clemency</a> from the Nixon administration. There was one condition written into the president’s grant of clemency: He couldn’t run for a position in the union until 1980.</p>
<p>Once free, Hoffa claimed that his ban from union office was illegitimate and began planning to run for the Teamsters presidency. However, he faced resistance not from the government but from organized crime figures, who had found it easier to work with Hoffa’s successor, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/07/obituaries/frank-fitzsimmons-of-teamsters-dies.html">Frank Fitzsimmons</a>. </p>
<p>Hoffa’s meeting at the restaurant on July 30, 1975, was part of his efforts to allay that opposition. </p>
<p>Clearly, things didn’t go as planned. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Teamsters/sLCNAn8ZjKIC?hl=en">Some theorize</a> that the mafia had him killed in order to ensure that he would not run against Fitzsimmons in the Teamsters’ upcoming 1976 union election. </p>
<p>But after no arrests and multiple fruitless excavations to try to locate his body, Hoffa’s case remains, to this day, unresolved.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this June 2013 photograph, Robert Foley of the FBI’s Detroit division announces that the FBI had come up empty after an excavation, based on a tip, to uncover Hoffa’s remains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hoffa-Search/0df29dfe203b41dea62bb74cd03b8f83/284/0">AP Photo/Carlos Osorio</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From man to myth</h2>
<p>In Andrew Lawler’s history of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=uK6ZDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&dq=andrew%20lawler%20lost%20colony%20roanoke&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">he writes</a>, “To die is tragic, but to go missing is to become a legend, a mystery.” </p>
<p>Stories are supposed to have a beginning, a middle and an end. But when people go missing and are never found, Lawler explains, they’ll endure as subjects of endless fascination. It allows their legacies to be re-written, over and over. </p>
<p>These new interpretations, Lawler observes, “can reveal something fresh about who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.”</p>
<p>The myth of Hoffa lives on, even though almost five decades have passed since that afternoon in July 1975. </p>
<p>What shapes has it taken?</p>
<p>To some, he stands for an idealized image of the working class – a man who’d known hard, manual labor and worked tirelessly to achieve his success. But even after rising to his leadership post, Hoffa lived simply and eschewed pretense.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/307597398?accountid=13158&pq-origsite=summon">Washington Post article from 1992</a> put it, “He wore white socks, and liked his beef cooked medium well… He snored at the opera.” </p>
<p>Meanwhile, his feud with the Kennedys pitted a populist “tough guy off the loading docks” against “the professional class, the governing class, the educated experts.” The Washington Post piece ties Hoffa’s story to that of another working-class icon. “Watching Hoffa go up against Bobby Kennedy was like watching John Henry go up against a steam hammer – it was only a matter of time before he lost.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man walks over rubble in Jersey City, N.J., one of the locations where authorities searched for the body of missing former Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hoffa-Search/2132e839ae064fdabda70fd83630395e/63/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Hoffa’s myth can also serve as a morality tale. The <a href="https://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/212889901?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:summon&accountid=13158">New Republic</a>, for instance, described how Danny DeVito’s 1992 film reworks Hoffa’s life into the story of an “embattled champion of the working class” who makes “a Faustian pact with the underworld.” </p>
<p>In the movie, Hoffa’s Teamsters are caught in hopeless picket line battles with mob goons who the anti-union employers have hired. In order to get those goons to switch sides, Hoffa makes a bargain with mafia leaders. But the mafia ultimately has Hoffa killed when he tries to defy their control, becoming the victim of his own unbridled ambition. </p>
<p>Finally, the underworld’s mysterious role in Hoffa’s death keeps his story compelling for Americans who have a fascination with conspiracy theories. It supports the idea of an invisible cabal that secretly runs everything, and which can make even a famous labor leader disappear without a trace. </p>
<p>Hoffa’s story is often intertwined with <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-withering-public-trust-in-government-be-traced-back-to-the-jfk-assassination-87719">theories about the Kennedy assassination</a> that attribute the president’s murder to an organized crime conspiracy. Both Hoffa and Kennedy’s murders, in these accounts, highlight the underworld’s apparently unlimited power to protect its interests, with tentacles that extend into the government and law enforcement.</p>
<h2>Did Hoffa taint the labor movement?</h2>
<p>Over two decades after he went missing, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-17-op-23341-story.html">a 1997 article in The Los Angeles Times</a> noted that “No union in America conjures up more negative images than the Teamsters.”</p>
<p>This matters, because for most Americans who lack first-hand knowledge about organized labor, Hoffa is the only labor leader’s name they recognize. And as communications scholar <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780875461854/through-jaundiced-eyes/">William Puette</a> has noted, “the Teamsters’ notoriety is such that for many people in this country the Teamsters Union is the labor movement.” </p>
<p>A union widely perceived as mobbed up – with a labor leader notorious for his Mafia ties – has come, in the minds of some Americans, to represent the entire labor movement. That perception, in turn, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-_b_913311">bolsters arguments against legislative reforms</a> that would facilitate union organizing efforts.</p>
