If a visitor from another planet were to land in America today, they might just wonder about the civility of our Presidential politics. Inundated with vitriol against both left and right of the political landscape, such visitors would see no real comity in the public discourse.
President Donald Trump’s personal life has been dissected, and sins from the distant past keep surfacing, keeping the ordinary American somewhat sheltered from what good he might be doing. Has this been the norm down through our history of men running for and attaining the highest office in the land?
Not so. A cursory look at just the campaign slogans of campaigns past will show us how crude, vicious and sometimes inventive people can be when running for office.
Why did this subject come to mind? In a parking lot of an eating establishment, a vehicle was leaving, exposing on the back bumper the slogan, “Ready for Hillary”. One of two conclusions came to mind: either he could not get the sticker off the bumper (after all, they have a half-life of a thousand years!) or he remains stuck in 2016, politically.
American history is rich with the winning and losing slogans of Presidential candidates. We shall take a look at some of these, and show that today’s wordsmiths have lost a little of their luster over the centuries.
Perhaps the first candidate to successfully use words to further his race was William Henry Harrison. In 1840, many over the country knew who was referenced when the phrase “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too” was heard. Harrison was the “hero” of the Battle of Tippecanoe, when he routed the forces of the Indians under the leadership of Tecumseh and the Prophet in western Indiana in 1811. His running made, John Tyler, made the quip memorable, and the two romped to victory over the incumbent President, Martin Van Buren.
In 1844, James Knox Polk spoke to the popular mood with his slogan, “54’40” or Fight”. This pointed to the dispute between the United States, Russia and Great Britain over the boundary line in the Pacific Northwest. Manifest Destiny won, and Polk presided over the expansion of the republic in that area and in the aftermath of the Mexican War.
Playing on words successfully propelled Franklin Pierce to the Presidency in 1852 as the Democrats used the phrase, “We Polked you in ’44, We Shall Pierce you in ’52”.
In 1856, playing on the candidate’s name, Republicans declared, “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men, Fremont”, putting John C. Fremont’s name out for the public to know. He lost.
One would think the 1860 campaign, which brought about the rebellion of the Southern states, would produce some memorable political slogans, but very few would recall Abraham Lincoln’s short verse, “Vote yourself a farm and horses” as something to recall. But his 1864 campaign would see a slogan that would be used eighty years later in the midst of another war: “Don’t change horses in midstream”. The Civil war still raged, and Franklin Roosevelt used those words in 1944 when World War 2 still was being fought.
In the next few years, winning slogans showed little innovation. Speech writers could not be blamed, for they were years in the future. But some became quite well-known to the public. In 1916, Democrats chanted, “He kept us out of war” — except President Woodrow Wilson took us into war a scant month after he took his second oath of office. 1920 heard the coining of a word when Warren Harding rode the phrase, “A return to normalcy” to the White House.
Four years later, Herbert Hoover won the office with a promise of “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”, before presiding over the beginning of the Great Depression. When up for reelection, Hoover was faced with Franklin Roosevelt’s coopting the words of a song for his campaign slogan, “Happy Days Are Here Again”!
Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, had a slogan handed to the Democrats when a leather-lunged supporter, in one of Truman’s stops on his campaign by rail in 1948, yelled, “Give ’em Hell, Harry”! An upset victory was aided by this short, pithy phrase in support of the incumbent President.
1952’s Presidential race featured one of the shortest campaign slogans, but also one of the most effective ones when Dwight Eisenhower’ supporters would chant, “I Like Ike!” Four years later, it was changed to “I Still Like Ike!” as he coasted to a second term.
“All the way with LBJ” was featured in Lyndon Johnson’s successful run in 1964, but memorable phrases since then are few and far between. Ronald Reagan, in 1980 ran, partly, on the promise, “Let’s make America great again,” a sentiment echoed by Donald Trump in 2016.
James Carville, an advisor to Bill Clinton in 1992, in a private session, declared to the candidate and others, “It’s the economy, stupid!” When Clinton followed this “advice”, he managed to win the prize.
But recent campaigns have been devoid of slogans and phrases which will resonate years from now. Who ran under the banner of “Go, Pat, Go?” Or “Progress and Prosperity?” Whose slogan was “Reformer With Results?” Who won while proclaiming “A Safer World and a More Hopeful America?” Perhaps we can recall that Barack Obama had posters proclaiming “Change” and “Hope” in 2008, but his 2012 run with the one word “Forward” was plagiarized by Hillary Clinton in 2016 as “Forward Together”; it seems as if there are no good wordsmiths working in politics anymore.
But some of the more colorful language used in such campaigns were used in a losing cause. These can bring laughter to those of us who sometimes believe we are living in an unprecedented era of vicious partisan bickering. Just a few of these are very memorable.
When Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine faced off in 1884, charges hurled by both sides became campaign slogans. Blaine, the Maine Republican, had his followers chant at Cleveland rallies, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?”, referring to a plausible report that Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock with a Buffalo widow. When Cleveland was elected, his supporters could retort, “Gone to the White House, ha, ha ha!”
One slogan which spectacularly failed was uttered in a meeting of the Religious Bureau of the Republican Committee in 1884. Dr. Samuel D. Burchard declared: We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion. We are loyal to our flag. This statement, made just a week before the election, became known and was used by the Democrats and provided just enough lift for Cleveland to win.
Perhaps the one most remembered by American history students emerged from the Democratic national convention in 1896. There, the “boy orator” from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, exhorted, ” You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” This speech stampeded the convention, gave Bryan the nomination, but to no avail. William McKinley easily defeated him for the Presidency.
Another ill-advised mantra by a winning candidate would contribute to his reelection loss in 1992. During the 1988 campaign, George H. W. Bush declared, “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Forced to sign a bill that created new taxes, he found this campaign statement used to help defeat him in the next election.
Perhaps there are no candidates or their supporters who can “think outside the box” and create a phrase or slogan which will excite the imaginations of American voters. Sometimes it seems as if plagiarism of past campaigns is the norm. “Forward with Roosevelt”, “Forward with Stevenson-Sparkman”, “Forward” with Obama, and “Forward Together”, with Hillary Clinton.
Give us better, please. We “normal” Americans are awaiting our inspiring leadership to emerge.