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Published as Chapter 1 in The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times, Eugene Mazo and Michael Dimino, eds.
It has been nearly two centuries since an American presidential election has evoked a crisis of confidence like that following the election of 2016. Not since the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 has there been such a public display of anxiety concerning the methods by which we choose our chief executive. As in the contest of 1828 pitting the Democrat Jackson against his Federalist opponent John Quincy Adams, the presidential nominating process of 2016 produced a contest between a celebrity populist, widely seen as unqualified by experience or temperament, and a highly experienced and competent but deeply uninspiring political insider who had been anointed by establishment elites.
Rights
Publication Date
9-1-2020
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
City
New York
ISBN
9781108835398
First Page
10
Last Page
35
Disciplines
Constitutional Law | Election Law | Law
Recommended Citation
James A. Gardner, Presidential Selection: Historical, Institutional, and Democratic Perspectives in The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times (Eugene Mazo & Michael Dimino, eds., Cambridge University Press 2020).