<p>The other themes in Hoffa’s myth have similar negative implications for labor. He represents <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/3/8/11177770/white-working-class-nostalgia-john-wayne">a nostalgic, white, male identity</a> that once existed in a seemingly lost world of manual work. That myth also implies that the unions that emerged in those olden times are no longer necessary.</p>
<p>This depiction doesn’t match reality. Today’s working class is <a href="https://www.demos.org/research/understanding-working-class">diverse</a> and employed in a broad spectrum of hard manual labor. Whether you’re working as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/nyregion/home-health-aide.html">home health aide</a> or <a href="https://qz.com/1556194/the-gig-economy-is-quietly-undermining-a-century-of-worker-protections/">in the gig economy</a>, the need for union protection remains quite real. </p>
<p>But for those working-class Americans who see their society controlled by a hidden cabal of powerful, corrupt forces – like the puppet masters who supposedly had JFK and Hoffa killed – <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-so-many-working-class-americans-feel-politics-is-pointless-121232">labor activism can appear quixotic</a>. </p>
<p>For these reasons, the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa continues to haunt the labor movement today.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Scott Witwer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hoffa’s ghost continues to haunt the labor movement.David Scott Witwer, Professor of American Studies, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1212942019-08-07T13:38:40Z2019-08-07T13:38:40ZWhat 1860 and 1968 can teach America about the 2020 presidential election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286973/original/file-20190805-36403-fmhscg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People watch the second of two Democratic presidential primary debates at Shaw's Tavern in Washington, D.C., July 31, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Debate/8e9eb8284f754153ac30b07a7dcc792b/263/0">AP/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fresh evidence of the nastiness and divisiveness of the 2020 presidential election emerges every day. </p>
<p>President Trump has let loose a storm of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/politics/trump-al-sharpton.html">invective over Twitter about various African American public figures</a> and about the conditions of life in America’s inner cities. The president seems bent on <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/29/trump-race-2020-1440436">exploiting a rural/urban divide</a> and creating racial cleavage as a way to get re-elected.</p>
<p>In addition, he has questioned the patriotism of Democrats and alleged that they are trying to “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/15/trumps-prepared-notes-democrats-he-criticized-are-dangerous-may-hate-america/?utm_term=.d9fc9e163944">destroy our country</a>.”</p>
<p>Democrats have responded by <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-call-trump-racist-doubles-attack-baltimore-rep/story?id=64616861">denouncing the president’s racially tinged language</a> and accusing the president and his supporters of being the ones destroying the country. </p>
<p>“Four years of Donald Trump,” <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-trump-existential-threat-to-us/">former Vice President Joe Biden claims</a>, “would be an aberration in American history. Eight years will fundamentally change who we are as a nation.” Biden, of course, is running for president.</p>
<p>Nasty, divisive elections are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/10/22/498987455/bitter-and-contested-elections-in-americas-history">nothing new in the United States</a>. As <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/16032/history_memory_and_the_law">someone who teaches and writes</a> about the <a href="https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/adsarat">importance of historical memory in American law and politics</a>, I believe the 2020 election will rival the ugliest America has ever witnessed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286965/original/file-20190805-36367-13jc2jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Trump, at a campaign rally, Aug. 1, 2019, in Cincinnati.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Trump/1899bb2de2fc4b0588cf5d08a3ee3708/1/0">AP/John Minchillo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are lessons that can be learned from examining this election’s parallels with two previous presidential elections – 1860 and 1968 – both of which left America deeply divided.</p>
<h2>Slavery and geography in 1860</h2>
<p>In the lead-up to the 1860 election, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Year-Meteors-Stephen-DouglasElection/dp/1596916192/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=X9CWFN8BPXCA8HWMVB10">the nation was splintered</a> by the question of slavery and by geography, with sectional conflicts between the more industrial northern states from the more agrarian South. </p>
<p><a href="http://movies2.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0505.html">Those divisions produced a schism</a> among Democrats <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1860">and the formation of two separate parties</a>. <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/election-of-1860">Stephen Douglas led the anti-slavery Northern Democrats, and John Breckenridge</a> led the pro-slavery Southern Democrats as their candidates for president. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286961/original/file-20190805-36372-y7eom4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the Democrats’ two presidential candidates in 1860, Stephen Douglas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/april-23/">Library of Congress/Mathew Brady’s Studio, between 1844 and 1860</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A third party,<a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/938a/b543225343d7a7e122bfce828b5e27206073.pdf">the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John Bell</a>. It was a splinter party composed of disillusioned Democrats and former members of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Whig-Party">Whig party</a> (a major political party in the mid-19th century which stood for protective tariffs, national banking, and federal aid for internal improvements). The Constitutional Union Party wanted to avoid secession over slavery. Bell’s
