Talk:United States presidential election, 1908
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[edit] Electoral picture peculiarity
Why is the graphic depiction of electoral votes skewed? Rarely nowadays does one see democratic votes colored red and and republican votes blue. --maru (talk) Contribs 20:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] “Anointed”
SoWhy changed the sentence in the introduction:
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- Popular incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt, honoring a promise not to seek a third term, anointed William Howard Taft as his successor.
to:
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- Popular incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt, honoring a promise not to seek a third term, apointed William Howard Taft as his successor.
Aside from misspelling “appointed”, I thought that this was a bad change: you appoint somebody to a job when you somehow have the right of hiring and firing; moreover, it suggests that the job is inferior, less powerful than your own. “Anoint”, on the other hand, is so often-used, it's a cliché, and for good reason: it captures precisely the notion that, although Roosevelt didn't have the legal right of choosing his successor, he did link Taft as the person to carry the Roosevelt legacy, that Taft was his inheritor. In the Bible, the priests would anoint a king to show that the king was the chosen of God; in a similar fashion, Roosevelt was showing that Taft was his chosen. (And, yes, that means that Roosevelt was taking on the role of both the priests and of God; this is actually quite consistent with Roosevelt's personality. <g>)
SoWhy has also tried the replacement “recommended”, which is too weak. Your waiter might recommend a dish, but he doesn't expect you to order it; he isn't invested in your choice. Roosevelt had his prestige on the line in the election of 1908: if Taft had been rejected, it would have been an implicit rejection of Roosevelt.
