The Best Presidential Campaign Slogans

by Mallory Ortberg · June 18, 2015

With all gratitude toward Friend of the Toast Jamelle Bouie:

This one can’t possibly be real. Can it? Did he really say “Not just peanuts”? Like, with his mouth?

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This is so old-timey! GOOD MONEY NEVER MADE TIMES HARD. What does that mean? Don’t worry about it; you’ve got a full dinner pail.

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Oh, my God, I love this one so much. People talk about a lack of civility in modern politics, but, like…these rhymed. And they dragged in each other’s kids.

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I love how non-Lincolnesque this is.

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Disappointingly prosaic.

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I…what?

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112 Comments

  1. MsGibson +203

    Is this a safe space where I can confess to having made “Who is James K. Polk” t-shirts in high school?

    2. jennycieplak +16

      Why aren’t you making them NOW? Because I am a total Henry Clay fangirl and I would buy one.

    4. MsPiggleWiggles +7

      Please tell me that it had a picture of Mariah Carey saying,”I don’t know her”

    5. Gear +7

      Not only is it a safe space to admit that. It is a safe space to start making them again and SELL THEM TO ME IMMEDIATELY.

  2. super_novice +35

    In Canada, the NDP had a strong showing with the slogan “Corporate welfare bums” in 1972. Very classy and subtle.

    1. pole2pole +12

      That one is pretty much the ne plus ultra of campaign slogans. It can mean anything we want it to mean!

    2. kellyrtillson +39

      I definitely say this silently in my head more often than it makes sense to do so.

      1. tanaise +8

        OMG, me too. I mean, obviously given that does it ever really make sense to say it these days, but I’d say once a week at the minimum is not unlikely.

      2. bookwormV +7

        Same! I know so little about American political history that there is basically no context for it in my brain, but I don’t care.

    4. eoporto +18

      “Tippecanoe and Taylor Too” is a Gilmore Girls episode and I NEVER KNEW WHY.

      I’m only half embarrassed I’m more familiar with GG ep titles than presidential campaign slogans.

    5. Canard +67

      I live in Tippecanoe County. Across the street from our mall, the Tippecanoe Mall, is a run-down strip mall called Tyler Too Plaza.

    6. cleoreads +5

      This is my favorite historical slogan – and the only one I remember. Why? I have no idea.

    7. erikagillian +5

      Anyone remember 54.40 or Fight? I had to look up the meaning, I thought it had to do with a border dispute but my memory, she plays tricks on me. I suppose I can blame this one on my dad,he was a high school history teacher, at my high school.

  5. stateside_ +51

    We like money, we like Trump,
    We like the girls with pumps and a bump!

    -TRUMP/HAMMER 2016

  7. grumblyqueer +186

    But Nixon though. “THEY CAN’T LICK OUR DICK” was an actual campaign badge.

    2. neMagistra +18

      I’m partial to “Cox and Cocktails” (which sounds like a niche party theme, but was a successful attempt by Warren G. Harding to get the prohibition vote against Cox), but it doesn’t have the same blatancy as Nixon’s. I wonder how many “I LIKE DICK” pins got re-purposed after the campaign…

        1. erikagillian +2

          Gah! And I was trying to think what was so important about Stonewall Jackson! Thank you, Toast!

  8. yeah, sure +55

    But “Vote Yourself A Farm” was totally Lincolnesque. One major precursor to the Republican Party was the Free Soil Party which advocated against the expansion of slavery and for the distribution of federal lands west of the Mississippi through a homestead law. Whereas slave holders were against any kind of homestead law because after all, small households could move out and snap up those lands a lot faster than some total asshole who had to cart out his entire household and the people he held as “property.”

    Vote Yourself A Farm = support for the Republican base who wanted a homestead act. And in 1861 they got it, not least thanks to secession.

    /history pedantry

    1. malloryelis +88

      I WAS NOT QUESTIONING WHETHER OR NOT LINCOLN WAS PROMISING FARMS FOR VOTES, RATHER THAT “VOTE YOURSELF A FARM,” WHILE PRACTICAL, DOES NOT MATCH THE LOFTY HEIGHTS OF RHETORIC FOR WHICH HE HAS BEEN RATHER WELL-KNOWN

    2. blueblazes11 +40

      And here I was asking myself “Why would I want to be a farm?”

      Grammar, Mr. Lincoln!

  9. ppyajunebug +29

    We spent an unusual amount of time on Grover Cleavland’s paternity scandal in my AP US History class, possibly because of how dirty that election got.

    But yeah, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” wins for Greatest Slogan Ever, mostly because it’s the only historical one everyone remembers.

