Anything for a Vote

by Joseph Cummins

10. “YOU’RE NOT TOUGH ENOUGH!” This perennial attack suggests that—in a time of war—a candidate will probably turn tail like a yellow-belly chicken. The list of cowardly candidates in U.S. history is enormous: Thomas Jefferson was too soft on France; Franklin Pierce fainted in the heat of battle; Jimmy Carter couldn’t stand up to Iran; and many of today’s candidates aren’t “man enough” to battle the terrorists.

  9. “YOU’LL DRIVE US INTO WAR!” The flip side of number 10. These candidates—say, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, George W. Bush—are loose cannons who will drag us into bloody foreign wars and destroy our future, just to prove how tough they are.

  8. “YOU’RE TOO OLD!” William Henry Harrison, Winfield Scott, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole—geez, you guys should be out playing shuffleboard! What if you fall asleep with your finger on that big red button? Let the young fifty-five-year-olds take over!

  7. “YOU’RE AN EGGHEAD!” Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Adlai Stevenson, Eugene McCarthy, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore—all were way too smart for their own good, according to their opponents. Even worse, they were book smart—Jefferson loved architecture, Stevenson read poetry, and McCarthy wrote poetry, for Christ’s sake.

  6. “YOU’RE AN IDIOT!” On the other hand, candidates like Lewis Cass, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, and George W. Bush must have fallen down and bumped their heads when they were young. In the case of Gerald Ford, many Democrats speculated that he’d played too much football without a helmet.

  5. “YOU’RE A SLUT!” Apparently Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding (a rare Republican target for this attack), Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry just couldn’t keep their minds on business when the ladies were around.

  4. “YOU’RE CLEARLY NOT HAVING SEX WITH ANYONE!” On the other hand, Americans do want their presidents to have a little red blood. It’s bad form for the commander-in-chief to appear dry, shriveled, and sexless, like James Madison, Benjamin Harrison, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, and even Jimmy Carter, despite the lust in his heart.

  3. “YOU’RE AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT GAY!” Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But many felt that James Buchanan and Adlai Stevenson “played for the other team,” and party operatives did their best to spread rumors.

  2. “YOU’RE DRUNK ALL THE TIME!” This favorite attack was used most notably against Ulysses S. Grant, but it was also leveled at the likes of Henry Clay, Franklin Pierce, Teddy Roosevelt, Warren Harding, and George W. Bush. Of course, Bush was clean and sober by the 2000 election, but who cares. Once a souse, always a souse.

  1. “YOU’RE INSANE!” Shrinks publicly stated that both William Jennings Bryan and Barry Goldwater were neurotic and paranoid; Horace Greeley died in an asylum right after Election Day 1872; Thomas Eagleton received shock treatments; and Nixon—well, all you had to do was look at the guy’s 1952 Checkers speech. Diagnosis: Bonkers.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Jason Rekulak, my astute and generous editor. Not only was this book his brainchild, but he has made many helpful suggestions along the way which have immeasurably improved it. Every writer should be so lucky.

  I’d also like to thank Mary Ellen Wilson, for her meticulous fact-checking, especially when it came to tracking down accurate vote totals (a surprisingly difficult task). Doogie Horner’s energetic page design perfectly matches the patriotic yet risible spirit of America’s presidential elections, as do Mike Fink’s spirited illustrations.

  I read innumerable books and articles while researching this book, but I relied heavily on Stefan Lorant’s The Glorious Burden, Paul Boller’s Presidential Campaigns, Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s books Packaging the Presidency and Dirty Politics, and Paul H. Roseboom and Alfred E. Eckes Jr.’s History of Presidential Elections: From George Washington to Jimmy Carter. These books are treasure troves of information on all aspects of presidential politics, and I highly recommend them.

  Finally, I’d like to thank my friend Eric Thoroman, whose brain I picked on matters presidential during our long runs in New Jersey and who first introduced me to Lorant’s glorious The Glorious Burden.