As of mid-July, 20 individuals have declared their intentions to become our 45th president. That does not include third-party candidates and others who have “expressed interest.” No doubt, the camp will enlarge a bit before it begins shrinking next year. For many of us, it looks as if we have a less-than-desirable range of people to choose from. Perhaps there is at least one candidate you really like, though overall it can be difficult to distinguish some of these candidates other than their range of personalities and character. Platform or vision for the country is more difficult to ascertain, especially among candidates of the same party. Where these platforms came from is an important question to ask, since it can help us make more informed decisions before we take to the polls. So here’s some history.

After World War II, our country faced some serious questions and had to make some profound decisions: Will we return to isolation? Should we stomp out communism? If so, aggressively or through attrition? Should we gloat in our nuclear monopoly or share our science with the world in the name of peace and prosperity? Is the Soviet Union an ally as she had been in the War or is she the Enemy now that Hitler is gone? Is America safe from communism? Do we need to be? How people answered these questions not only shaped our destiny as far as policy and international relations. It has shaped our political parties in ways that still determines our candidates today. I would argue that we, as voters, need to encourage them to redefine the political landscape for the better.

While both parties dealt with the questions above, they responded in their own ways, some with more success than others. And it actually caused division within both parties immediately following WWII. Democrats held the Executive Branch and were in charge of shaping our foreign policy immediately following the War. One could argue that this gave them the advantage since they could shape the party’s stance on these new and major issues. On the other hand, there was a considerable danger with this responsibility. If President Truman slipped or made one misstep with the Soviets, he could lose his political mandate and that of the entire party, allowing Republicans to take the helm.

However, dualities existed in both parties. Conservatives, moderates, and liberals within both parties were substantially divided in the early years of the Cold War, specifically with how the United States should respond to the Soviet Union and the “threat” of communism. Conservative Republicans and Democrats believed that an all-out war with the Soviets was inevitable, and the sooner we confronted them aggressively, the better, since we held the upper hand militarily. Liberals from both parties felt that we would easily out-live the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union and should simply wait them out.

This debate shaped much of politics of the 1940s and 1950s. The extremes of both parties were easily silenced by the majority who agreed upon Truman’s defining policy of containing communism and doing whatever necessary to stave off its appeal and advances at home and abroad. (The Korean peninsula validated this need to confront communism.)

Furthermore, both parties felt a need to silence left-leaning “radicals” working in American factories, thanks to a growing distaste for communism and individuals such as Sen. Joe McCarthy. Evidence of moderation within the two parties is also seen in the 1960 election. Both Nixon and Kennedy held relatively moderate positions, and Kennedy won by one-tenth of one percent, which was less than 113,000 votes. One could argue their similar views on communism united them more than it divided them. This was a turning point in American politics. We are still dealing with decisions that came out of this election.

Kennedy perhaps would have had a more substantial victory if it were not for a disgruntled, conservative group within the party. (Remember those extremes we were talking about.) They were predominantly in the South, and felt betrayed by the Kennedy-Johnson position against segregation and for civil rights. Electorates representing these states refused to support Kennedy and threw their votes toward a segregationist, Harry Byrd.

Republicans were split in their response to this election. Some felt that the abundance of votes for moderate candidates validated the need to shift the party toward a more liberal-Republican platform. Others, like Barry Goldwater, felt that the party could pull in the conservative Democrats if they swung to the right-wing, conservative branch of the party. In the 1964 elections, even though Goldwater lost in a landslide to Johnson, he carried the South. A GOP candidate had not done this well in the South since the Reconstruction. By 1968, however, Republicans would have additional advantages. The political landscape was changing.

The “radicals” of the 1940s and 1950s, who had been silenced by policies and politicians, had also been silenced by their growing affluence. Suddenly, in the 1950s, a factory job paid well enough that they could own a home, a car, a television, and drift into suburban oblivion. Their children saw this passivity and listened to the stories of their parents’ former fanaticism around the dinner table. They grew resentful about how their parents became silent and how they enjoyed a material wealth denied to others. At the same time, there were wealthy youth who saw the inequality within the United States and carried a certain amount of guilt that would serve as an effective motivator for action. These youth combined to be called the “New Left.” And they were looking beyond our policy with the Soviet Union to issues that impacted them directly at home.

While there is more to the rise of this New Left, the point is they were becoming vocal again, and they had a lot to revolt against: segregation in the South, Vietnam, the draft, inequality, the threat of nuclear war, conformity. They had been inspired by the youthful, pro-Civil Rights, pro-Peace Corps President Kennedy. These young individuals were utterly dissatisfied with the current state of their Union by the mid-1960s, and they expressed their frustrations with marches, boycotts, and unfortunately, sometimes violence. Their counterparts—the authority that had been traditionally respected—responded with violence and oppression, giving the impression that these radicals were out of control.

There was also a bourgeoning New Right in the Republican Party. They capitalized on these protests and expanded their platform beyond states’ rights (which had won over the former Democratic South) to champion Law and Order. This is a position that was hard to argue against and that mobilized the fear of chaos to win a vote. This, and the disillusionment of Democratic youth after the 1968 Democratic Convention with the subsequent riots, handed the election to Nixon in 1968, though with only a 500,000 margin, or 0.3%. However, if you look at the South, whose electorates handed their votes to segregationist George Wallace, Nixon could have arguably won those 9.9 million votes. Nixon would carry those states in the next election. The South has voted overwhelmingly Republican ever since.

By 1970, the Republican Party had discovered their new identity. Libertarians, anti-Communists, and traditionalists (social conservatives) had formed a new coalition with the GOP and had drowned out liberal Republicans along the lines of Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller. Goldwater’s plan to swing to the right had worked, but more as a response to the youth of the New Left after 1965. Those young “radicals” had become disillusioned with inequality, bigotry, hypocrisy, and war, and launched several social revolutions: the sexual revolution, feminism, gay rights, contraception and abortion, and secularism. Evangelicals awoke by the hundred of thousands to join the libertarians and anti-Communists and became a mobilizing force to create a strong Republican party, though quite different from the one 15 years prior. Within ten years, they had their Golden Age with Reagan. The extent of their success can even be seen in the Democrats realizing the need to swing right with Bill Clinton to win in 1992.

How does all this bring us to 2016 with 20 or more people clamoring for the White House? We have the legacy of a traditional Republican Party that was banked heavily on the Law and Order and states’ rights platform of the 1960s and 1970s and has seen itself as the bastion of morality. The past few elections, the party has been criticized for lacking a coherent platform. It is quite coherent, but one for 30 years ago. The Left of the 1960s drifted into political oblivion by the 1970s when Vietnam and the draft ended, 18-year-olds gained suffrage, and social issues such as homosexuality, abortion, contraceptives, and secularism were no longer taboo. Their social success was their political failure. It was a party of adaptation in the 1990s, and had a resurgence under traditional progressivism with Obama. But again, what about 2016? Is it an election seeking to maintain the traditional stances of previous decades? Are these issues of the past still relevant today or should both parties redefine themselves out of a need for relevance? Or are we four years too early for that?

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NOTE: I had the privilege to attend a seminar at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio dealing with the Cold War and American Society. Much of the information presented here was gathered from these lectures by professors considered experts in their field. Apologies for the lack of citations, but I can refer you to publications by these individuals if you are interested.