BY GEORGE MYERS JR.

Morning Sentinel City Editor

You've been hearing it for months: Yesterday's presidential election would be a historic one, with the nation electing the first black American president or the first female vice president.

Today, historians have noted the results and are drafting a new chapter for U.S. election history.

But despite this morning's post-election fanfare, some say the election wasn't truly of large consequence, not with two centuries of more momentous ones in the books with which to compare.

Far more important, said Colby College political-science professor L. Sandy Maisel, was the election of 1800, in which Vice President Thomas Jefferson vanquished President John Adams.

For the first time, said Maisel, director of Colby's Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement, "a party in power lost at the polls and voluntarily turned over the reins of power to the other side."

It was the beginning of the end for the Federalist party.

"Jefferson's election threatened the very essence of what the Federalists stood for," Maisel said. "Yet the Federalists ceded power ... and the legitimacy of our government was thus established."

Nor did yesterday's election rank as the second-most important one, he said. That's reserved for 1796, the first contested presidential election. More significantly, it was when George Washington refused to serve a third term.

By retiring to Mount Vernon, Maisel said, "Washington assured that we would have an elected presidency, not one that the incumbent held on to until death. His voluntarily retiring ... assured that the American experiment with an elected chief executive succeeded."

While neither of those elections had blogs or Saturday Night Live comics to help spark the campaigns, they did, Maisel says, "guarantee the legitimacy of the new government."

Transforming society

Maisel reserves the third spot for Lincoln's first election, in 1860. It was a key one, he said, in terms of policy-setting, which led directly to the Civil War and "a basic transformation in American society."

Following that: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first election, in 1932. FDR's so-called New Deal coalition and subsequent "governing philosophy -- that the federal government had a responsibility to lead the nation out of the Great Depression -- fundamentally changed the relationship between a people and their government," Maisel said.

Several others, he said, had a heft and consequence greater than the McCain-Obama election, including Andrew Jackson's, in 1828; McKinley's, in 1896; Lyndon Baines Johnson's, in 1964; and Ronald Reagan's, in 1980.

The latter, Maisel said, "marked the demise of the New Deal coalition in many eyes" and signaled the rise of voters who based their choices on cultural issues rather than economic ones.

The rise of Lincoln

For James P. Melcher, associate professor of political science at the University of Maine at Farmington, the most significant election was that of 1860, carrying with it the "first Republican win, the rise of Lincoln" and a signal of increasing regional divisions.

Next in consequence was the election of 1896, in which Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan; and that of 1932, in which Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt swamped Republican Herbert Hoover three years after the century's biggest stock market swoon.

Melcher said the 1968 election ranks fourth in import.

"So many changes to the nominating process came out of what happened at the Democratic convention: You have the most electoral votes for a third party since Teddy Roosevelt, the Southern Strategy of Nixon that helps move realignment along, the tragic assassination of RFK, a sitting incumbent bailing out of the race. ... It has to be up there," Melcher said.

For David Harville, a retired history teacher in Skowhegan, the three most important elections were:

• In 1860, when Lincoln, the first GOP president, "defeated three major challengers, saw the regional split of the Democratic Party and secession by the South, which led to the Civil War." Lincoln's election "paved the way for the abolition of slavery with his famous Emancipation Proclamation of 1863," Harville said.

• In 1932. FDR's New Deal, Harville said, "provided legal support to labor, social security to the aged and the dependent, protection of depositors' savings; and created a coalition of minorities under one umbrella of the Democratic Party."

• In 1900. William McKinley was re-elected, but more significant, said Harville, was his running mate who became the 26th president after McKinley was assassinated in 1901: Teddy Roosevelt.

Harville said Roosevelt brought robust leadership to Washington "that focused the federal government and our nation on conservation of natural resources, destruction of corporate monopolies and world peace."

George Myers Jr. -- 861-9249

gmyers@centralmaine.com