battle cry was “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5403/oregonhistq.115.4.0502?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">The Union as it is, and the Constitution as it is</a>.” </p>
<p>Abraham Lincoln, an opponent of slavery, <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/lincoln/campaigns-and-elections">was the Republican candidate</a>. Yet he promised to let the South hold onto its slaves so long as slavery was not extended to any new territories. </p>
<p>“Wrong as we think slavery is,” <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm">Lincoln said</a>, “we can yet afford to let it alone where it is… but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively.” </p>
<p>Despite winning the election, whites allied with the Southern Democratic Party <a href="https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/what-the-south-got-wrong/">did not see Lincoln as a legitimate president</a> because of his opposition to the expansion of slavery and perceived hostility to the beliefs and values of Southerners. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Election-1860-Consequences-Presidential-Elections/dp/0700624872">Seven Southern states seceded</a> between Lincoln’s election and inauguration: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.</p>
<p>Lincoln <a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/secessiontableofcontents.htm">regarded secession as illegal</a>. </p>
<p>Rather than waiting for Lincoln’s Union troops to act, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/causes-of-the-civil-war/">the newly named Confederate States attacked</a> Fort Sumter, a Union fort in Charleston, South Carolina. Thus began the Civil War, in which an estimated <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-casualties">620,000 soldiers were killed, nearly 2%</a> of the U.S. population.</p>
<h2>Bitterness in 1968</h2>
<p>A little more than 100 years later, <a href="https://time.com/5607309/democratic-primaries-with-most-candidates/">the 1968 election</a> was marked by extraordinary bitterness arising from the Vietnam War, the legacy of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and a backlash against the ongoing civil rights revolution. </p>
<p>As was the case <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-campaign-sees-political-advantage-in-a-divisive-appeal-to-working-class-white-voters/2019/07/26/39234f00-aef1-11e9-8e77-03b30bc29f64_story.html">in 1860 and is the case now</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/lessons-from-the-election-of-1968">race was at the center of the 1968 campaign</a>. </p>
<p>In 1968, Republicans nominated Richard Nixon, who relied on a “<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/">Southern Strategy</a>” that used opposition to desegregation and barely concealed racist appeals to “law and order” to enlist the support of white Southerners. </p>
<p>Nixon also stirred up resentment by appealing to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-America/dp/074324303X">what he called “the great silent majority</a>.” </p>
<p>“There are two kinds of Americans,” Nixon said, “the ordinary middle-class folks with the white picket fence who play by the rules and pay their taxes and don’t protest and the people who basically come from the left.”</p>
<p>Like today’s Democratic Party, in which some candidates are calling for revolutionary changes while others offer only reform, the Democrats of 50 years ago had to choose among candidates with starkly different visions of the future of their party and the nation. </p>
<p>The Democrats <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/aug/19/the-whole-world-is-watching-chicago-police-riot-vietnam-war-regan">fractured over the Vietnam War</a> with their <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26840327/ns/politics/t/democratic-split-helped-nixon-win/#.XUHi_C2ZOi5">division on display</a> during the nominating convention. They chose the establishment candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, as their standard bearer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286963/original/file-20190805-36399-lbyjv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was filled with conflict, including this encounter between a demonstrator and National Guard soldiers on Aug. 26.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2016652537/">Library of Congress/Leffler, Warren K., photographer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today the leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president is yet another establishment candidate and a former vice president – <a href="https://www.insidesources.com/joe-biden-goes-old-school-as-the-establishment-candidate-in-2020-primary/">Joe Biden</a>.</p>
<p>In 1968, <a href="https://www.apnews.com/fb991cd4b1914069aaba7615ce831bd8">Segregationist Gov. George Wallace</a> of Alabama, a Democrat well-known for his declaration “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” ran a third party campaign for president. </p>
<p>Wallace promoted what The New York Times called a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/07/30/us/politics/ap-us-trump-george-wallace.html">“visceral populism”</a> and used raucous rallies to belittle his opponents. He asked his supporters to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/1968-project/2018/08/16/stand-up-america-george-wallaces-chaotic-prophetic-campaign/961043002/">“Stand Up for America.”</a></p>
<p>Wallace received <a href="https://dp.la/exhibitions/outsiders-president-elections/anti-outsider-platforms/george-wallace-1968">13.5% of the vote. He carried five Southern states</a> - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi – and almost won enough votes to throw the election to the House of Representatives to decide.</p>
<p>Like the aftermath of the 1860 election, 1968 created what <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/25/how-did-the-1968-election-change-u-s-politics-so-dramatically-this-new-book-explains/?utm_term=.06507e262c43">columnist and author Michael A. Cohen called “a very clear racial divide between the two parties”</a> and a sharp division about the role of the federal government in American life.</p>
