In Presidential Elections, the Past Can Be Prelude

American elections from more than 100 years ago may not offer much of a guide for the best digital-outreach strategy or how much money a campaign needs to raise, but the old adage “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is as true for elections as it is for war and peace. The so-called political experts proved this point in 2016 and 2020, looking back only as far as the 1980s to make sense of Donald Trump and the phenomenon of conservative populism. Bob Riel’s Quest for the Presidency: The Storied and Surprising History of Presidential Campaigns in America goes beyond recent headlines to demonstrate that all of us can learn more from the past when thinking about presidential elections and democracy.