“This is it. The most hotly contested presidential race of our lifetimes is in the homestretch. One week from now, we will know who will be the next American president. Maybe.”
That’s a good way to sum up how we are feeling right now regarding the 2024 presidential election. Will it be Trump? Will it be Harris?
But wait — the words above came from exactly two decades ago, written in an editorial in our paper in late October 2004, when George W. Bush was running against John Kerry.
And yet it’s hard to imagine it’s not 2024 when you read another sentence from that same editorial: “American Jews have Israel on their minds more than ever. And that is sure to impact voting choices.”
Or what about these words from 1916, describing the election that saw the incumbent Woodrow Wilson narrowly defeat former associate justice of the Supreme Court Charles Evans Hughes? Surely this also describes 2024: “The political fight waxes hotter and hotter as the Presidential campaign progresses. The partisans of each candidate claim that victory is surely theirs, and that theirs is the just cause which deserves to win. It is not for anybody less than a prophet to predict what the future may bring forth.”
As focused as we’ve always been on local stories, this paper always carried a take on presidential elections, whether it was a discussion on the Jewish voting bloc or just hoping a new president would be a friend to the Jews.
Within those words, one could glean that Reform Jews had a deeply held belief in — and gratitude to — the stability of the American political system.
Reform Judaism leaders founded and funded this paper, and Reform Judaism was part of the great assimilationist project of American Jewry. America was the new home for the diaspora, while many other countries were chaotic — and chaos often spelled scapegoating of the conveniently hated Jews. Unrest in Europe was sending streams of Jewish immigrants to the United States. American Jews needed to cling to the idea that America was peaceful and stable.
After Jan. 6, 2021, these words from 127 years ago ring differently:
“We are accustomed to peaceful succession of administrations, and have no adequate idea of the dangers that elsewhere attend the same function,” the paper wrote in 1897. “No Janizaries [sic], no Swiss Guards surround the palaces of our rulers, to defend the consecrated person against the passions stirred up by despotic government. The exchange of one President for another is but a peaceful ripple upon the stream of our political existence.”
This was written by founding editor Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger for the very first presidential election that’s even mentioned in the pages of this paper, that of 1896, which saw Republican William McKinley defeat Democrat William Jennings Bryan.
“One administration succeeds another with the naturalness and simplicity befitting a mere subordinate function, the latter being recognized as but an expression of that majestic form of self-government, which is inherent in the American people,” Voorsanger’s lengthy “Our Weekly Chat” continued. “The President who retires becomes as the humblest of citizens, the first to obey his successor in all things lawful and right. He retires because it is the people’s will.”
In 1928, in a column headlined “Editorial Comment,” we made a plea for religious tolerance without mentioning Judaism, but it’s hard not to see that same ideal image of America upheld. The race was between Republican Herbert Hoover and Democratic Al Smith.
“Religious tolerance should win when a Quaker and a Catholic, each representing a minority group, contest for the presidency. The K. K. K. will find little to choose between such candidates, for both espouse liberalism. However they may differ on prohibition, farm relief, immigration, labor and the World Court, both candidates have won on merit the right to lead a great political party. May the leading issues be met squarely this fall and the contest elevated to a high level.”
Back in that editorial of 20 years ago, we emphasized something similar. An election should be about ideas, not identity.
“We Jews honor diverse opinion, and conflict often leads to consensus,” we wrote. “As long as we remember we are still one community, we should feel free to have at it in the marketplace of ideas.”
Perhaps these days, a year after the horrific events of Oct. 7, our appetite for conflict is a little suppressed. But spare a thought for the election of 1908, which saw Republican William Howard Taft snuff out Bryan’s third attempt at the presidency.
At the time, we spared a little sigh for the stress of it all and admitted it’s only human to want it to end.
“But it is all over now and we will once more pursue the even tenor of our ways,” we wrote.