<p>Since his entrance into national politics, President Trump has borrowed from both Nixon and Wallace, sometimes using the same rallying cries. Thus, in 2016 his campaign handed out signs at his rallies, “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/01/22/463884201/trump-champions-the-silent-majority-but-what-does-that-mean-in-2016">The Silent Majority Stands with Trump</a>.” And he skillfully evokes the populism of Wallace’s “Stand Up for America” when he promises to “Make America Great Again.”</p>
<h2>‘A house divided’</h2>
<p>In the 1860 and 1968 elections, arguments about race and appeals to racial resentment were used in ways that injured America. The current campaign is lining up to be a repeat performance. </p>
<p>The 1860 and 1968 elections also offer warnings that the vitriol surrounding an election can leave the losing side feeling that it cannot reconcile with those who prevailed and the winning side angry even after its victory. Such vitriol, I believe, is the daily grist of the politics on both sides of the 2020 campaign.</p>
<p>In fact, like the Southerners of 1860, people in both parties now question the legitimacy of their opposition. Because of President Trump’s alleged collusion with Russians, the fact he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/politics/is-trump-racist.html">lost the popular vote and his race baiting</a> a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/20/poll-young-americans-see-trump-as-illegitimate">majority of 18- to 30-year-olds</a>, many <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/04/trump-impeachment-and-question-democratic-legitimacy">liberal commentators</a> and prominent Democrats like <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/01/13/john-lewis-trump-not-a-legitimate-president">U.S. Rep. John Lewis</a> and former President Jimmy Carter <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jimmy-carter-says-president-trump-illegitimate-president-russian-interference-2019-06-28/">call him an “illegitimate president</a>.”</p>
<p>And, if a Democrat wins in 2020, some <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/10/18535212/trump-2020-pelosi-lose-leave-office">leaders of that party worry</a> that the president will not accept defeat and <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/21/trump-election-2020-1374589">will contest the election in court</a>. Liberal commentators predict that “the defeated Trump will be on Fox News and Twitter every day saying that the election was stolen from him and that the Democrat <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/06/next-democratic-president-could-face-legitimacy-crisis/?utm_term=.46cda4d88bea">is not really the president.”</a></p>
<p>As the country faces the prospect of a rancorous 2020 presidential election, the elections of 1860 and 1968 should remind all Americans of Lincoln’s prophetic warning that “<a href="https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/teachers/lessonplans/House-Divided-Speech.pdf">a house divided against itself cannot stand</a>.”</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121294/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 2020 US election could set a record for ugliness and division. Two previous elections provide important context for what that division can mean.Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1180262019-05-30T23:02:34Z2019-05-30T23:02:34ZJ. Edgar Hoover’s revenge: Information the FBI once hoped could destroy Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been declassified<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277266/original/file-20190530-69067-gdsosc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/March-On-Washington-Photo-Gallery/799f8d9c3371479b9e7d6be2b80b2ae2/3/0">AP/File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An article just published by the U.K.-based <a href="https://standpointmag.co.uk/">Standpoint Magazine</a> alleges that civil rights icon Martin Luther King witnessed and even celebrated a woman’s rape. </p>
<p>Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian <a href="https://www.davidgarrow.com/">David Garrow</a>, one of <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060566920/bearing-the-cross/">King’s biographers</a>, the claim relies upon <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release%22%22">recently declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation documents</a> that summarize tape recordings of King’s extramarital affairs.</p>
<p>The allegation that King witnessed a rape and did not stop it is a serious one. Its impact on how we understand and tell U.S. history, and King’s role in it, is likely to be debated for years. </p>
<p>It’s important to reevaluate King’s legacy in light of this new information. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://independentresearcher.academia.edu/TrevorGriffey">as an historian</a> who has done substantial research in FBI files on the black freedom movement, I believe that it’s also important to understand how this information came to be public. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, before testifying at a hearing in Washington, D.C., Sept. 18, 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-DC-USA-APHS104014-J-Edgar-Hoover-1968/aaeceee62552400d93b3707e6c04be2e/60/0">AP/File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Targeting black activism</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/directors/j-edgar-hoover">director of the FBI from 1924-72, J. Edgar Hoover</a> had an outsized influence on the organization. <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about">The FBI operated within the Department of Justice</a> and was tasked with investigating violations of federal law and developing intelligence on foreign agents operating on U.S. soil. </p>
<p>At various points in the 20th century, both Congress and the president instructed the FBI to investigate not just foreign agents but also “radicals” and “subversives.” Hoover interpreted that mandate to also develop what the FBI called <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-2e.html">“racial intelligence.”</a> </p>
