To the Editor:

D

avid Frum’s essay comparing the election of 1968 with the current national election has some merit, but there are other prior elections that share some commonalities with this year’s Clinton–Trump competition [“Is It 1968?” September].

In his analytical survey of the 1896 election, The Triumph of William McKinley, Karl Rove explores how McKinley’s strategy helped him defeat William Jennings Bryan without much help from the equivalent of today’s GOP establishment. The primary issues of the day were Europe’s unfair trading practices, the importance of the gold standard, unemployment, and weakened national security.

Out on the campaign trail, Donald Trump has been discussing law and order, trade issues, securing the southern border, and ramping up the armed forces. Although Trump is much more of an outsider than McKinley, the 2016 election has some similarities to the 1896 contest. After eight years of a progressive White House agenda, America faces steep domestic and foreign-policy challenges.

The current election could also be compared to the 1980 battle between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. On the one hand, Carter had governed over a period of economic malaise and a feckless foreign policy. By contrast, Reagan offered a bold economic plan of tax cuts along with a vision of a robust military. He took his plan of liberty, opportunity, and security all the way to a landslide victory.

Both McKinley and Reagan won their first elections by large margins, but does that mean that Donald Trump will win at all, or win big? Hillary Clinton has been part of an administration that has governed during a weak economic recovery and a period of foreign-policy drift. Trump is articulating a message of economic growth, law and order, responsive government, and a strong national-security strategy.

Will the majority of voters pull the lever for the change that Trump promises, or will they stick with the status quo politician? Both contenders are highly flawed and unpopular, so it is, as of this writing, a toss-up.
Christian Milord
Fullerton, California

To the Editor:

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avid Frum asks, “Is It 1968?” and looks at the politics of then and now. His comparison of the issues and the conservatism of Nixon and Trump makes a strong argument against “ideological extremes.”

I recall 1968. The class of voters who felt betrayed and maltreated then are today’s Trump supporters. The candidate I remember as the “Trump” of the time was not Nixon, but rather George Wallace. How could a discussion of 1968 omit Wallace? Trump will “Make America Great Again,” and, similarly, my old Wallace campaign button reads “Stand Up For America.” Wallace was a serious candidate who won nearly 14 percent of the popular vote and 45 electoral votes.

One could easily confuse old George Wallace quotes with what Trump says today. Here’s Wallace on law and order and the police: “You have seen the breakdown of law and order in your own state. And according to the decisions of the Supreme Court, if you go—if you go into the streets tonight and are attacked and a policeman knocks the person in the head, he’ll be let out of jail before you get into the hospital and then they go and try the policeman about it.” On big government: “I am in this race because I believe the American people have been pushed around long enough and that they, like you and I, are fed up with the continuing trend toward a socialist state which now subjects the individual to the dictates of an all-powerful central government.” On hecklers:  “You know what you are? You’re a little punk. That’s all you are. You haven’t got any guts. You’ve got too much hair on your head, partner. You got a load on your mind. That’s right.”

It seems that Trump’s populism is a faithful echo of Wallace’s vintage brand.
Thomas Straka
Pendleton, South Carolina

To the Editor:

P

erhaps David Frum and Noah C. Rothman should have compared notes. Mr. Frum denies that threats to public peace and safety are as great today as they were 48 years ago and Mr. Rothman implicitly makes a pretty good case that the situations are comparable [“Whose Violence Is It?” September].

What Mr. Frum overlooks is that, as bad as 1968 was, matters got worse, as violent attacks on police and military personnel accelerated. The Weather Underground, which included the likes of Bill Ayers, formed the next year and proceeded to add bombing to their rioting. Richard Nixon’s election was surely a conservative reaction to the events symbolized by the year 1968, but the president was unable to stop them. It took the death of four young people at Kent State University at the hands of National Guardsmen to shake up the anti-war left.

As for 2016, Mr. Rothman’s account of the anti-Trump and Black Lives Matter–inspired violence reminds us more than a little of 1968 and its aftermath. If anything, the credibility these forces have in the media and in government makes them even more menacing. Who knows how much more violence there will be in the absence of a credible governmental response?

Effectively, Mr. Rothman refutes Mr. Frum’s judgment on 2016’s dissimilarity to 1968. Judging by what followed back then, we have every reason to expect a rocky future.
Richard H. Reeb Jr.
Helendale, California

David Frum writes:

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t’s interesting that Christian Milord compares this election to 1896. I previously essayed that comparison myself, only with Trump in the role of William Jennings Bryan, not William McKinley:

Both men championed constituencies that formerly occupied a position of cultural and political dominance: small farmers in Bryan’s case, the white working class in Trump’s. Both of those constituencies had been economically ravaged for years beforehand: by 20 years of price deflation for the small farmers, by a generation of declining wages for the white working class.

Both men used their communication skills to upend well-established political hierarchies. . . . Both candidates came to prominence in times of anger and anxiety. . . .Both offered exciting, easy-to-understand solutions: in Bryan’s case, replacing the country’s de facto gold standard with the bimetallic silver and gold standard of pre-Civil War days; in Trump’s, immigration restriction plus trade protection. . . .Both men joined their economic ideas to a cultural message that appalled and frightened their political opponents.

You can read the rest, if you wish, in the Wall Street Journal of July 29, 2016. For today’s purposes, it’s sufficient to note that both men inflamed rather than assuaged the passions of their time—and as a result, both men found themselves on the opposite side from the small-“c” conservative forces of their time, and especially big business and finance. For Bryan, that spelled defeat. For Trump . . . we’ll see.

Thomas Straka is not the first to compare Donald Trump to George Wallace, but he certainly counts as one of the few to regard the comparison as a compliment. There’s some truth to it—provided one also mixes in a certain quantity of Henry Wallace, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vice president of 1941–45, who ran for president in 1948 on a platform of “Be Nicer to the Soviets” that bears a certain family resemblance to Donald Trump’s approach to great-power politics. On the other hand, Wallace failed to capture the nomination of a major party. Trump succeeded, with consequences still to be reckoned.

Richard Reeb offers a bold creative misreading of Noah Rothman, who has repeatedly and accurately noted the radical difference between the troubles of today and those of 1968. America is in almost every way a more orderly society than it was then. If it feels different, that’s attributable to the fabulous improvement and diffusion of video technology, not to any deterioration in law and order.

Noah C. Rothman writes:

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must take issue with Richard Reeb’s contention that I suggest that the underreported violence perpetrated by Donald Trump’s opponents is reminiscent of 1968. As I wrote on Commentary’s blog, in June of last year, “It is not 1968, and the Republican Party would do well to disabuse themselves of the notion that it is.” David Frum does a more thorough job than I of making this case, but we agree on the conclusion. In noting that the rise of a dangerous culture on the left—one that equates speech with violence and violence with speech—has given rise to real political violence, I hope to do my small part in preventing the next 1968 from occurring.