No one can analyze the present like someone who analyzes the past. With Barack Obama's inauguration just a month away, Uni's own history experts are here to put the ground-breaking presidential election of 2008 in perspective. What does Obama's victory over Republican candidate John McCain say about where the country is heading? How does it rank among other historic elections? Read on as social studies teachers Chris Butler, Janet Morford, Bill Sutton, and Billy Vaughn discuss those topics and more.

What are your thoughts about this year’s election, and how do you think it relates to history in general?

Chris Butler
B.A. and M.Ed, University of Illinois
Courses taught: World History, Modern History, World Since 1945

It could have been dirtier than it was, the election itself, especially McCain’s side. [They could've played] the race card more, which they did a little bit, and maybe they really couldn’t. It was too out of topic and could backfire on them. As far as that goes, elections all too often get sidetracked by non-issues that take up all the time. You know, things like "lipstick on a pig." That’s really unfortunate.

One of the things I think the election process does is — it is a grueling process for the candidates, so I think by the end of it, if somebody looks pretty good after all the stuff that’d gone on, that’s a compliment to them. Barack Obama really held up well as far as that goes. He took the high road. McCain said he’d take the high road, but he had one of Karl Rove’s protégé’s running his campaign, and I’ve heard so many times people saying, “I used to like John McCain, but this isn’t the John McCain that I knew.” After the election, I think he has gone back to the John McCain people liked. You know, I liked him before. But during the campaign, I was disgusted, and it was largely because of what his campaign people were trying to do.

I think it really is one of the landmark events in our history. I mean, with civil rights, you’d get Congress to pass laws to try to do away with discrimination. This is the first there has been a popular vote on something where the majority of the Americans voted for an African-American. That, to me, is absolutely huge. I hope that this is something that lasts, that it doesn’t backfire in some ways. … It will remain to be seen how this will all play out, but I think at this point it is a really important event.

Janet Morford (executive teacher)
B.A., Bates College; various graduate degrees in France; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Chicago
Course taught: Introduction to Social Studies

Clearly a lot of people were interested in it because of the prominent role played by women candidates and the African-African presidential candidate, and it was very exciting to see how seriously both of those kinds of candidates were taken.

I think, symbolically, it represents a great achievement to have an African-American in the White House. I’d like to see similar things with female candidates. When you look at the history of our country, for example, you look at the history of voting rights — there was a big struggle back in the 19th century to decide who should get voting rights first, males of color or women? Actually, those two groups who had worked together for civil rights for a while were kind of pitted against each other, as the abolitionists who were also activists for women’s rights tried to decide, "Should we support the effort to give men of color the right to vote or should we hold out as long as women are not being given the right to vote?"

And so some of the reactions to having Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as candidates for the Democratic party this year made me think about that earlier struggle. I think it’s important to keep in mind that, in either case, it’s just about what people who already have full rights, white males, decide to do. It was unfortunate in the 19th century that when men of color got the right to vote it was almost 50 years before women got the right to vote. I hope it won’t be that long before we see similar advances for women in terms of gaining access to the country’s highest executive office.
But it was a very interesting and exciting election; I was very excited to see how much young people were involved in it and following it, and I have high hopes for what Barack Obama’s going to achieve under his administration.

William Sutton
B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., University of Illinois
Courses taught: U.S. History, Senior Seminar

This will come as a shock and surprise to you because I’m the only one who noticed this, but I think that this is a milestone for race relations in America — and you can quote me on that. Maybe everyone else will figure that out, too.

But what I think even more is that the most significant thing to me has been the response from a whole bunch of different people and an unexpected sort of patriotic response, as signified by college students spontaneously singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the U of I and at Madison-Wisconsin — these sort of patriotic symbols that one end of the spectrum has not really been embracing for a long time. I think it felt sort of left out of the entire political process. I think Obama’s victory signals to them that they are back in, and they’re excited about being back in.

I’ve never seen an election even remotely like this, in terms of the excitement on the part of anybody. You just haven’t seen that kind of excitement. You haven’t seen those mass rallies and spontaneous demonstrations, but it’s particularly from people who have not really been known to be a part of the political process, the mainstream process. Young people, African-Americans, a whole bunch of people, who have been sort of marginalized in the political process for a long time responded to this victory by being very much re-enfranchised.

Billy Vaughn
B.M., Florida State University; M.A., University of Chicago; M.Ed., University of Illinois
Courses taught: Intro to Philosophy, Anthropology, World History, and Modern History

Well, as has been said many times now, [voters elected] the first African-American president of the United States, which is a major historical event. I would also want to say that it doesn’t mean that racism has now magically ended in the United States. There are still many racial issues that need to be resolved, but I’m hopeful that President Obama — President-elect Obama — will be able to tackle these so that we can continue to move forward in the United States on racial issues.

How much did you pay attention to this election compared to previous years?

Butler:
I was obsessed with it. I would get home and probably watch three hours worth of different news shows, talk shows. I’m sort of glad to be able to get off my addiction now.

Morford:
I probably paid more attention to this election that any other I have in my life, I think in part because there was a real possibility of history being made by electing a candidate who represents a group that has not yet been in the White House. I think also that after eight years of the Bush administration, I was seeing a lot of principles laid out in the Constitution, seeing them kind of eroded and eaten away. I had really high hopes that through this election we’d be able to elect someone who could change that pattern.

Sutton:
I paid infinitely more attention. I paid more attention to this election than I paid to all the elections previous to this in my entire personal history. Take that.

Vaughn:
I usually spend a lot of time paying attention to politics, but that this was very intense, absolutely, compared to others in the past.

Other than the fact that Obama is the first African-American elected president, do you feel anything else was different about this election?