<p>From the 1910s to the 1970s, the FBI treated civil rights activists in general, and African American activists in particular, as either disloyal “subversives” or “dupes” of foreign agents. The FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, sought to <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-10923-1">“compel black loyalty” during World War I</a> and <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/marcus-garvey">investigate “negro radicalism” in the 1920s</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1940s and 1950s, the FBI amassed 140,000 pages of documents as part of its investigation of what it called “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/fbis-racon-racial-conditions-in-america-during-world-war-ii/oclc/64083849">foreign inspired agitation</a> among American Negroes.” That didn’t even include its files on individual black “subversives” such as civil rights activist <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807856161/ella-baker-and-the-black-freedom-movement/">Ella Baker</a>, <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/E.%20B.%20%28William%29%20Dubois">the renowned scholar W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, and the singer and actor <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/Paul%20Robeson%2C%20Sr.">Paul Robeson</a>. </p>
<p>And from the late 1930s through the 1970s, the FBI and the <a href="https://www2.gwu.edu/%7Eerpapers/teachinger/glossary/huac.cfm">House Un-American Activities Committee</a>, through official reports like “<a href="https://archive.org/details/americannegroinc00unit">The American Negro and the Communist Party</a>,” popularized the notion among conservatives that communists were always trying to use the struggle against racial segregation as a “front” for the “subversion” of individual American liberty. </p>
<h2>Focus on King</h2>
<p>As Martin Luther King ascended in prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s, it was inevitable that the FBI would investigate him, like it did every other civil rights movement activist, for what it called “<a href="https://archive.org/details/lazarfoia?and%5B%5D=%22communist+influence+racial+matters%22&sin=&sort=titleSorter">communist influence in racial matters</a>.” </p>
<p>King did consult with former members of the Communist Party, among many others. One of his advisers – <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/levison-stanley-david">Stanley Levison – maintained closer ties to the party than he admitted to King</a>, and the FBI knew it. </p>
<p>But it was the civil rights movement’s growing influence that inspired Hoover to become increasingly alarmed about these connections. </p>
<p>Two days after King delivered his famous <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/i-have-dream-address-delivered-march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">“I Have a Dream” speech</a> at the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>, William Sullivan, the FBI’s director of intelligence, <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-Neutralize-King">famously responded by writing</a>, “We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” </p>
<p>In late 1963, FBI leaders met to discuss ways of “<a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-Neutralize-King">neutralizing King</a> as an effective Negro leader and developing evidence concerning King’s continued dependence on communists for guidance and direction.”</p>
<p>One of those ways for “developing evidence” involved <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/614/2821.pdf?1559244520">bugging hotel rooms</a> and other places to record King’s conversations with colleagues.</p>
<p>The recordings did not provide evidence of “communist influence” on the civil rights movement. Instead, they recorded King’s extramarital affairs. FBI officials, who already planned to “neutralize” King before they recorded his infidelities, shifted the rationale for their campaign to “morality” without missing a beat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screenshot from a 1966 FBI memo regarding surveillance of King.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/613/2820.pdf?1559244493">National Archives via Trevor Griffey photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Obscene file’</h2>
<p>Perhaps surprising to a 21st century reader, policing sexuality had long been part of the FBI’s mission. </p>
<p>The agency had a history of <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368118">selectively enforcing the Mann Act</a>, the 1910 law that aimed to stem interstate transport of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The FBI did this by prosecuting African American men for traveling across state lines with white women. Its “sex deviates” investigation from 1951 through the 1970s produced over 300,000 pages of files as part of what one historian has called “<a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2119-4.html">a war on gays</a>.” </p>
<p>FBI agents regularly collected “obscene” materials as part of their investigations, which were then deposited in an “<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781566630719/J-Edgar-Hoover-Sex-and-Crime-An-Historical-Antidote">Obscene File</a>” that contained thousands of books, photographs and films by the mid-1960s. </p>
<p>And longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s “Personal and Confidential” files contained what Attorney General Edward Levi <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/28/archives/levi-details-wide-scope-of-hoovers-secret-files-levi-details-wide.html">described to Congress in 1975</a> as 48 folders on “public figures and prominent persons… Presidents, executive branch employees and 17 individuals who were members of Congress.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t clear, however, how the FBI could circulate information about King’s affairs without also raising questions as to why the FBI was bugging King’s hotel rooms in the first place. When FBI Assistant Director Courtney Evans <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-MISUR-Martin-Luther-King">recommended in September 1964 that the tapes be destroyed</a>, Hoover overruled him. </p>
<p>Instead, in late 1964, following the passage of the Civil Rights Act and King’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI sent excerpts of the recordings to King’s wife, Coretta, along with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html">a letter that encouraged King to commit suicide</a> to avoid having exposure of his extramarital affairs ruin his life.</p>
<p>The stunt failed. In <a href="https://www.baylorpress.com/9781602580732/an-easy-burden/">his autobiography</a>, civil rights leader Andrew Young described his and Coretta and Martin Luther King’s responses to the tape that accompanied what he called the “sick letter”: “It was a very poor quality recording. … There was no question in our minds that this scurrilous material was coming from the FBI … few people had the capability of bugging hotel rooms except the FBI.” </p>
