17 Atlantic Covers From Completely different Presidential Elections

November 1, 2024

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These covers provide a window into the distinctive and enduring concepts of every electoral period.

An orange-tinted illustration of three issues of The Atlantic magazine side by side. From L to R: The October 1920 issue, the November 1992 issue, and the October 2012 issue — Illustration by The Atlantic

October 31, 2024, 3:18 PM ET

That is an version of Time-Journey Thursdays, a journey via The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the current, floor pleasant treasures, and look at the American thought.

This 12 months’s presidential election is the sixtieth within the historical past of the USA. The Atlantic has for 42 of these election cycles printed tales inspecting the health of candidates to serve, the inclinations of the voting public to vote, and the durability of our democratic establishments to hold on. Our journal’s covers in October and November of presidential-election years provide home windows into the distinctive—or uniquely persistent—nationwide anxieties of every electoral period.

One cowl story from our archives imagined a hypothetical Inauguration Day on which, “for the primary time in historical past, the Inaugural stand has been constructed on the West Entrance of the Capitol,” however by midday in D.C., “there isn’t a new President—not one of the candidates carried a majority of the electoral vote on November 4.” That was Laurence H. Tribe and Thomas M. Rollins writing in The Atlantic in October 1980, in a narrative titled “Impasse” (to be clear, on the precise 1981 Inauguration Day, Ronald Reagan was sworn in, having defeated the incumbent Jimmy Carter in a landslide the earlier November).

Voters on the margins have been an everyday topic of examine in The Atlantic. “Between campaigns Smith is open-minded on all issues affecting the physique politic,” Meredith Nicholson wrote in an October 1920 essay outlining debates he, a Democrat, had been having together with his good friend Smith, a Republican, about whom to vote for within the upcoming presidential election. However “social gathering loyalty is likely one of the strongest elements within the operation of our democracy,” Nicholson famous. “If Smith, in his new temper of independence, votes for Mr. Cox, and I, not just a little bitter that my social gathering in these eight years has failed to satisfy my hopes for it, vote for Mr. Harding, which of us, I ponder, will finest serve America?”

Politics is a constant presence, however not all of our fall covers from these years completely involved the election. November 1976, as an illustration, led with the tradition critic Benjamin DeMott’s spirited exploration of the state of the American household. November 1964 contained a particular complement on … the nation of Canada; the month earlier than, nevertheless, The Atlantic made its second-ever presidential endorsement. As of late, the months surrounding an election pose a selected problem for our print crew: The November problem of the journal seems on newsstands after the election, however goes to the printers earlier than it takes place.

In lots of election years, together with the current one, we sought classes from American historical past. Our November 1988 problem mounted a sturdy protection for the instructing of American historical past—historical past, not simply civics classes, or details about American authorities. “The probabilities for democratic ideas to outlive such crises rely upon the variety of residents who keep in mind how free societies have responded to crises up to now, how free societies have acted to defend themselves in, and emerge from, the unhealthy occasions. Why have some societies fallen and others stood quick?” the historian Paul Gagnon wrote, in a cowl story titled “Why Examine Historical past?”

So spend a second in the present day with historical past: Beneath is a choice of 17 Atlantic covers from election years spanning two centuries. For those who’d prefer to learn extra, you’ll be able to browse our whole assortment of points on-line right here, courting again to November 1857.