Elections matter in American political history. Though journalists, contemporary pundits, politicians, and the voting public would agree with this statement, historians have shied away from studying elections in recent years. In fact, the overwhelming tendency of traditional political histories – those penned by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Richard Hofstadter in the mid-twentieth century, for example – to focus on election returns and elite politics made the field of political history seem dead during the 1970s and 1980s, when social and cultural history began to transform historical understanding of how race, gender, urban space, sexuality, religion, and economics have influenced the American experience. Over the past twenty years, the revival in American political history has connected grassroots politics and studies of local institutions with these methodologies from urban history, religious studies, histories of gender and race, and corporate development to better understand political realignment and the trajectory of ideological shifts outside electoral cycles. But Margaret O'Mara demonstrates how studying elections can, in fact, encapsulate and elucidate the ideological shifts, technological change, partisan transformations, and economic debates. Elections, she effectively argues, matter precisely because they create new opportunities for individuals to engage with the state and with one another. After all, she contends in her new book, Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century, “elections are evolutionary, not revolutionary; they provide clues to bigger changes that have happened, that are underway, that are soon to come” (5).

In an important and compelling book, Margaret O'Mara uses four elections – the three-way contest of 1912, the competition over how to solve the Great Depression of 1932, the tumultuous battle during 1968, and the surprising three-way split of 1992 – to explore broader technological, economic, cultural, and political changes in American society during the twentieth century. By connecting the narratives, themes, and historical debates from 1912, 1932, 1968, and 1992, O'Mara illuminates the process of political realignment, the process by which the mass media transformed electoral politics, and the process by which party politics became more candidate-focussed. This historical process of political change is frequently referenced in narratives of twentieth-century political history, but not always analysed and synthesized in one account. O'Mara does this much-needed synthesis effectively and convincingly, using the drama and entertainment of contentious elections to illuminate how shifting demographics, economic crises, new media, and the makeup of party politics transformed political life and the American presidency more broadly.

This book has many important insights that explain not simply changes in presidential politics, but also changes in civic engagement and party organization. First, O'Mara details how, as early as 1932, professional campaign advisers, “whose full-time job was to get a candidate elected and re-elected” (84), began to reshape party politics. These men had expertise in media or government and were dedicated to the presidential hopeful, not the political party. Their success in helping Franklin Roosevelt secure first the nomination and then the presidency made this candidate-centred machinery essential to winning the nomination. Second, O'Mara offers a fascinating examination of the influence of third-party candidates. By focussing on three elections in which third-party candidates ran – 1912, 1968, and 1992 – O'Mara examines how third parties can “disrupt – but not overturn – the two-party system” and transform ideas initially deemed radical into mainstream arguments (10).

O'Mara also effectively explores the shifting role of the media – from the expansion of newspapers to radio and motion pictures to network and then cable television. Perhaps her most groundbreaking research is her chapter on Bill Clinton as the “CNN President.” O'Mara explains that her previous work on the Clinton campaign provides a unique lens through which to view the dramatic changes that Clinton and his media-savvy challenger, Ross Perot, begot in communications strategies. CNN, explains O'Mara, “was event-driven television, and in its pursuit of ratings it helped turn the ordinary process of a presidential election year into suspenseful, personality-driven media events” (178). Looking at regulatory changes in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with the growth of cable television and the shifting strategies of political persuasion that Clinton and Perot used, O'Mara offers a fantastic entrée into recent political history and the impact of cable television and the 24/7 news cycle on presidential politics – from the lens of the Oval Office to that of the television viewer.

Elections matter not simply because they mark definitive turning points that one man ushered in with the sheer force of his personality or skills, as perhaps political historians of fifty years ago previously argued. Rather, elections matter because they are moments in which activists focus their organization on the promotion of a particular issue, or when advisers experiment with a new media technology to promote their candidate, or when new ideas can be heard. O'Mara demonstrates that elections, in fact, provide an important window into the intersections between local, grassroots organizations and national politics. Her book definitively shows that we can learn much about ordinary Americans and political leaders by approaching presidential politics with a sociocultural lens that is informed and enriched by the insights of a growing, interdisciplinary field of political history of the past two decades.