Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 June 3

Humanities desk
< June 2	<< May | June | Jul >>	June 4 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 3

Prudence Turner

Hi - I can't find Prudence Turner on Wikipedia. I don't understand why. She was one of the most talented British Artists of the twentieth century and yet she doesn't seem to be on your website. Would you investigate this for me please? Many thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.198.68.222 (talk) 19:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Investigation complete: it's because you didn't write an article for Prudence Turner!  Wikipedia is made possible by contributions from volunteers like you. 107.15.157.44 (talk) 20:58, 3 June 2020 (UTC) Links added: 06:52, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi question-asker, It would be awesome if you want to write an article on Prudence Turner. The most important thing to establish (and this may be the reason why an article doesn’t exist) is that she is what Wikipedia calls “notable” enough to have an entry in an encyclopedia. As Help:Your first article explains, this means at least three high-quality sources that a) have substantial discussion of the subject (not just a mention) and b) are written and published independently of the subject (so, a company's website or press releases are not OK). If you are not sure if the subject you want to write about is "notable", you can ask questions at the Wikipedia:Teahouse. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 21:59, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello questioner. I'd add to the advice above that it's notoriously difficult for newbies to write an article, despite the best intentions of Help:Your first article. Please don't be discouraged if you find it hard and don't spend an eternity on your first draft, as you'll inevitably get a lot of things 'wrong'. If you ask questions, people will help you. Wikipedia notoriously under-represents notable women, it would be lovely to have another included. And we do love new editors, dearly! --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 09:09, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

In this specific case the most difficult may be to find in-depth coverage in reliable sources. You can find some information by Googling ["Prudence Turner" "Baluchistan"|"Balochistan"], but none of the hits is what Wikipedia considers a reliable source. Apparently, her work has not received recognition by the established art world.  --Lambiam 10:04, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I found Who's who in Art, Volume 32 (p. 1006: "Turner, Prudence, freelance artist in oil on canvas; Scottish landscape painter specifically since 1966; plus portraiture, seascapes and dream-fantasies. b: 15 Mar., 1930. d of: Brigadier Charles Ernest Windle, O.B.E., M.C. Studied: in India, Egypt, France and England, learning from artists already famous. Nationally recognized in England in 1934. Fine Art Publication copyrights purchased from 1967 onwards by well-established publishers and given international circulation, including limited editions of signed prints. Works in collections: U.K., and Overseas. Commissions: Professional: constant, including royalty. Signs work: "Prudence Turner." Address: 49 Romulus Ct., Justin CL, Brentford Dock Marina, Brentford, Middx. TW8 8QW".

Also (perhaps not such a good source) Premier Paintings - Prudence Turner - Contemporary Artist "Prudence Turner (1930 - 2007) was a contemporary artist who painted highland landscapes in a characteristic and impressive style. She was born of English parents in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan. She lived in Kashmir and in London".

Other art auction websites give her death date as 15th September 2007. [1] [2]

Alansplodge (talk) 12:13, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Primary vs unelected incumbent president

I know that Teddy Kennedy ran against Jimmy Carter in 1980 but that was, I think, considered pretty unusual, maybe because Carter was elected and was running for re-election. The previous election, there were 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries where Ronald Reagan seriously contested the unelected incumbent, Gerald Ford (Ford became president on Nixon's resignation).

Is the latter situation unusual? VP becomes president for whatever reason, runs for president in next election, and receives serious opposition in the primaries? Like did Truman get much primary opposition? I know he lost the 1952 general election to Eisenhower. It seems to me that he was also favored by the party elders, who had gotten Roosevelt to swap out Henry Wallace in favor of Truman.

What about when an incumbent VP runs for president? Biden got some opposition but is an ex-VP rather than an incumbent. Gore (2000) had an opponent (Bradley) but the opponent got nowhere. Bush (1988) also won easily. Cheney (2008) didn't run. I didn't check back further than 1988. (Added: Humphrey (1968) might be relevant: I'll read up on that.)

