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I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s an election coming up. People will tell you that THIS IS IT, THIS IS THE ONE\u2014that we’ve finally reached peak election insanity and it’s all coming to a head this November. But these people haven’t been studying their U.S. history. I’m here to tell you that elections have been ridiculous for as long as we’ve been a country. Case in point:<\/p>\n
#10: \u00a0“Vote Yourself a Farm” – Abraham Lincoln, 1860<\/strong> #9: “We Polked you in ’44, We shall Pierce you in ’52” – Franklin Pierce, 1852<\/strong> #8: “Who is James K. Polk?” – Henry Clay, 1844<\/strong> #7: “Keep Cool With Coolidge” – Calvin Coolidge, 1924<\/strong> #6: “Let’s Make it a Landon-Slide” – Alfred Landon, 1936<\/strong> #5: “He Kept Us Out of War” – Woodrow Wilson, 1916<\/strong> #4: “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, The Continental Liar from the State of Maine” – Grover Cleveland, 1884<\/strong> #3: “Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!” – James Blaine, 1884<\/strong> “Nothing,” says his grim-faced peer. “We’re going to have to dig deeper. \u00a0He has an illegitimate child, doesn’t he? There’s gotta be something there. Something scathing, but catchy. Something that rhymes.<\/em>”<\/p>\n The presidential election of 1884. What a time to be alive. Grover Cleveland allegedly had a child out of wedlock, giving his political opponents cause to get \u00a0“Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?” trending. The “Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!” part, well, that was a how Cleveland’s supporters \u00a0answered the rallying cry. \u00a0Spoiler alert: Grover Cleveland did indeed snag the victory, but I think the argument can be made that in this election there were no winners, only losers.<\/p>\n #2: “I Like Ike” – Dwight Eisenhower, 1952<\/strong> #1: “I Still Like Ike” – Dwight Eisenhower, 1956<\/strong> I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s an election coming up. People will tell you that THIS IS IT, THIS IS THE ONE\u2014that we’ve finally reached peak election insanity and it’s all coming to continue reading<\/span>
\nIt seems like a promising transaction. Cast a vote, get a farm. No wonder voter turnout is low in America; we’re not handing out entire farms anymore.<\/p>\n
\nI see your “Feel the Bern” bumper stickers and I raise you THIS untarnished \u00a0gem of political wordplay. Dark-horse Democrat Franklin Pierce wanted his candidacy \u00a0to harken back to the good old days of James K. Polk, so he threatened constituents with this catchy, vaguely homicidal-sounding motto that I would’ve 100% gotten on a T-shirt literally the second I heard it.<\/p>\n
\nBefore James K. Polk \u00a0was the best historical pun this side of “I’ll be Bach,” he was a political nobody. His opponent, Henry Clay, was \u00a0like the Nicki Minaj of yore, publicly calling out his lesser-known and twerk-prone rivals. His whole campaign slogan was basically just “WHO EVEN IS HE”\u2014a stratagem that didn’t pay off in the long run, though I mean I guess he’s getting mentioned alongside articles taking Shakespeare quotes ridiculously out of context<\/a>, so it wasn’t a total loss.<\/p>\n
\nWhat’s so fantastic about this one is you can practically see the guy moonwalking backwards into the Oval Office \u00a0and throwing up some finger guns.<\/p>\n
\nThere’s a reason Landon lost to FDR, who had 98% of the electoral vote, and I’m pretty sure this was it.<\/p>\n
\nA better slogan would’ve been “he kept us out of war for, like, five minutes.”<\/p>\n
\nThis is the \u00a0greatest string of words ever roped together in the English language. Or at least, it would’ve been…<\/p>\n
\n“What rhymes with ‘Grover Cleveland’?” cries one of Blaine’s staffers on the campaign trail, wringing his hands.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s short. Sweet. \u00a0Not too strong a sentiment, but catchy nonetheless. That said, I cannot in good conscience encumber you with \u00a0this glorious burden\u2014unequivocally the best and worst campaign slogan ever crafted\u2014without also sharing the slogan that was born out of it for Eisenhower’s second term, which is, if you can believe it, even better.<\/p>\n
\nI think there’s a lesson here: if you have presidential aspirations, and if you’re willing to put forth the absolute minimal effort or even no effort at all, and if you can be bothered to vaguely rhyme things once every four years, then you, too, \u00a0can one day be the President of the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"