Publisher Dan McDermott was guest hosting a talk show today. Dan and WZRV afternoon DJ Lonnie Hill discussed the Friends of Shenandoah River State Park and some critters that populate our favorite river destination.
Here is the Audio. (Left-click to play or right-click to Save-As and play from your computer.)
More about Friends of Shenandoah River State Park.
Just Ten seconds: Please vote BEFORE MIDNIGHT FRIDAY for Mountain Laurel Montessori school in Front Royal http://tinyurl.com/lv7as9
Voting has begun! Please go to: http://www.earthdayeverydaychallenge.com/ and click on Mountain Laurel’s video (sign of Mountain Laurel Montessori – 4th school listed) to view our 5-minute video. There is also a link to read our essay. Follow the directions to register your vote and don’t forget to confirm your vote when they send you the confirmation email. We think you’ll be very excited to see all that Mountain Laurel Montessori does to help our little corner of the world. Please vote for us and and urge all your friends to vote, too. Just imagine what our tiny school with a big heart can do with the $20,000 grant!
One-day-old clouded leopard cubs at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo Conservation and Research Center, originally uploaded by Smithsonian’s National Zoo.
An endangered clouded leopard at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center (CRC) in Front Royal, Va., gave birth to a genetically valuable litter of two cubs on Tuesday, March 24. Staff had been on pregnancy watch of the two-and-a-half year-old clouded leopard “Jao Chu” (JOW-chew) for five days. She gave birth to the litter early Tuesday morning.
This is Jao Chu’s first litter. She and the cubs’ father, two-and-a-half year-old “Hannibal,” were born in Thailand in a collaborative research program with the Zoological Park Organization of Thailand. The cubs’ sex will not be known until the first veterinary exam.
Due to deforestation and hunting, clouded leopards are vulnerable to extinction. National Zoo scientist Dr. JoGayle Howard and colleagues are aggressively working toward saving this species from decline. The Zoo has been working with clouded leopards at the Conservation & Research Center since 1978, with the goal of creating a genetically diverse population. In the past 30 years, more than 70 clouded leopards have been born at the Zoo’s research facility in Virginia, with the last litter born in 1993.
Breeding clouded leopards in captivity has been a challenge, primarily due to male aggression, decreased breeding activity between paired animals, and high cub mortality. In 2002, the National Zoo in collaboration with the Nashville Zoo and the Clouded Leopard Species Survival Plan (SSP) created the Thailand Clouded Leopard Consortium—the largest population of confiscated clouded leopards in Southeast Asia. The Clouded Leopard SSP oversees clouded leopard populations in zoos worldwide, and makes breeding recommendations for potential pairs based on the genetics of each cat. Since Thailand’s captive cubs are only one or two generations removed from the wild, their genes are especially valuable.
To date, the Thailand Clouded Leopard Consortium has produced 32 surviving cubs. The National Zoo’s program at the Front Royal facility is the only one of its kind combining breeding with scientific research. For example, scientists still do not know why male clouded leopards attack their possible mates, but several graduate students at the National Zoo are studying the males’ behavior—one student plans to test anti-anxiety drugs used in humans and domestic cats in an attempt to suppress male aggression.
Howard and colleagues have learned how to reduce the risk of fatal attacks by hand-rearing cubs for socialization and also introducing males to their mates when they are six months old, allowing the pair to grow up together. Hannibal and Jao Chu, the only compatible pair of clouded leopards at CRC, are proof that these techniques work. The new cubs also will be handreared by experienced CRC staff.
Following mating, the gestation period for clouded leopards is about 86 to 93 days. The average litter size for clouded leopards is two to five cubs. Clouded leopard cubs weigh about a half of a pound when born.
Little is known about clouded leopards. They are cats native to Southeast Asia and parts of China in a habitat that ranges from dense tropical evergreen forests to drier forests if there is suitable prey.
They are the smallest of the big cats, weighing 30 to 50 pounds and measuring about five feet long. Their short legs, large paws, and long tail (accounts for half their length) help them balance on small branches, and their flexible ankles allow them to run down trees headfirst.
