Dan Kallgren is an associate professor of history and political science at UW-Marinette. He recently was the moderator of a political forum on campus that featured state legislative candidates from northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.
Wisconsin Vote on Campus asked him three questions about this year's election.
What sort of topics are dominating the list of voter concerns in the northern Wisconsin/Upper Michigan area?
We had a forum last Friday evening (10/24) with two pairs of Wisconsin candidates running for the State Assembly (the 89th and the 36th districts). The questions varied between the pairs, but the common issues dealt with health insurance in the state, the way state funding for local education is calculated, stemming the rising cost of higher education, infrastructure improvements in the area, and job creation and retention in this area. One of the legislative candidates from Michigan was unable to make the forum, but the one who did attend fielded questions about Michigan’s no-fault auto insurance law, again funding for local education, the creation of jobs in Michigan, and the loss of jobs from the area in recent years.
As a history professor, is there any past presidential election that stands out to you as being the most comparable to the current election? What are the similarities?
I’m not a presidential or political historian, but it seems to me that with Barack Obama potentially becoming the first African American president, similarities can be drawn between elections in the past when other people from groups that had historically been excluded from presidential politics were running. In 1928, Al Smith, the nominee for the Democratic party, was the first Roman Catholic candidate from a major party. He did not win, but in 1960, of course, Jack Kennedy, also a Roman Catholic, was elected. The other potentially comparable election some are pointing to is the 1980 election of Ronald Regan which arguably ushered in our current political paradigm of low taxes and deregulation of the economy. Some argue that with the current political/economic crisis that paradigm is poised to change.
What are some of the main lessons from past presidential elections that you think this year's candidates are using to develop their strategies?
Again, I’m not an expert on these issues, but it seems to me that the McCain campaign has been using the “politics of resentment” tactic Richard Nixon first employed in 1968. They are doing this by labeling Obama as an “elitist” who thinks he is better than everyday American citizens. Also, it is seems that the so-called “culture war” issues that were particularly important in the 1992 campaign (“family values”, the destructive legacy of the 1960s social movements) have reemerged in the past few weeks with Sarah Palin’s remarks about enjoying visiting the “pro-America” parts of the United States, and the campaign playing up connections between Obama and William Ayers, the former head of the Weather Underground. I think the lesson the Democrats learned from past elections is to react quickly to potentially “Swift-Boat-like” ads from the opposition to avoid a repeat of what happened to John Kerry four years ago. Also, the Obama campaign, in deciding to forgo public financing, turned the tables on what had always been a Republican advantage in past elections regarding fund raising. It is strange to hear Republicans complaining of Democrats potentially “buying” the election (in the past that’s what Democrats had claimed of Republicans) and to hear the Democrats arguing for fewer controls on campaign spending (which the Republicans traditionally argued for). The one lesson all sides are going to take away from this election is that public financing of presidential elections is dead.