<p>Undeterred, the FBI continued to bug King’s hotel rooms from 1965 to 1968, and occasionally circulated <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-MISUR-Martin-Luther-King">memos to the attorney general</a> about the results of the recordings, including both political and sexual topics. </p>
<p>But the FBI didn’t release the tapes themselves, because doing so may have generated the same suspicions raised by the one sent to King.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King arrives with his wife Coretta Scott King, to deliver the traditional address of the winner of Nobel Peace Prize at the University of Oslo, Dec. 11, 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-NOR-APHS341546-Nobel-Prize-MLK-1964/4d4387d816794f62ab1277f1e67ddbb0/7/1">AP/File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Context matters</h2>
<p>The preservation of the FBI’s tapes so that they could someday come to light was a political decision made through acts of omission. </p>
<p>When J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, his secretary <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001203mag-chart.html">Helen Gandy destroyed the FBI’s “Personal and Confidential”</a> files on public officials and celebrities. At the same time, according to Athan Theoharis’ <a href="https://www.amazon.com/FBI-Comprehensive-Reference-Guide/dp/089774991X">“The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide,”</a> Acting Director Mark Felt incorporated the Bureau’s “Official and Confidential” files into the FBI’s central records system, subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Files on King’s private life were placed in this latter set of records rather than destroyed, and some were <a href="https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2005/nr05-89.html">transferred to the National Archives in 2005</a>. </p>
<p>Litigation by Bernard Lee from King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference sought to compel destruction of the recordings and transcripts. But the judge in the case, John Lewis Smith Jr., rejected the request, and instead <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/01/archives/fbi-ordered-to-send-king-tapes-to-archives.html">ordered them sealed for 50 years until 2027</a>. </p>
<p>People will rightly debate the trustworthiness of FBI sources, and Garrow’s interpretation of them. No figure, no matter how revered, should be immune from scrutiny over their potential support for violence against women.</p>
<p>But those weighing the evidence and its veracity should not forget that the tapes being used to facilitate this discussion were created and preserved with the goal of destroying Martin Luther King’s reputation. The FBI’s intent was to demoralize and fragment the coalition of supporters King brought together in his life, the people who find common purpose by honoring his memory. </p>
<p>In this respect, revealing these materials could be considered “Hoover’s revenge.”</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the name of the litigant from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who sought to compel destruction of the recordings and transcripts.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Trevor Griffey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Publication was justified of information from the FBI that Martin Luther King Jr. witnessed and celebrated a woman’s rape, writes a historian, who warns the FBI had long wanted to destroy King.Trevor Griffey, Lecturer, Labor Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1081602018-12-07T11:40:09Z2018-12-07T11:40:09ZNominating a crony, loyalist or old buddy for attorney general is a US presidential tradition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249089/original/file-20181205-186064-1j6pucg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sen. Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump on the presidential campaign trail, February 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/GOP-2016-Trump-/5fe6f57bb57245b483189d410676e746/11/0">AP/John Bazemore</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With President Donald Trump’s announcement that he <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/william-barr-attorney-general-nomination/index.html">would nominate former Attorney General William P. Barr to fill the position</a> again, Trump chose a prominent Republican lawyer with extensive government experience to run the Justice Department.</p>
<p>Barr has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/us/politics/john-kelly-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">publicly supported some of Trump’s criticisms</a> of the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It’s not known how Barr would reflect those positions in his interactions with the investigation.</p>
<p>But when Donald Trump <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/politics/jeff-sessions-attorney-general-donald-trump-consideration/index.html">announced Jeff Sessions’s nomination as his attorney general</a>, the position was seen as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539576121/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-has-long-shown-unwavering-support-for-trump">a reward for Sessions’s early endorsement</a> of the president’s 2016 campaign. And the president <a href="http://time.com/5203216/trump-sessions-timeline/">wanted loyalty in return</a>.</p>
<p>“The only reason I gave him the job,” Trump said, “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/18/502207098/trump-picks-sen-jeff-sessions-for-attorney-general">was because I felt loyalty</a>. He was an original supporter. He was on the campaign.”</p>
<p>Many people predicted that Trump indeed would have a loyal foot soldier <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-taps-loyalists-for-cabinet-picks-session-for-ag-pompeo-as-cia-director">as head of the Justice Department</a>.</p>
<p>But the president’s wish was not realized. Feeling betrayed when Sessions recused himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump turned Sessions into a <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/history-trump-jeff-sessions-feud.html">regular target for his Twitter assaults</a>.</p>