The newborn cubs will not be on exhibit at CRC. However, visitors may get an up-close treetop view of two clouded leopards—a male named Tai and a female named Mook—at Asia Trail at the National Zoo’s campus in Washington, D.C.
For more photos, visit the Zoo’s Flickr site: tinyurl.com/dem9uu
Andre Gerner, former Commandant of the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, spoke at the Skyline Soaring Club annual safety meeting on Feb. 7 Gerner also lauded the role of glider flying in developing general aviation skills. Photo by Roger Bianchini.
‘Stick & rudder’ experience with powerless flight crucial for all pilots
By Roger Bianchini
Warren County Report
Did powerless flight skills honed at small general aviation airports such as the one here in Warren County, Virginia, help US Airways Pilot Chesley Sullenberger bring his commercial passenger jet down safely in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, saving the lives of all 155 people aboard in the process?
A trio of members and participants in the Skyline Soaring Club’s annual safety meeting held Saturday, Feb. 7, at the Front Royal-Warren County Airport (FRR), as well as their host, Airport Manager Reggie Cassagnol, believe Sullenberger’s experience with glider flight was a contributing factor in his ability to safely guide his US Airways Flight 1549 “Airbus” to a safe “off-field” landing within two minutes of losing all engine power just after takeoff from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport.
While a career-long focus on the wide parameter of airline safety procedures was noted, Sullenberger’s experience as a glider pilot was singled out as a crucial part of the skill sets utilized that day to save an untold number of lives in the midst of heavily populated midtown Manhattan. The primary reason is a glider pilot’s constant focus on what to do if the thermal lift upon which gliders are dependent is lost. For while it was a powerful commercial jetliner bound for Charlotte, North Carolina, Sullenberger piloted on Jan. 15, his sudden loss of power after a collision with a flock of birds put him in essentially the same position glider pilots regularly find themselves in – improvising a landing site.
Cassagnol points out that when gliders are forced to land short of a return to their airport point of departure, it is not termed an accident or even incident, but rather simply an “off-field landing.” And land off field is essentially what pilot Chesley Sullenberger accomplished with his commercial passenger jet on the Hudson River in the middle of New York City on Jan. 15.
Cassagnol, who is a Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) certified safety instructor, said he recommends his CassAviation flight students take at least a couple of glider instructions “to illustrate the point that when the engine stops it’s not over; and to improve their general flying skills.”
‘The Right (Glider) Stuff’
“When you’re flying a powered aircraft, one of the things you’re always asked, especially when you’re a student, is ‘Okay, if the engine fails now, where would you go?’ And it is something [Sullenberger] had rehearsed many times, because in a glider every landing is an emergency landing – they’re all engine out. So you’ve got to make it count. You can’t go around and do it again,” Andre Gerner told us after his own safety presentation to the Skyline Soaring Club. “In terms of developing pure stick and rudder skills, and getting out into the air and finding lift, and there are different forms of lift – glider flying, really I think, makes you keenly aware of what’s going on around you.”
Gerner called himself “an avid proponent” of glider flight as an instructional tool for powered flight in a previous position he held. That position was as Commandant of the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base from 2005-2007. It is a position he noted, that has been held by, among others, Chuck Yeager and “Buzz” Aldrin. Yeager’s legendary reputation in the test pilot world was immortalized in the book and movie “The Right Stuff;” and Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon, behind fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong.
“As I was saying earlier, the four tier-one military schools would be the Air Force Test Pilot School (Edwards), the Naval Test Pilot School at “Pax” River, the Empire Test Pilot School in England, and Epner, which is the French Test Pilot School,” Gerner said. “Then there’s also the National Test Pilot School, which is civilian, that’s in Mohave, California, and then Brazil and India both have test pilot schools. Those are the major schools in the West – but the point I wanted to make is all four of those [military] schools use gliders in their curriculum because it’s considered important to expose students to that unique portion of the envelope.
