For my first post, I would like to set the stage for our ongoing discussion of the coming presidential election with some little known but highly important political history. In order to do so, I will refer to a very timely column by James Traub in the New York Times regarding the long-held belief by Karl Rove that GWB is a contemporary President McKinley. Understanding the Bush/McKinley parallel will illuminate the reader’s understanding of what is likely to happen in the coming presidential election, and in the years ahead.

Please be sure to read on.

Traub’s intention is to trash the McKinley/GWB parallel, but his column actually serves to reinforce it once removed from the natural anti-GOP bias that is naturally characteristic of the Times. The historical background? It’s 1896. The GOP has been the nation’s dominant party for 36 years, ever since Lincoln won his first election in 1860, but recent years have seen that power diminish. The issues that the GOP majority coalition had been united around, like the Civil War and its aftermath, are fading into history, and a popular Democratic president, Grover Cleveland, is finishing his second successful term. Republicans turn to a big-state governor, Ohio’s William McKinley, who leads the party back to the White House in 1896, defeating the leftist-populist William Jennings Bryan by putting together a regional coalition of largely contiguous states in the industrial north and on the coasts.

Now here’s where things get interesting. Fast-forward 104 years, change a few nouns, and the above paragraph remains basically true. Instead of 1896, it’s 2000. Instead of GOP dominance beginning in 1860 under Lincoln, it began in 1980 under Reagan. Instead of a waning GOP majority due to the end of the Civil War, there is a waning GOP majority due to the end of Communism. Instead of Grover Cleveland, there’s Bill Clinton. Instead of William Jennings Bryan, we have Al Gore. And instead of Ohio Gov. McKinley, we have Texas Gov. Bush, also winning the election by uniting contiguous states to form an electoral majority, only this time in the south and west.

As students of history are well aware, McKinley’s election was followed by 2-3 decades of Republican institutional rule, including 5 GOP presidents and prolonged control over Congress. Traub points out that McKinley did this by making the GOP the party of the future through reaching out to new immigrant groups, by recognizing that America had become an industrial society, and by winning the industrial north, the high-growth area of the time. Traub then goes on to argue that this is exactly what GWB is not doing, and, as such, we might as well get used to our imminent Democratic overlords.

Do you buy it? Neither do I?

Traub’s logical flaws are quite transparent; once again, this is the NYT we’re talking about. For example, one of Traub’s arguments contrasting GWB and McKinley basically goes as follows: McKinley won the high-growth industrial north; GWB won the south; in McKinley’s time, the south voted Democrat; the Democrats were the minority party; therefore, GWB is leading the GOP down the path to minority status. Catch the flaw? Traub is assuming that “high-growth” and “industrial north” are equivalent. They’re not. It wasn’t the fact that McKinley won the north that propelled him to victory. It was the fact that he won the region of the country that was experiencing the most growth, economically and socially, and that region during McKinley’s time was the industrial north. Today, however, the sunbelt is the most pro-growth region of the country; the industrial north is losing population because the economy has gone post-industrial! What Traub should be looking to see is who won the most high-growth regions of the country during the last two elections, and even Traub himself, in the very same article, points out that GWB won 97 of the nation’s fastest growing 100 counties. I would say the parallel is quite intact.

Traub also contrasts the two presidents by suggesting that McKinley was more labor-friendly. But once again, it’s an apples and oranges comparison. Labor was the backbone of the industrial economy. McKinley was forward-thinking enough to recognize that, and to design policies as such. Today’s post-industrial economy is fueled by the high-tech, white-collar sectors that Bush has been quite friendly to; things like Social Security reform and pro-growth tax cuts are ideal for the young professionals who are the backbone of today’s economy. Once again, the parallel is intact.

And both McKinley and GWB led the U.S. into military engagements that were termed by opponents to be “imperialistic.” I really don’t see how the parallel could be any clearer. Rove was right; Traub is wrong; McKinley and GWB are political soulmates.

And that’s where 2008 comes in.

In 1900, McKinley won a rematch against Bryan, capturing most of his 1896 states while making electoral inroads into the west. In 2004, GWB defeated a Gore-like opponent, winning most of his 2000 states while upping his numbers in the midwest. In 1904, the dynamic Teddy Roosevelt changed the map by taking the McKinley states and sweeping the wavering west, turning it “red.” In 2008, will a dynamic GOP successor to GWB change the map once again, taking Bush country and bringing in the purple northern midwest, turning Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota red?

If so, who will it be?

That’s what I’m here to find out.

Stay tuned…