<p>Trump ended their fraught relationship by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/07/politics/sessions-resign/index.html">asking for Sessions to resign</a> after the 2018 midterm election and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-matthew-whitaker-the-new-acting-attorney-general/">replacing him with Matthew Whitaker</a>. Whitaker is known as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/us/politics/whitaker-mueller-trump.html">critic of the Mueller investigation</a> into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. </p>
<p>The Whitaker appointment provoked questions among Trump critics, including George Conway, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/opinion/trump-attorney-general-sessions-unconstitutional.html">husband of the president’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway,</a> about its <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/whitaker-cant-take-officeand-that-helps-mueller/575770/">constitutionality and its wisdom</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249091/original/file-20181205-186067-v83639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249091/original/file-20181205-186067-v83639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249091/original/file-20181205-186067-v83639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249091/original/file-20181205-186067-v83639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249091/original/file-20181205-186067-v83639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249091/original/file-20181205-186067-v83639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249091/original/file-20181205-186067-v83639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President-elect John F. Kennedy (left) announces the nomination of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy (right), as attorney general in December 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-Columbi-/5910c29a61e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/3/0">AP photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, others welcomed the alliance between Trump and Whitaker. Margot Cleveland, an adjunct law professor at the University of Notre Dame, argued that “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/11/13/donald-trump-matthew-whitaker-no-need-recuse-russia-investigation-column/1968664002/">there is nothing nefarious about the (acting) attorney general loyally serving the president of the United States</a>.” </p>
<p>For me as a legal scholar who has studied controversies surrounding the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Governments-Break-Law-Administration/dp/0814739857">role of prosecutors and prosecutorial decisions</a>, all of this has a familiar ring. </p>
<p>Indeed, throughout American history, there have been different visions of the role of the <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0530-9.html">attorney general and his or her relationship to the president</a>. </p>
<h2>Part-time official</h2>
<p>The office of attorney general is not mentioned in the Constitution. It was created when the First Congress passed <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/judiciary.html">the Judiciary Act of 1789</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/judiciary_act.asp">That act called for the appointment of a person</a> “learned in the law, to act as attorney general for the United States.” It said that the attorney general’s duty “shall be to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned, and to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the President of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249090/original/file-20181205-186082-1caam88.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first attorney general of the U.S., Edmund Jennings Randolph, who was close to President George Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/randolph-edmund-jennings">Department of Justice/John Mix Stanley</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The act gave the attorney general limited duties relating strictly to matters of law. In fact, the attorney general was to be a part-time official, carrying out quasi-judicial functions, but responsible to the president who appointed him. </p>
<p>Two days after the Judiciary Act became law, George Washington appointed <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/randolph-edmund-jennings">Edmund Jennings Randolph</a> to be the first attorney general of the United States. </p>
<p>Randolph had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and Virginia’s attorney general. He was “learned in the law,” but he was also Washington’s confidante and close political ally, having served as the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/randolph-edmund-jennings">general’s chief of staff and personal secretary</a> in 1775.</p>
<p>During Randolph’s term as attorney general, Washington relied on him for support on matters that went <a href="https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2213&context=facpub">well beyond the formal duties of his office</a>. In one such instance, Randolph helped Washington handle foreign relations with France and Great Britain and, in others, <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0530-9.html">advised him on his dealings with Congress</a>.</p>
<p>Thus, “from the beginning,” writes law professor Susan Low Bloch, “there were questions about whom the attorney general represented, who should and would control the incumbent attorney general, and what it means to represent the <a href="https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2213&context=facpub">‘interests of the United States</a>.‘”</p>
<h2>Carving out a role</h2>
<p>As other scholars have noted, the role of the attorney general has been variously <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/The-Politics-of-Justice-Attorney-General-and-the-Making-of-Government/Clayton/p/book/9781563240195">defined by the occupants of that office</a>.</p>
<p>Some have followed in Randolph’s footsteps, serving as close political allies of the president. Others have seen themselves as different from the rest of the president’s Cabinet and kept their distance from the president. They acted primarily as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/05/29/187079882/the-role-of-the-attorney-general-throughout-history">defenders of the rule of law</a>. </p>