“I would require every student to come in and get a commercial glider [license]. I’m just a big fan of that. I think its very effective training. It’s pure flying, flying in its purest sense – stick and rudder, you’ve got to move everything and you’re more in tune with what’s going on,” Gerner says of glider pilot’s relationship to his flight environment.
A first in the jet age
Another glider pilot and safety expert we spoke with at FRR on Feb. 7, pointed to the entire set of flight skills Sullenberger brought to the table to accomplish what he called a first in the age of jet flight.
“I think glider training is valuable. It helps a pilot with certain skills. But nobody’s ever ditched an airliner full of passengers in the jet era without loss of life,” Steve Wallace observed of emergency landings at sea. “In my view the more incredible aspect of this story than setting the airplane down in tact in the river, was getting everybody off it alive in the cold water. The plane didn’t break up; the captain and the whole crew, I think, did a brilliant job. I personally am not surprised that he was able to set that airplane down in the river in tact. I am surprised everybody got off it alive.”
Wallace’s credentials in the aviation community include being a part of the team that officially reviewed the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. In fact, Wallace pointed out he had presented a talk on the Columbia disaster at FRR, where one of the astronauts killed on that flight, David Brown, used to fly in on his way to visit his parents in Washington, Va. (but that’s another story for another day)
“I would say [glider flight] is a part of Sullenberger’s background which was tremendous. He was a military pilot as well. And he was also well known in the aviation community for participating in various safety issues, the pilot’s union, national investigations and different things like that. So this was a guy who was well beyond this is the job I’ve got from 9 to 5,” Wallace says.
“He would be the type of person, who in his head, would be – as we talked about on safety issues today – inclined to constantly think in terms of what would I do if this happens and turn over those what-if scenarios. That scenario was beyond anything in a training simulator. That was Sullenberger – what’s my best option? I’m going to put the plane down there,” Wallace said of the man who became a national hero overnight with his quick response to a set of potentially fatal variables.
General Aviation’s value
“Because of increasing automation that you find on airliners, there’s fewer and fewer opportunities for manually flying the airplane – stick and rudder time – because a lot of our philosophies and procedures and practices now are based on using automation,” Skyline Soaring Club member and Sullenberger’s fellow US Airways commercial pilot Curtis Wheeler told us. “There’s a lot of benefit to that, but also it causes a loss of skill in just hand flying the airplane. So what you can realize in an operation like we have here in Front Royal, is we have the opportunity to fly airplanes that don’t have any automation at all. And that gives us a better understanding of just the process of doing that.
“In the landing in the Hudson, you had an airliner being landed in the river right down the middle of a big city. That’s a place where an airliner never goes. I don’t know how current Captain Sullenberger was in flying gliders, but he had, had enough exposure to that circumstance and environment where he had some familiarity with what to expect.”
As for commercial pilot training for flight emergencies, Wheeler added, “We have a lot of training events that we have to cover in our simulators, which are mandatory. But we can’t cover every possible contingency in a simulator because we have a finite amount of time in there. And US Airways has already acknowledged that there isn’t a simulator event for ditching that’s done. We study it. We read about it. We mentally prepare for it. But it’s considered a remote possibility and receives a lower priority in the training hierarchy than a lot of the more likely things that could happen, like engine failures – not that they’re likely but they are more likely than ditching,” Wheeler explained of industry-wide training priorities.
“I think that the best pilots look at all the available resources in aviation to try to prepare themselves – and I think most pilots do this – just to take advantage of all the different resources that general aviation provides in order to give some awareness to these hand flying scenarios, different scenarios that are not routine in airline flying. We’re flying around small airports, closer to the terrain than we would be in any circumstance in an airline operation.
“There’s not a good understanding in America today about what general aviation is doing for people, and we’d like to try and promote that,” Wheeler said of his glider club and its host facility. “We need a lot of help keeping an airport like Front Royal Airport open and operational because it brings economic value to the community. In the case of our soaring club here, we come out to Front Royal, we patronize local businesses for lunches and things like that … It gives access for medivac flights. We’ve had law enforcement that’s operated out of this airport, all kinds of utility that comes from having a General Aviation airport – not to mention the stick and rudder skills that can be honed in a relaxed and recreational environment for both amateur and professional pilots – and that was a big payoff that day in New York City.”