Butler:
Well, of course, that’s the thing people especially think of. But along those lines, I was glad to see that the American people actually voted for somebody who’s intelligent, which I don’t think has been one of the criteria they’ve gone with in recent elections, and so we’ve paid for it. That, to me, would probably be biggest thing — you know, it’s OK to vote for someone who’s intelligent.

Morford:
From what I understand, Obama won in part because he managed — he and his campaign managed — to mobilize many of the subgroups of the population who have never been brought together into a circle of coalition. That’s very exciting to see how Obama’s support not only came through from African-Americans but also in large part from women and also from younger voters. And when you think about the history of our country, again think about the Constitution, and the order in which people who originally did not have voting rights got them; first it was men of color, then it was women, then the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, and so it makes a lot of sense that in the history of our country those are the groups that historically have been disenfranchised. And that’s exciting to see, that Obama was able to get broad support from all three of those categories and bring them together.

Sutton:
I feel like for the first time in a long time there was very real choice, a very real difference in approach and opportunity. Obama’s different; it’s not just that he’s black. He’s a different person, he comes from nowhere, and he seems to remember that he came from nowhere. There are people who have been running the show who have always lived privileged lives. They have no idea of the way the rest of us live, actually. You can’t really blame them; they just don’t know. Obama really seems to come from the people and be comfortable with that. At the same time, he’s intelligent, he’s obviously articulate, which is also something we’ve been lacking in the last few administrations, so I think that that level of intellectual engagement is going to be interesting.

Vaughn:
I was very sad to see what happened in California with the passing of Proposition 8. To me that makes this election very bittersweet, and while a few people have commented to me personally about how sad they are about this, I’ve generally noticed that for a lot of people, not just at Uni but around campus and Champaign, most people do not seem to be that aware of what happened in California. This passing of Proposition 8 was the first time that rights given to gays and lesbians have now been taken away, and I find that very scary.

What part of this election would you have wished to turn out differently?

Butler:
Maybe if there had been a bigger vote, so it would seem more like a mandate — it was still a majority, but just so it would seem the American people were especially united behind him. We’ve talked about how divided we were, but to me this election was not nearly as divisive as the one in 2004, and I was furious what was going on then, the Swift Boat tactics and stuff like that.

Morford:
I think like a lot of people I was dismayed to see — not surprised, but just kind of disappointed to see — the pettiness to which some of the candidates stooped during the election. I think about some of the sniping back and forth between the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign, early in the process; I think particularly about the nasty turns the Republicans brought on as Obama really started to gain an advantage over McCain towards the end. I think that’s really unfortunate, but the good thing is that people showed that they weren’t going to be swayed by that, they weren’t going to be intimidated by a politics of fear, and they were willing to support Obama’s candidacy in spite of the often false accusations the McCain campaign was making.

Sutton:
I wish that Mitch McConnell would have lost in Kentucky in the senatorial race. That would have been raw. But other than that, I mean, if the vote had been more in favor of Obama I guess that would’ve been nice, but really and truly I just think everything about this surprised me and exceeded my expectations, and none of my worst fears were realized.

Vaughn:
Besides the passing of Proposition 8, well, not everyone I voted for won, but you know you can’t always expect to win every election.

How do you think Obama will change the course of the nation?

Butler:
We know what he wants to do. It’s really a cloudy glass as far as what’s actually going to happen. Since most of the campaign promises were made, we’ve had just this meltdown. I think it remains to be seen. I think if it were normal times, like it was four or five months ago, he would be able to turn things around. I know one of the things he plans on doing is closing down Guatanamo Bay, which I think is a real good signal to the rest of the world. I think we’ve really sort of lost our moral compass in the world, and one of the things he wants to do is reclaim that, and put on a better face for the rest of the world.

Morford:
Well, that’s very hard to predict. What I hope will happen: I really hope that we make strides towards a more equitable health care system in which people more readily have access to decent health care. I hope also that Obama, through his approach to various issues but also through his approach to relations with other countries, will mend, to a large extent, the sort of distrust of the United States that has developed over the last eight years during the Bush administration.

My sense is that he is much more likely to emphasize diplomacy over war-mongering. And I think the skills that I’ve seen him use — for example, during the debates, the ability to hear people out when they’re being irrational, provocative — I think those skills will be well-applied to mending our relationships with other countries around the world.

I know a lot of the media coverage from the days leading up to the election kept emphasizing how much support Obama had from lots of countries around the world. After 9/11 there was a huge outpouring of sympathy towards Americans, and then that got whittled away as people saw how the Bush administration was dealing with fears about terrorism. I feel like there’s a lot of good will there right now, and I hope that Barack Obama will use that good will to mend our relations with other countries.

Sutton:
You know, I’m not a prophet, and I don’t do that. I really have no idea. I mean, I know what I hope; I just don’t have any idea how he’s going to do it. I hope we get to change some of the conversations about race; I hope we get to really acknowledge and embrace the fact that we not only have a black president, but we have an African-American first lady, first family; and I hope that that will make some sort of breakthrough in the general way that racism works in this country. I hope it knocks it down a couple more pegs, but I hope we’ll also be able to talk about it more.

Of course, I want the Constitution back; that’d really be slick. I hope that Obama really is able to do something with health insurance and with the environment, and I hope that we can address seriously weaning ourselves off of foreign oil, which is something that wasn’t ever going to happen when the administration was essentially the administration of oil. So, I’ve got a lot of high hopes. I hope I don’t have too high hopes, but I think it’s not too much to expect to get the Constitution back and some of these other things.

Vaughn:
I don’t know. I’m waiting to see what he’s going to do. He has so many big problems ahead that I’m just hoping that he will be successful in whatever he decides to do. But I don’t like to predict the future.