Campaign Slogans: To Recycle Or Not To Recycle?

Ben Smith reported last night that Mitt Romney's new slogan, "Believe in America," was previously used by John Kerry for a cross-country bus tour. However, many presidential campaign slogans have been strikingly similar, albeit not exactly the same, as previous campaigns:

• George W. Bush's 2004 campaign message, as introduced at his RNC Nomination speech was "TURN THE CORNER," which was near identical to FDR's 1932 slogan, "WE ARE TURNING THE CORNER"
• Both Nixon and Reagan stressed the urgency of their message, Nixon with "NIXON NOW" and Reagan with "THE TIME IS NOW"
• John McCain's 2008 slogan "COUNTRY FIRST," was almost the same as Warren Harding's "AMERICA FIRST" in 1920.
• Eisenhower's "WE LIKE IKE" sounded like a rip-off of Wendell Willkie's 1940 message "WE WANT WILKIE," except one was a rhyme and the other used alliteration.

Edmund Muskie's Drug Addiction, According to Hunter Thompson

Self-proclaimed "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thomson defined his brand as, "a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism..." Maybe that's what he had in mind when he invented a story about presidential candidate Ed Muskie on the campaign trail in 1972. In the case of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Thompson's "loathing" was on full display when it came to Maine Senator Edmund Muksie, a lackluster candidate whom Thompson derided as "tired and confused" and at one point describing him as a "vicious 200-pound water rat".

Under the headline "Big Ed Exposed as Ibogaine Addict," in the April chapter of the serialized work, Thompson claimed that Muskie was addicted to a hallucinogenic drug called ibogaine. The prank was intended in part to test the gullibility of his fellow members of the press, who apparently proved suseptible to running with the false story. In the work, HST colorfully described the effect of the drug on Muskie, "given the known effects of ibogaine... Muskie's brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations... he looked out at the crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people". 

Frank Mankiewicz, who was the campaign strategist for the Democratic Nominee George McGovern, later reported that Thompson's reportage was the "most accurate and least factual account of that campaign." See the below clip from Wayne Ewing's Breakfast With Hunter, in the Alex Gibney documentary Gonzo: 

While the story was fiction, it hit the wires anyway. Thompson later claimed to be merely reporting a rumor, it just so happened that he created the rumor to begin with -- something that Faulkner might have been proud of.

George Bush, Meet the Barcode Scanner

The now infamous moment when George Bush appeared bewildered by a supermarket checkout scanner during his 1992 reelection campaign reinforced the caricature of the President as an out of touch politician, ensconced in the DC "bubble". 

 

"This is for checking out?" He asked, commenting that he was "Amazed by some of the technology." The trouble was that supermarket scanners had existed since the 1970's, revealing just how ignorant he was about Americans daily lives. One of his many gaffes of the 1992 campaign: 

Bob Dole Wasn't The Only Former Candidate To Be In A Pepsi Commercial

Former VP Candidate Ferraro. See my previous post on Dole here.