Brief commercial message
For information on scenic glider or powered flights over the Northern Shenandoah Valley, as well as flight instructions offered out of the Front Royal-Warren County Airport, call the airport at 540 635-3570.
Economic postscript
Perhaps of particular interest in the current economic climate, other than improving basic flying skills, former Edwards AFB Test Pilot School Commandant Gerner pointed to a side benefit of glider flight to jet pilot training – cost. That cost effectiveness calculates to $60 to $70, including tow plane expenses, per glider flight, to what Gerner estimated is now between $5,000 to somewhere under $10,000 per hour of powered jet flight, even for the low-cost T-38 trainer. – “And when you get into an F-15 or F-16, the number gets even bigger,” Gerner points out of the huge cost of jet flight. “But the glider, that’s $26 an hour plus the tow.”
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department photo)
Dear Friend
“What do you have against turtles?”
Today I did something I never imagined I would have to do when I was elected to serve in the Senate of Virginia. I spoke and voted against legislation to make the box turtle as our state reptile (passed 24-15). That has led to some asking me, “What do you have against turtles?” It’s not a question I anticipated being asked this session, but it’s one I’ve heard more than a few times in the last few days.
For the record, I don’t have anything against the Eastern Box Turtle or terrapins in general, so there’s no need to speculate.
No, I don’t object to turtles; I object to wasting time on trivialities while seriously contemplating pushing back the budget for some later date. I have nothing against the Eastern Box, but I do have a problem with the amount of time we’ve spent this session on bills that have nothing to do with making our Commonwealth a better place, to say nothing of getting our economy back on track. This bill is just one isolated, albeit absurd (okay, even slightly amusing), example of a larger trend.
Is designating a state reptile really worth our time? We already have a state beverage, state insect, and a state gold mining interpretive center – presumably to distinguish it from the pretenders. We even have a state fossil, an extinct scallop.
I concede that Virginia trails other states in designations. We don’t have a state shrub, a state grass, or even a state donut. But if we’re to pick a state reptile, how to choose? Sure, the Eastern Box Turtle is a fine choice, but there’s something to be said for the endangered stinkpot turtle, too. And who doesn’t have a soft spot for other reptilian species, like the yellow-bellied slider, the common five-lined skink (and, of course, some would undoubtedly suggest politicians and lawyers)?
You know, we have a state shell as well. Increasingly, though, I think our state shell should be the one some in government are hiding under they we wait for the economic ill winds to pass us by. One of the counties I represent has an 11.7% unemployment rate, and they’re not alone. People are struggling to make ends meet across the Commonwealth, and they need the General Assembly to redouble its efforts to promote economic recovery, not ignore the problem in the hopes that it will just go away.
So nothing against the turtle – but if I had my way, he’d have to get in line.
Mark Obenshain
Virginia State Senator
File photo of a Przewalski's Horse. This wild horse was declared extinct in the wild in the 1970s. National Zoo scientists are part of an international effort to preserve the species. Photo by Jessie Cohen, NZP photographer.
A six-month-old, male Przewalski’s horse died at the National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va. Friday, Jan. 30 due to a fractured neck. The cause of injury remains undetermined-staff closely observing the horse in the moments preceding its death did not notice any unusual behavior that would have caused the injury.
Staff directed the colt into a chute system leading into a trailer which would transport him and a six-month-old filly to a new pasture on Friday afternoon. The animal walked onto the trailer-as it had many times previously-without exhibiting any signs of stress or injury. Following protocol, staff checked on the animals a few minutes after they entered the trailer. Staff found the colt unconscious, but it was still breathing. The horse was quickly transported to the Center’s veterinary hospital where veterinarians attempted to resuscitate him, but he died a short while later. A subsequent necropsy report showed that the horse had sustained a fracture of the fourth cervical vertebrate in his neck.
