The History Behind Today’s Headlines

One of the true lessons of history is the stunned surprise of people today when they are confronted with the similarities of yesterday. What? This happened before? Maybe decades ago? Or centuries ago? How could this be?

Ronald T. Shafer, with an impressive resume as Wall Street Journal editor for a bunch of years, and now retired, is a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. He tackles the incongruities of history with knowledge, a smile, and a delicious sense of ironic humor. His latest book, a compilation of his more recent Washington Post articles, is aptly titled Breaking News All Over Again: The History Behind Today’s Headlines, The conclusion being that history definitely does repeat itself – wearing different clothes.

History is all about concepts. Of course there are specific events or situations, but the nub of it all, if you look closely, are the concepts.

It also helps that author Shafer has a dandy way with words, and tells a great story. 

For instance, vis-a-vis COVID. A pandemic is nothing new. Consider the Black Plague or other diseases that wiped out millions of people centuries ago. A hundred years ago was the so-called “Spanish Flu,” which also wiped out millions, probably wasn’t Spanish, and made Spaniards very angry at the implication that it was. Shafer tells it like it was.

More COVID… like vax and anti-vax. Two hundred and fifty years ago, smallpox, a recurrent plague of its own, with a 30% mortality rate was running rampant in Massachusetts. Abigail Adams bit a fearsome bullet in deciding to have herself – and her four young children – vaccinated. This was not a quick shot in the arm. It required weeks of preparation, and further quarantine. And she underwent the procedure first, so she could be immune and care for the children. If she survived. The decision was hers alone. Her husband was in Philadelphia shepherding a new nation into existence. PS – She survived.

For those who recoil at the nastiness and venom of recent elections, one could look back to the US Centennial election of 1876 and the Hayes-Tilden travesty. It challenged the Electoral Votes, and was played out in full before the entire country. It was also confused and complicated – and was barely “settled” by Inauguration Day. It was also mainly fought by the “bedfellows” of both sides, since both acerbic Samuel Tilden (D-NY), popular vote winner, and genial Rutherford B. Hayes (R-OH) chose to remain out of the fray and out of the path of slung mud. But it’s a dandy of a story! 

How about the Vice President having a final say in certifying the Electoral College votes? Or was it merely a formality? Go back to 1857, and check out a true molehill being whipped into a non-mountain by a man who wasn’t even the Vice President! (The elected VP had died years earlier, and had never been replaced!) Plus the fact that the actual vote, popular and electoral, was never in doubt. 

And there’s a little known story of racism being responsible for nobody actually running for VP as a Democratic candidate in 1840. Incumbent President Martin Van Buren, elected in 1836, was running again. His VP, Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, was summarily dropped from the ticket. Granted those early VPs had an honorable but mostly ceremonial position. It was primarily a geopolitical accommodation, with no heavy lifting. But back in 1811, Johnson had begun a common law marriage with Julia Chinn, a mulatto slave. He could not free her, according to Kentucky law. The fact that the marriage lasted for more than 20 years and was considered reasonably happy, producing two daughters – and the fact that Julia Chinn had died a few years before Johnson became VP… none of this mattered. What did matter was that those two daughters had been lovingly and well brought up, educated, dressed in silks and satins, introduced into polite society and even married white fellows. It was scandalous and not to be tolerated by those few who knew about it. When the time came for the re-election of Van Buren, enough people knew about it to make Johnson a definite liability. He was not on the ticket, and perhaps they believed that ducking a potentially hot subject was more important than an empty office. Nobody was nominated on the Democratic ticket. It didn’t matter anyway. Van Buren lost. But not because of his “unsuitable” Vice President. 

Snubbing between incoming and outgoing Presidents is not new either. Author Shafer focuses on a complicated minuet-gone-wrong between outgoing Andrew Johnson and incoming Ulysses S. Grant, who had grown to loathe each other. And THEY had precedents for that too! POTUS John Adams skipped out of town to avoid his ex-best friend Thomas Jefferson. And his son John Q. dittoed the snub because he loathed Andrew Jackson. 

But one of my favorite Shafer stories concerns commercially-driven holidays. We always hear the complaints that even before Labor Day, Halloween decorations are filling the shelves. And before Halloween is over, Christmas goodies are filling the shelves. Poor Thanksgiving gets lost in the shuffle. This is not new. Abraham Lincoln put the 4th Thursday in November on the calendar as Thanksgiving, but FDR was coerced into moving it up a week – to accommodate the merchants who wanted a week’s “stimulus” for the shoppers. Granted it was still the Depression, but in 1939, the country was torn between which Thanksgiving to celebrate, and it wound up being where you lived. The confusion lasted only one year. It is now and forever (we trust) the 4th Thursday. (And the shelves are still decorated in Merry and Bright right after Halloween!

Read “Breaking News” – you’ll love it! And you might even learn something!est of all – it’s only $10! What a bargain!!

Shafer, Ronald G. – Breaking News All Over Again: The History Behind Today’s Headlines

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 125 pages

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8840421079