The Thrilla on Manila

In 1908, the United States was at a managerial crossroads. Teddy Roosevelt, who had ascended to the presidency following the 1901 assassination of William McKinley and won reelection in his own right in 1904, was legally eligable for another term but chose not to run. He retained his massive popularity, and in 1912 would run for office again, this time as a member of the progressive "Bull Moose" Party; he would split his old support base with his former colleagues in the Republican Party, opening the door for Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who would enter the country into World War I and be instrumental in the postwar restructuring of the western world. In the meantime, the 1908 election pitted Roosevelt's protege William Howard Taft against the most important also-ran in American history, the thrice-defeated William Jennings Bryan.

In a quiet way, the 1908 election also heralded the arrival of a newcomer that would prove by far a more important political player as the century progressed than either of the two men running for president, namely, the sound byte. The advent of the Edison phonograph - as owned by many Americans and experienced by countless more at entertainment parlors across the country - had by then progressed sufficiently that the two candidates were convinced to record speeches that would be sold at Edison outlets nationwide. Though the speeches sold well, it would be a stretch to claim they had an enormous (or even significant) outcome on Taft's eventual landslide victory. Still, they humbly symbolized the dawn of a new era in the extension of the American election down to the common man, and even served to create the first-ever presidential "debates" when the aforementioned parlors would set up "dialogues" between opposing phonographs for public consumption. In all, 22 two-minute canisters were recorded in 1908 - 12 by Taft, 10 by Bryan - and have now been digitized and compiled on CD by Archephone Records.

Certainly, as historical curiosities their appeal is almost unrivalled, offering as they do a chance to hear the voices of the fattest president in American history and the prosecuting attorney of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Yet the recordings are revalatory far beyond their old-timey charm, not only as a source of insight into the minds and personalities of two manifestly intelligent men, but also - more sadly - as evidence of the denigration of American popular politics into something profoundly bland and noticably dumbed down.

Appropriately, the centennial of the Taft-Bryan recordings marked the appearance of the most widely distributed presidential debates in American history, simulcast online for the very first time. The speakers themselves offered no surprises. Republican candidate John McCain - an intelligent man and devoted politician, but not a dynamic public speaker - retreated too often to "my fellow Americans" for dramatic effect and was predictably forgettable in the midst of a presidential race he could never have won. Future president Barack Obama also stayed true to form, offering a well-scripted if platitudinous series of remarks in the confident tone that understandably won him multitudes of admirers.

The contents of the debates were as color-by-numbers as the men who delivered them. Each candidate danced around taking any concrete stances even as the two discussed what purportedly were the hot button topics on whose basis American voters were supposed to choose their candidate. The vapidness of the arguments was compounded as both camps attempted to reach out to the nation's lowest common denominator (see: dumb kids). As reported so lustily by media outlets and dried-up late night tv (see: SNL), the GOP was boldfaced in its stilted folksiness, canonizing Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber in a desperate attempt to reach the everyman. However, the Dems were just as bad, urging American youth and audiences of The View to "BaRock the Vote" and ruining the words "hope" and "change" for decades to come. Neither Obama nor McCain made any concerted appeal to their intelligence in their pursuit of votes, neglecting what ultimately should be the job's primary qualification out of fear of alienating any sector of the voting populace.

The Taft-Bryan recordings, by contrast, showcase both candidates making rational appeals to their audiences and trying to win votes by explicitly outlining the policies they intended to implement in the Oval Office. Though the issues they discuss - trusts, railroads, and American activity in the Philippines, among others - are in many cases no longer at the forefront of the national consciousness, it's nonetheless remarkable to hear American politicans laying their cards on the table. Nor is this only evident in speeches on the future of Roosevelt Progressivism: Taft's talk on the "Rights and Progress of the Negro," for instance, addresses the sticky issue of racial politics with a directness that is both touching and possessed of a brave honesty whose modern-day absence is in many ways responsible for the continued existence of America's racial demons. The most stunning of all the recordings are one apiece from each candidate recorded not as political statements, but as reflections of their characters. Taft displays the same sensitivity he showed in his discussion of black Americans' status in a speech called "Irish Humor," where he suggests that humor had helped sustain Irish immigrants through their enormously difficult transition to American life. Bryan, meanwhile, uses a 3000-year-old grain of wheat as the basis of a staggering meditation on immortality:

It is inconceivable to imagine any Presidential candidate issuing a similar statement today - any such revelation of depth of character could only be seen as too elitist, religious, or strange, and in any case would be tantamount to political suicide. Yet listening to recordings like these could remind modern politicians of the benefits America enjoyed as a consequence of having had the most educated founding fathers in world history. If we're lucky, one day we'll see the transposition of politicians unafraid to openly lead with their minds to a modern political context; until then, we can enjoy listening to one of the terribly few aspects of life that was better in 1908 than it is today. (You can buy Debate '08 from Amazon or directly from Archeophone.)