The colt was born in July, sired by a 9-year-old stallion named Frog, the most genetically valuable Przewalski’s horse in the North American breeding program. Its mother came from Europe to breed with Frog in order to boost the breeding program. The Przewalski’s horse is a horse species native to China and Mongolia that was declared extinct in the wild in 1970. Currently, there are approximately 1,500 of these animals maintained in zoological institutions throughout the world and in several small reintroduced populations in Asia.
The filly that was also being transported sustained no injury and is in good health.
From a release.
With a stopover at Warren County’s Skyline High for a final practice
By Roger Bianchini
Warren County Report
From left, Principal Trombonist E.J. Miller, Flute Section Leader Ericka Morris, Drum Major Greg Barr and Color Guard Captain Josie Taylor. Photo by Roger Bianchini.
Prepare yourselves for “a memory of a lifetime” was the general message of Warren County and Town of Front Royal officials greeting a high school band from Petal, Mississippi, to Front Royal and Skyline High School on Jan. 19. While school was closed for Martin Luther King Day, school administrators opened two-year-old Skyline High’s doors and grounds to allow the Petal High School Marching Band a final outdoor rehearsal prior to their appearance in the Presidential Inaugural Parade the following day.
And while the Petal Marching Band is no stranger to honors, state championships and appearances around the nation, several band members we spoke to seemed to realize the import of the approaching moment to themselves, their band, school and nation.
Preparing for the cold - what's that tuba doing on your head? Photo by Roger Bianchini.
“This is the biggest thing since Kennedy’s Inauguration,” Principal Trombonist E.J. Miller observed of the mood of many younger Americans. For while President John F. Kennedy may be ancient history to the teens of the early 21st Century, his well reported appeal to the nation’s youth of the early 1960’s rings familiar to their own generation’s emotional connections to President Obama.
“It’s a true blessing for me to be in this organization and to see the President and to be able to march in the parade. To be in the band selected out of all the different bands in Mississippi is a true blessing and an honor,” 17-year-old T.J. Taylor said as he stood with fellow baritone player Joy Grimsley preparing to brave temperatures 30-some degrees colder than characteristic of their home town.
Petal High Assistant Band Director Chris Word is greeted by Warren County Administrator Doug Stanley and Schools Superintendent Pam McInnis. Photo by Roger Bianchini.
We asked Trombonist Miller if the cold and snow might dampen the Mississippi band’s spirits come inauguration day.
“It doesn’t matter. My mind’s not going to be focused on that, my mind is going to be focused on how awesome it is to be there,” Miller enthused, along with Flute Section Leader Ericka Morris, who agreed wholeheartedly that the weather would be irrelevant to the events of the following day for the Petal contingent.
And while the temperatures on the 19th hovered slightly below freezing throughout the day, as if on cue as the band left the comfortable confines of Skyline High’s auditorium around 1:45 p.m., the clouds lifted, snow flurries evaporated and the sun even peeked out to cast a soft glow as the 158-strong Petal Marching Band and Color Guard warmed to their task in the Skyline football stadium parking lot.
As the brass and reeds warmed both their lips and instruments at one end of the lot and the drumline beat a steady rhythm at the other end, it quickly became apparent why Petal High was one of 70 marching bands chosen to participate in the 56th US Presidential inauguration from a pool of 1,300 applicants.
“They are better than my high school band already and they’re only warming up,” Dan McDermott whispered to me in case any ghosts of his high school past were listening.
“Yea, this droning horn and reed warm up with the drums rattling away down there is pretty avant garde – I wonder what their stage band is like?” I wondered aloud.
Ninth-grade Principal Mike Lott, one of Petal High’s four principals, pointed out that 40 percent of his school’s 1,200, 9-12 grade students are involved in music in one way or another.
The Petal High School Band website – www.petalbands.org – notes it “is the largest organization in the Petal School District, comprised of approximately 160 students in grades 9-12. During the fall, these students are a part of the All-Superior PHS Marching Band. The band performs at football games and makes appearances at parades and community events as well as competitions throughout the South. During the winter and spring, the band is divided into two performing ensembles that include the PHS Symphonic and Concert Bands. The Petal Band program now also offers winter performing opportunities with the Indoor Visual Ensemble and the Indoor Percussion Theatre. All of these groups have received continuous superior ratings in state and regional competitions.” – And some federal, state and local bureaucrats and politicians would have you believe the arts don’t enrich the US student experience enough to fund directly.