Basically I'm wondering whether VP-becomes-nominee is relatively speaking baked into the system. Of course it's not legally mandated or anything like that. I'm thinking of Pence in 2024 if Trump gets a 2nd term, or Biden's VP in 2028, or in 2024 if for whatever reason Biden doesn't run for a 2nd term. Or hmm, has there ever been a case of an incumbent VP running in a primary against the sitting president? Like if Pence had run against Trump this year? That could be entertaining. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 22:37, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm struggling to understand your opening sentence. Whenever an incumbent president stands for re-election, there is always some opponent. In what sense was Kennedy's candidature unusual? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:08, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

The OP is asking about primary challenges. There is often no serious opponent to an incumbent in the party primary. --Trovatore (talk) 23:24, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Ah, you must mean that situation where Americans have taken the adjective from the expression "primary election" and turned it into a noun. You must admit that in the title of this section the word "primary" could easily be read as an adjective. HiLo48 (talk) 23:37, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

You mean that it might have been asking about a contrast between primary incumbent presidents versus unelected incumbent presidents? I suppose it could be read that way; not sure about "easily". --Trovatore (talk) 23:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

To be honest, I wasn't sure what the title meant when I first read it, but we don't have primary elections where Jack and I come from, so the US meaning didn't leap into my mind. (The US isn't mentioned there.) I wonder how many countries do? (Something amusing I just noticed is that my spellchecker objects to the spelling of "unelected" in that title.) HiLo48 (talk) 23:53, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, sorry about any confusion: in the US the party nominees are elected by the public, in what are called primary elections (they are spread out across several months). The Democratic primaries this year were a complicated mess but ended up with Joe Biden as the de facto nominee. The Republicans also had primaries, but they were a formality since Trump had no real opponent. In November there will be an election for the presidency itself, which is called a "general election" to distinguish it from a primary. An unelected president just means one who got into the office by succession (the president leaves office in the middle of the term and the VP becomes president) rather than being elected into it. I think Nixon (resigned in 1974) was the only president so far to leave office in mid-term other than feet first, though there have been unsuccessful impeachment attempts against a few.

Ford (Nixon's VP who became president on Nixon's resignation) was himself not elected as VP (Nixon's original VP Agnew had resigned after an unrelated scandal to Nixon's, and Nixon appointed Ford to replace Agnew), and then Ford appointed Rockefeller as his own VP. So that led to an apparently historically unique situation where the president and VP were both unelected. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 00:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

You say the party nominees are elected by the public. Well, kinda sorta. The parties can choose their nominees more or less however they want (there are limits; for example you can't let white people vote and not black people -- see white primary). If you don't like how they choose them, you don't have to vote for their nominee in the general election.

In practice, most states hold party primaries, though there's nothing that says they have to, and the parties decide how much weight to put on them. Down to and including zero — the parties are not obliged to pay any attention to the primary at all. If you don't like it, see above. --Trovatore (talk) 01:15, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

The primaries are about a lot more than just selecting the presidential candidate. For example, the Iowa congressman Steve King, a Republican, was defeated by a Republican challenger in Tuesday's primary. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:54, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I gather that the states have somewhat more ability to regulate the parties vis-a-vis those races, for slightly complicated reasons. On the one hand, the states don't have to let the people vote for president at all; they are entitled to name their electors via a vote of the legislature, though I don't think that's happened since 1824 or something like that. So you'd think they could do whatever they want to in regulating the presidential race, and that's sort of almost true (again modulo the 15th amendment). But if they wind up with different candidates on the presidential ballot than the rest of the country, that's an obvious problem; the state's electors might wind up without influence.
All the other races are at the state level or smaller, so the states don't have to worry about that and potentially have more opportunity to regulate the parties. However, California Democratic Party v. Jones seems to put serious limits on their right to regulate them; they have to honor the parties' freedom of association. I don't know that the limits are clear. --Trovatore (talk) 17:09, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

In the 1968 Democratic presidential primaries, incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson had significant challenges from Senators Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy. LBJ withdrew from the race on April 1, and Bobby Kennedy got assassinated right after winning the California primary in early June. The party bosses united around vice president Hubert Humphrey as the nominee at the chaotic and violent party convention in Chicago and Republican Richard Nixon won the November election. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I knew Johnson opted out of seeking a second term, but didn't realize the primaries were already underway when he did that. The 1968 primaries sound interesting and I'll have to read up on them. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 00:40, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

To correct a minor point, Harry Truman did not "lose the 1952 election to Eisenhower". Truman quickly decided not to run that year; Adlai Stevenson was the losing Democratic candidate. --76.71.5.208 (talk) 02:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

