That is an version of Time-Journey Thursdays, a journey via The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the current, floor pleasant treasures, and study the American thought.
This 12 months’s presidential election is the sixtieth within the historical past of america. The Atlantic has for 42 of these election cycles revealed tales analyzing the health of candidates to serve, the inclinations of the voting public to vote, and the durability of our democratic establishments to hold on. Our journal’s covers in October and November of presidential-election years provide home windows into the distinctive—or uniquely persistent—nationwide anxieties of every electoral period.
One cowl story from our archives imagined a hypothetical Inauguration Day on which, “for the primary time in historical past, the Inaugural stand has been constructed on the West Entrance of the Capitol,” however by midday in D.C., “there is no such thing as a new President—not one of the candidates carried a majority of the electoral vote on November 4.” That was Laurence H. Tribe and Thomas M. Rollins writing in The Atlantic in October 1980, in a narrative titled “Impasse” (to be clear, on the precise 1981 Inauguration Day, Ronald Reagan was sworn in, having defeated the incumbent Jimmy Carter in a landslide the earlier November).
Voters on the margins have been a daily topic of research in The Atlantic. “Between campaigns Smith is open-minded on all issues affecting the physique politic,” Meredith Nicholson wrote in an October 1920 essay outlining debates he, a Democrat, had been having along with his good friend Smith, a Republican, about whom to vote for within the upcoming presidential election. However “social gathering loyalty is likely one of the strongest elements within the operation of our democracy,” Nicholson famous. “If Smith, in his new temper of independence, votes for Mr. Cox, and I, not just a little bitter that my social gathering in these eight years has failed to fulfill my hopes for it, vote for Mr. Harding, which of us, I’m wondering, will finest serve America?”
Politics is a constant presence, however notallofourfall covers from these years completely involved the election. November 1976, as an illustration, led with the tradition critic Benjamin DeMott’s spirited exploration of the state of the American household. November 1964 contained a particular complement on … the nation of Canada; the month earlier than, nonetheless, The Atlantic made its second-ever presidential endorsement. Today, the months surrounding an election pose a specific problem for our print group: The November subject of the journal seems on newsstands after the election, however goes to the printers earlier than it takes place.
In lots of election years, together with the current one, we sought classes from American historical past. Our November 1988 subject mounted a strong protection for the educating of American historical past—historical past, not simply civics classes, or information about American authorities. “The possibilities for democratic rules to outlive such crises rely upon the variety of residents who keep in mind how free societies have responded to crises prior to now, how free societies have acted to defend themselves in, and emerge from, the dangerous occasions. Why have some societies fallen and others stood quick?” the historian Paul Gagnon wrote, in a cowl story titled “Why Examine Historical past?”
So spend a second in the present day with historical past: Under is a collection of 17 Atlantic covers from election years spanning two centuries. If you happen to’d prefer to learn extra, you’ll be able to browse our complete assortment of points on-line right here, courting again to November 1857.
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