Lott said that while the Town of Petal’s population is about 10,000, the school district’s population reaches beyond the town limits into Forrest County to serve a total of about 25,000 people.
And while the band is no stranger to travel and awards, Trombonist Miller said the band’s director didn’t initially alert the band about the application for the Inaugural Parade out of fear of setting his oung charges up for a big fall.
“Our Band Director Mr. “G” (Garnard) made the statement to our Hattiesburg American Newspaper that he didn’t even expect to make it, that’s why he didn’t say anything [to us] about it. And then when he got the papers back it was a huge surprise for us.”
And speaking of huge – Warren Public Schools Superintendent Pamela McInnis noted that Skyline (60) and the new Warren County High (50) bands combined were smaller than the Petal contingent.
As the band practiced on Skyline High’s grounds under the watchful eyes of Assistant Directors Ryan Saul and Chris Word on Jan. 19, Director Mr. Mike Garnard was in DC running through the logistics of the Petal High School Band’s march through history the following day.
“We congratulate you on your achievement, and maybe someday our schools can reach the kind of achievement you have – we hope so at least,” the Petal band, school officials and sponsors were told during welcoming ceremonies in Skyline’s auditorium.
Front Royal, VA Mayor Eugene Tewalt, Warren County, VA Board of Supervisros Chairman Archie Fox, FR Vice Mayor Bret Hrbek, Town Councilmen Shae Parker and Chris Holloway and Warren County, VA Administrator Doug Stanley, his wife and family joined McInnis in welcoming the Petal contingent to Front Royal as a staging area for its jump to the nation’s capital just 70 miles to the east the following day.
Also lauded for their work in facilitating Petal’s trip north were members of Rotary Clubs and Chambers of Commerce on both ends of the trip. Local resident Stephanie Fretwell of the Linden Rotary, whose sister lives in the Forrest County-Hattiesburg area of Mississippi where Petal is, acknowledged several months of logistical efforts to see that Petal High would have their place on the national stage on Jan. 20, 2009, as Barack H. Obama is inaugurated as the 56th President of the United States. Deborah Reynolds (not that one, you aging movie buffs), both a Petal Rotarian and Chamber President thanked her local counterparts for their help, and other local officials for their support and assistance as the Petal Band got in its final practice before the big day.
And remember what the late opera singer Pavorotti said about practice, kids – “If I don’t practice for one day, I notice; if I don’t practice for two days, the band notices; and if I don’t practice for three days, the audience notices.”
The band arrived in Front Royal at about 11 a.m. on Jan. 19 after an overnight stay in a Roanoke Holiday Inn. They descended on the South Street Burger King and McDonald’s for lunch before arriving at Skyline to be greeted by Activities Adminstrator Buck Smith at 1 p.m. They will stay at the Northern Virginia 4-H Educational Center in southern Warren County the evening of the 19th before heading east early.
“I think they told us we’d be getting a 4 a.m. breakfast call,” one band member pondered. That estimate was later pared back even earlier as those around the band said they were expecting to pull out of the 4-H Center and Warren County by 4:30 a.m. for their march into the historical American landscape.
(Dan McDermott contributed to this story)
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Inside this issue:
Also, 2008: The Year in Review
The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.
Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California who specializes in brain function, has found through studies that Internet searching and text messaging has made brains more adept at filtering information and making snap decisions.
What kind of change will this presidential election bring to the political landscape? Historian Robert S. McElvaine compares 2008 with past elections, and concludes that the results this year have the potential to be broad, profound and lasting.
This year’s equation: 1920 + 1932 = 2008
By Robert S. McElvaine
History News Service
We often hear that the election that takes place next Tuesday will be one of the most important in American history. Such statements, however, are often little more than hyperbole. To make the case that an election is momentous, you need to compare it with previous critical ones.