<p>Examples of the first type from the early years of the country include President <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/about/history/pages/rbtaney.aspx">Andrew Jackson’s attorney general, Roger Taney</a>, who worked <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/bank-of-the-united-states">hand-in-hand with Jackson to end funding</a> for the Bank of the United States. </p>
<p>Jackson subsequently nominated Taney to the Supreme Court, where he wrote the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/60us393">decision in the infamous Dred Scott case</a>.</p>
<p>In the 20th century, President Franklin Roosevelt’s attorneys general regularly helped him in political battles. Some of those battles <a href="http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/04/KatyalCaplan.pdf">involved the Justice Department</a> and some did not. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/jackson-robert-houghwout">Robert Jackson</a>, who served as FDR’s attorney general in 1940 and 1941 before being elevated to the Supreme Court, played a key role in <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/neutrality-acts">the effort to circumvent the Neutrality Act</a>
in order to provide war equipment to Great Britain <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0530-9.html">before America’s entrance into World War II</a>. </p>
<p>Other close political allies of the president who appointed them include <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/kennedy-robert-francis">Robert Kennedy</a>, who was appointed at age 35 by his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and widely <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/142063/robert-f-kennedy-case-attorney-general">criticized as unqualified for the job</a>. President <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/meese-edwin-iii">Reagan’s second attorney general, Edwin Meese</a>, was a longtime friend of Reagan’s.</p>
<p>So common is this tendency to appoint friends and supporters to be attorneys general that, since FDR, many presidents have chosen their campaign manager or their party’s <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0530-9.html">national chairperson to be attorney general of the United States</a>. Examples include <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/mcgrath-james-howard">J. Howard McGrath</a>, who served under President Truman, and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/brownell-herbert-jr">Herbert Brownell</a>, attorney general under President Eisenhower. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249101/original/file-20181205-186058-1cdxioe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Harry S. Truman with his new attorney general, J. Howard McGrath, right, and William M. Boyle, Jr., who took over from McGrath as Democratic Party chairman, in Washington, 1949.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-/27d24e1be17743a8906df4c69c5db2c6/12/0">AP/Bill Chaplis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Attorneys general who have tried to eschew a clearly political role and be bureaucratic servants of the rule of law include, in the early 19th century, <a href="https://wizzwoo.com/download.php?q=memoirs-of-the-life-of-william-wirt-attorney-general-of-the-united-states">William Wirt</a>. </p>
<p>Wirt was attorney general from 1817-1829 under Presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. He insisted that the <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0530-9.html">attorney general should not be drawn into partisan activities</a> and should adhere to what he called “the strict limits prescribed for… [that office] by law.’” </p>
<p>Twentieth-century exemplars of this more independent role include <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/stone-harlan-fiske">Calvin Coolidge’s attorney general, Harlan Fiske Stone</a>, and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/levi-edward-hirsch">Edward Levi, who served under President Gerald Ford</a>. </p>
<p>Both of them came to office <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Justice-Government-Political-Institutions/dp/156324019X">in the wake of scandals</a>. Stone took office after the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Teapot-Dome-Scandal">Teapot Dome scandal</a> and Levi after <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/timeline.html">Watergate</a>. Each restored integrity to the Justice Department by instituting new guidelines designed to limit political interference in its work.</p>
<p>Throughout American history, when presidents have appointed political cronies to be attorney general, they were looking for people only to help them pursue a policy agenda. President Nixon’s efforts to enlist Attorney General John Mitchell in the Watergate cover-up and get one of Mitchell’s successors, Elliot Richardson, to fire the Watergate special prosecutor stand out as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/08/25/trump-is-acting-like-richard-nixon-now-we-need-others-to-channel-the-heroes-of-watergate/?utm_term=.53713fd83d52">important, but rare, exceptions</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-calls-manafort-prosecution-a-hoax-says-sessions-should-stop-mueller-investigation/2018/08/01/8deb579e-958e-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?utm_term=.989d9753c406">Other presidents have not expected or</a> asked their attorneys general to shut down investigations or protect them from possible criminal liability. </p>
<p>But that is exactly what <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/jeff-sessionss-firing-matthew-whitakers-rise-and-attorney-generals-role-mueller-investigation">Trump’s vision of the attorney general’s role</a> seemed to entail. Like Nixon, he wanted more than a political ally. What he wanted from his attorney general posed a serious threat to the rule of law. With his appointment of Barr, perhaps that will change.</p>
<p><em>This story has been updated to reflect the nomination of William P. Barr as attorney general.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Trump has been criticized for the appointment of political allies as attorney general. But history is filled with examples of AGs who were friends and political supporters of the president.Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.