And to return to some of the original statements: Ted Kennedy's run against Jimmy Carter in 1980 was indeed unusual, as it is very rare for a serious opponent to run in the primaries against an incumbent president seeking a second term. However, running unopposed is just as rare; for example Richard Nixon faced two low-profile opponents in the Republican primaries in 1972. Former vice-presidents like Biden have an advantage due to name recognition and relevant experience. However, it's no guarantee of becoming a front-runner. Dan Quayle's presidential run was a notorious fiasco (as was his vice-presidency, some might say), but having served as V-P was indeed an asset for others such as Nixon, G.H.W. Bush, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and now Biden. Xuxl (talk) 14:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• There haven't been that many VPs to succeed to the presidency in the midst of a term, we can look at each to see what happened on the subsequent election (it is also important to note that the United States presidential primary process is a relatively modern one. Proper primaries didn't exist at all until the early 20th century, and until the 1960s were still only a minor part of the candidate selection process, see Smoke-filled room). Here's the complete table:
  • John Tyler, the first, known derisively as "His Accidency", was hugely unpopular, and dropped out of the race endorsing James K. Polk; the 1844 Democratic National Convention was a contentious mess, Polk himself was relatively unknown going in to the convention, even with Tyler's endorsement, he arose as the original Dark horse candidate as a compromise between those who backed former president Martin Van Buren and a slate of other candidates.
  • Andrew Johnson, the second, stood NO chance of being nominated by either party in 1868. He was a Unionist Democrat from Tennessee who was tabbed by the Republican Lincoln to run on a coalition ticket during the Civil War. The Republicans didn't trust him, and the Democrats thought of him as a turncoat, not to mention that his presidency was an unmitigated disaster with his mishandling of Reconstruction, and he was the first president to ever be impeached, holding his office by a narrow 1-vote margin. Johnson was an official candidate for the Democratic nomination at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, at the convention he only lasted through the first round of voting, garnering only 65 of 317 possible votes. The convention was held at Tammany Hall in New York, which probably influenced the selection of eventual nominee Horatio Seymour, a New Yorker.
  • Chester A. Arthur, the third, only nominally contested the 1884 United States presidential election. He was an official candidate at the 1884 Republican National Convention, but that was almost purely on a pro-forma basis as the sitting president. He had health issues, and didn't really want the job; though he was well liked as a President, and consistently finished a strong second behind eventual nominee James G. Blaine on all ballots, he never really gained many votes through the voting process, and most support coalesced around Blaine at the convention.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, the fourth, was the first who successfully ran for and won, not only his own party's nomination, but the next general election as well. He was hugely popular, but he voluntarily decided not to run in the 1908 United States presidential election, though at the time there was no law against it, there was a precedent set by George Washington that no president would seek a third term. His handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, was pretty much a disaster as a president (though he was MUCH better regarded as a later Supreme Court justice), so Roosevelt ran on his own third party ticket in 1912, splitting the Republican vote and throwing THAT election to Wilson.
  • Calvin Coolidge, the fifth, was a popular, if do-nothing sort of president, and easily won his party nomination at the 1924 Republican National Convention. He also won a second term in the general election, and expressed no interest in running in 1928.
  • Harry S. Truman, the sixth, faced serious opposition from the Dixiecrats, the bigot wing of the Democratic party, and perhaps would have faced more opposition at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, but they bolted the party and ran their own candidate, Strom Thurmond. Truman was thought likely to lose the general election, having lost the Solid South of the Democratic Party, but ended up doing much better, and surprised all by winning the general election rather comfortably, despite some newspapers famously blowing the coverage of the election (see Dewey Defeats Truman). Truman's second term was MUCH less successful than his first, and he ran briefly, by default, for a third term before his defeat in the New Hampshire Primary that year led him to quickly withdraw from the race, as noted above Adlai Stevenson got the nomination that year. After Truman, the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution came into effect, severely limiting (but not entirely eliminating) the possibility of an unelected VP seeking a third term.
  • Lyndon B. Johnson, the seventh, only faced opposition in the 1964 Democratic Party presidential primaries from George Wallace, again from the bigot wing of the Democratic party; like Thurmond before him, Wallace bolt the party and take a bunch of delegates with him. Though he didn't run in 1964, he did run a separate campaign for president 4 years later. By the time of the 1964 Democratic National Convention, he was the unanimous nominee on the first ballot, and he also crushed his opponent in the 1964 United States presidential election leading to the nickname "Landslide Lyndon". However, the Vietnam War had not yet tarnished his reputation, as noted above following some disastrous results in the early primaries, he famously backed out of the 1968 race. He was eligible to run for a third term only because he had completed less than half of his predecessor's term.
  • Gerald Ford, the eighth, faced serious opposition in the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries from Ronald Reagan, and Ford only barely secured the nomination in 1976, winning by less than 1% of the delegate margin at the 1976 Republican National Convention. He would go on to lose the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter.

There's the full list. --Jayron32 16:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Slight correction: That's not why LBJ was called "Landslide Lyndon"; that ironic sobriquet was bestowed upon him due to the 1948 United States Senate election in Texas, where he won the primary runoff by 87 votes, some of which may possibly have been legitimate. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 21:27, 6 June 2020 (UTC)