"The things that truly last when men and things have passed, They are all in Pennsylvania this morning." – Rudyard Kipling in "Philadelphia."
The failure of Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, to be chosen as Kamala Harris’s running mate reflects the low esteem that Pennsylvania’s political figures are held nationally. Since the nation’s founding, Pennsylvania, once the second largest state in the union, and Philadelphia, once the second largest city, have counted little politically.
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Over the years the country’s various political parties, from the Jeffersonians and Federalists to today’s two parties, made few attempts to enlist the city and state’s elites into the heart of national politics. Pennsylvania’s only President, James Buchanan, is regarded as among the nation’s greatest political failures. His inaction during the national crisis over the slavery issue is often credited with helping bring about our Civil War. Since Buchanan, no Pennsylvanian has been a serious candidate for President or Vice President of either major party.
The record of the state’s governors and senators is equally unimpressive as far as national prominence is concerned. This despite the fact that for most of the 20th century, Pennsylvania’s electoral vote was second only to New York’s. It was the solidest of Republican bulwarks, voting for the Grand Old Party in every Presidential election from 1900 to 1932 with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt in his Bull Moose campaign of 1912. Franklin D. Roosevelt held the state for his last three terms, but it reverted Republican in 1948 and remained so until John F. Kennedy, building upon a huge majority in Democratic-dominated Philadelphia, carried the state in 1960. In the last eight Presidential elections it only voted Republican once, narrowly for Donald Trump in 2016.
Over the last 125 years, only one member of the Keystone State achieved national significance: Boies Penrose, a U.S. senator from 1896 to 1921. Penrose, a 300-pound mammoth of a man, had a legendary appetite. A typical breakfast would consist of a dozen eggs, a half-dozen rolls, and an inch-thick slab of ham washed down in a vat of coffee. His appetite for politics also was equally huge. He effectively ran Pennsylvania politics along with Republican party boss Matt Quay and was a major figure nationally for 30 years. He helped engineer the vice presidency for Theodore Roosevelt in 1900, mostly as a way to spite the Republican party boss, Mark Hanna, whom he personally disliked. He also was one of men responsible for Warren Harding winning the presidency in 1920. No other Pennsylvanian since could boast of similar influence.
A case could be made that David Lawrence, a long-time Democratic major of Pittsburgh, former governor and respected voice in the Democratic party, helped Kennedy become president. But he was a minor figure compared to Penrose. Hugh Scott, a long-time Republican member of the House and the Senate, was one of the three Republican elders who told Richard Nixon he had to resign the presidency. But like Lawrence, he was a behind-the-scenes operator with no national ambitions.
The question remains: why has Pennsylvania counted so little nationally? Some historians have argued that Pennsylvania and Philadelphia suffered from an inferiority complex once the state lost influence to New York early in the 19th Century. The nation’s banking center moved from Philadelphia to New York in the 1830s when Andrew Jackson declared war against the Bank of the United States then housed in the city. Financial dominance has remained on Wall Street ever since. The same holds true for Philadelphia’s legal position. The term “Philadelphia lawyer” was once a synonym for honesty and probity and the University of Pennsylvania was once famous for the quality of its graduates. Now Yale and Harvard have long outstripped Penn. The last graduate from Penn’s law school to serve on the Supreme Court was Owen J. Roberts. Famous for casting the vote, “the switch in time that saved nine,” that may have saved the Court from President Roosevelt's packing plan, Roberts left the Court in 1950. Yale and Havard have dominated the Court since.
Pennsylvania’s major contribution to the nation’s economic development, the coal mining industry, Pittsburgh steel mills and the railroads, gave the state a powerful economic position in the nation into the 20th century, but that failed to translate to political power. The Pennsylvania Manufactures Association carefully nurtured the state economically and politically but lacked any interest in national politics. The Pennsylvania Railroad lost power and influence as the New York Central and the Erie Canal gave the Empire state access to the economically expanding Middle West and Great Lakes region.
Some historians have argued that the state and especially Philadelphia have suffered from an inferiority complex viz a viz as New York became the economic and cultural center but also the sports capital of the nation. For 30 years, Philadelphia matched New York for dominance in the only sport that mattered to the nation, baseball. Christened “White Elephants” by New York Giants Manager John McGraw, Connie Mack’s Athletics won one fewer pennants but two more World Series titles than McGraw’s Giants. But the success of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees combined with the miserable performance of the two Philadelphia teams, the A’s, and Phillies, further reinforced the state and city’s sense of inferiority.
One of the most interesting and intriguing explanations for both the state's and its largest city’s sense of inferiority was developed by the historian, R. Digby Baltzell of the University of Pennsylvania, the man who coined the term WASP. Baltzell, an historian as well as sociologist, in a series of books and articles, especially "Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia" argued that Quaker influence with its emphasis on equality and deference was at the core of the state’s reluctance to push itself forward. He contrasted the record of statesmanship beginning with John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, down to the Kennedys compared with the quiet deference of the great Philadelphia families, the Drexels, the Ingersolls and the Biddles.
With Shapiro’s rejection for the vice presidency nomination and relative insignificance of current Sens. Robert Casey and John Fetterman – one a quiet party regular and the other a party renegade – I doubt if the state’s political insignificance nationally will change.
John P. Rossi is Emeritus Professor of History at La Salle University.
