Talk:Daniel Webster

Conservatives and Liberals??

Aren't these post-Civil War labels? I find it anachronistic to call Webster a "conservative"; Webster was dead before J. S. Mill defined Liberalism. Webster was a Whig. Leave it at that. And it gets really confusing to oppose Webster to the Democratic Party which in the Antebellum period was the conservative party. And being "a spokesman for modernization and the industrial interests" in the 1830s makes him a raving radical!! This first paragraph needs some work. If Webster was a conservative he'd be old republican and agrarian. Russell D. Jones 02:28, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A very small hat thrown into the ring

I am moving the previous last sentence of the lead paragraph here, " He aspired to the White House but was an elitist, not a "man of the people," and the people knew it." This is a nice ringing expression, as are many things from the presumed author. Nevertheless, it is a judgment, it makes some assumptions about what "the people" knew, and I don't think should be present without sourcing.

Objective expert commentary is one thing; editorializing is another. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Here, here! --Jones

Yet another hat: "second party system"

I've been wondering about this about since I joined this site, but I figured I'd ask now since it appears in the lead sentence of this article: Is there any reason the "party systems" scheme is used so prominently in American party politics discussions here? I can see where it's sometimes useful for periodizing American political development, but other times it seems kind of forced. Shamira Gelbman 03:00, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A party system became a useful tool to periodize and analyze changes in US political history. It started gaining popularity, I think, beginning in the 1950s. A party system, historically, is defined as two political parties dominating national elections. All historians with whom I've spoken are in agreement that there have been three party systems is US history (Federalist/Republican; Democratic/Whig; Democratic/Republican). However, political scientists define a party system differently and tend to see a political realignment as the formation of a new party system. Thus political scientists have seen six or seven "party systems" in US history (many are positing that the recent election indicates the arrival of the seventh "party system"). I do not think a political realignment is the advent of an new party system as a realignment lacks the essential ingredient for a new party system, which is a new party. I've been harboring ambitions of re-writing a lot of articles that discuss a fourth, fifth, or sixth "party system." Such philosophizing should be left to the political science workgroup. Russell D. Jones 15:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Second Party System

As a guy who took *many* courses in American history at Exeter, Stanford, and Harvard, and who could actually have gotten his degree in History rather than English, I have to admit my ignorance and say that I have never, until now, heard of the Second Party System. This is typical of the sort of stuff that Prof. Jensen used to put into his articles, and is probably the reason he is no longer with us -- Larry and others (including me) would argue that just because professional historians, in their own specialized journals, did things *one* way (ie, "Gettysburg, Campaign of" rather than "Battle of Gettysburg"), that was not necessarily the way things should be done at CZ. Prof. Jensen was, shall I say, rather intractable about some of these things and finally chose to leave rather than continue to try to have his own way. I myself am not gonna jump into this morass by deleting this reference myself, but I *urge* someone else to! This is elitist, "inside baseball" writing, and it has no place in a general encyclopedia except *way* further down in the article, as an aside or footnote. Hayford Peirce 15:57, 15 March 2009 (UTC)