The most important elections are those in which political history changes course. There have been only three genuine realignments in the past 125 years. They centered on the presidential elections of 1896, 1932 and 1968.
It’s often assumed that realignments are the positive results of the actions of popular leaders, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. In fact, however, the origins of realignments are always negative. Voters turn against a party that has long held power when it presides over a major failure.
A long period of Republican dominance began with the 1896 election as the result of an economic collapse, the Panic of 1893, that started under the Democrats. GOP supremacy continued until an economic collapse on its watch, the Panic of 1929, turned the public against the party. The Democratic ascendancy that was made possible by the Panic of 1929 and began with the Election of 1932 lasted until 1968, when a disastrous, unnecessary war discredited the party.
The 1968 turning point was somewhat disguised in that year’s election because of the third-party candidacy of George Wallace and a very narrow victory by Richard Nixon. But Republican strategists understood that if they could add the Wallace vote to Nixon’s they would have a substantial majority and that they could do that by running against “the Sixties.” The GOP used that formula to win an overwhelming victory in 1972. Watergate temporarily slowed the Republican ascendancy, but it was clear by 1980.
Now the long period of Republican dominance that began with a negative reaction against the Democrats in 1968 appears likely to end next Tuesday because both a disastrous, unnecessary war and the Panic of 2008 have discredited the Republicans. If so, Barack Obama will be presented with an opportunity to turn a negative rejection of the party blamed with messing things up into a positive mandate for change and a lasting majority for his party. FDR was able to take advantage of such an opportunity, but Nixon was not, leaving it for Reagan to do so a decade later.
As for which previous election this year’s most resembles, several candidates have been nominated. The two mentioned most often are 1960 and 1980.
In 1960, a young, inexperienced “celebrity” Democrat from a minority that had never before produced a president ran against a more experienced but less likable Republican. The young, handsome, Catholic John F. Kennedy won a narrow victory over the experienced, monochromatic Republican vice president, Richard Nixon.
Voters in 1980 were very upset with the failings of the incumbent party’s president but were also fearful that the challenger was not up to the job, had no experience in foreign policy, and might be dangerous. In the closing days of the campaign, though, a majority of voters decided that it was even riskier to keep going in the same direction with Jimmy Carter than to take a leap into the unknown with Ronald Reagan.
Both of these elections parallel that of 2008 and point toward an Obama victory this year. There are, though, three other elections that are even more similar to the one this year.
In 1896, the party in power under which the economy had collapsed nominated a man who disagreed with the party’s president on some issues. Although William Jennings Bryan was far more different from Democratic President Grover Cleveland than John McCain is from Republican President George W. Bush, Bryan’s party affiliation helped to doom him and William McKinley was elected.
In 1920, the incumbent party’s president had become very unpopular as a result of a war that had not produced the idealistic results he had promised when the United States entered it. Woodrow Wilson was not on the ballot, but his party’s nominee, James Cox, was chained to his party’s unpopular president, who pulled him down like an anchor, and Republican Warren Harding won in a landslide.
In 1932, as in 1896, the economy had collapsed and the incumbent president was extremely unpopular. The challenger was a man who was criticized as being all fluff and no substance. That challenger, Franklin Roosevelt, easily defeated the incumbent, Herbert Hoover.
Next week’s election is shaping up as a combination of 1932 and 1920. The Panic of 2008 is having an effect on the Republican nominee similar to that of the Panic of 1929 on the Republican candidate in 1932. But, unlike Hoover in 1932, McCain is not the incumbent president. That circumstance makes the 2008 election more like that of 1920: McCain is being weighed down by his party’s president and that president’s war, as Cox was in 1920.
The equation for next Tuesday, then, is: 1920+1932 = 2008.
And we can take some comfort in the fact that history indicates that while realignments are caused by party failures, they usually set the country in a fresh direction and usher in needed reforms.
Robert S. McElvaine, a writer for History News Service, is a professor of history at Millsaps College and the author of “The Great Depression.”
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