    1. emlind +14

      John Dickerson has a presidential campaign history podcast called Whistlestop. The Grover Cleveland episode was one of the most memorable.

  10. rolotomassi5 +30

    My mind can’t quite comprehend the message presented in/suggested by Vote Yourself A Farm. Is it a command? Why a farm? You realize an entire nation cannot consist of farmers alone, yes? Do I get a farm for voting? What if I don’t wish to be in possession of a farm? Can I sell it and use the money to purchase other goods and services.

    1. Mrs_Peel +71

      Modern-day suggestions:

      * Vote Yourself a Cold-Brew Coffee System

      * Vote Yourself a Battlestar Gallactica Box Set

      * Vote Yourself an Anarcho-Syndicalist Collective That Quickly Breaks Down Over Unperformed Chores

    2. MameDC +14

      Except it did consist of mostly farmers for a long time, and it’s only fairly recently that that stopped being true. You know. Because food.

      1. jennycieplak +5

        Well yes but the Republicans were by that time the party of the more industrialized north right? Then again maybe they all secretly wanted to be farmers like a bunch of hipsters.

        1. Unreadaethel +14

          But poverty and squalor were rampant in cities, so the life goal of moving to the country and setting up a farm on this cheap/free land was a genuine one.

  11. grandma_nancy +100

    I am literally drinking tea out of a mug with presidential campaign slogans on it. My favorite one is “Let Well Enough Alone” (William McKinley, 1900). Inspiring!

    1. Mrs_Peel +18

      That’s my #1 favorite, and also the platform I would personally run for re-election on.

    2. francienolan04 +15

      My favorite mug and my favorite slogan! More like William Meh-kinley, amiright?

      1. failsafeplot +8

        These mentions of presidential campaign slogan mugs has just lead me to the ideal Father’s Day present. I don’t know how my goofy, American-trivia loving dad has made it this long without one. Thanks for the inspiration!

  12. 30Litresof +26

    Gordon Brown went with ‘Not flash, just Gordon’ for UK election campaign in 2010. He didn’t win. In 2005 I’m SURE the Labour party ran a poster campaign where they depicted the leader of the opposition at the time (Michael Howard) as a comedy vampire but I can’t find it anywhere on the internet! I remember seeing it and even at 13 thinking ‘what the fuck?’

    2. roisindubh211 +2

      That Gordon Brown slogan is just so sad – “I know nobody likes me, it’s okay. I’m disappointed too.”

  13. Toft +25

    In Lincoln’s campaign’s defense, “Vote Yourself a Farm” is a lot easier to swallow than “Vote Yourself into Battle.”

  15. rachaar +72

    Cleveland and Blaine by far win for apparently recruiting seven-year-old girls from a round of double-Dutch to write theirs.

  16. MRTK +73

    There are some outstanding name-based puns in here too:

    “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men, Fremont”
    “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge”
    “Who but Hoover?”
    “Let’s Make It a Landon-Slide”

    (Ulysses S. Grant gets no points for “Grant Us Another Term” btw. Do better, Grant.)

    1. bird_internet +26

      I’m imagining the Coolidge ones printed up on a t-shirt like “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Those shirts are so ubiquitous that I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow reached backwards in time to take part in the Coolidge campaign.

      1. Mrs_Peel +47

        This isn’t really related, but I have a 1940s GE refrigerator that my friend named “Kelvin Coolfridge”.

  17. merrite +37

    definitely read “I still like Ike” in a Hans Moleman-esque voice

    also I spent most of my winter break this year reading a very detailed biography of US Grant which I enjoyed immensely – I might be a Dad in disguise. Unfortunately it did not mention “vote as you shot,” but it *did* include an amusing anecdote about his dentures accidentally being thrown overboard on a gunboat.

    2. Agrippina Major +13

      If you enjoyed the biography you have to read his autobiography. It is an incredibly compelling work, not simply for its prose but for the portrait it paints of Grant: a brilliant, painfully awkward introvert with subterranean self-esteem. The history of his administration makes much more sense when you consider this was a guy who as an adult regularly berated himself over mistakes he made at age nine.

  18. kellyrtillson +6

    You left out my 2nd favorite of all time, “I Like Ike”! (Favorite being, obviously, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”)

      1. 30Litresof +5

        I WAS SINGING THAT SONG FOR YEARS AFTERWARDS. AND YOU’VE JUST BROUGHT IT BACK.

  19. neMagistra +29

    Mallory, are you in my head? I was looking these up on Tuesday to rebut a colleague’s woefully inadequate claim of “best political slogan.” While nothing beats Polk/Pierce, I’d like to highlight “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge” and Alf Landon’s “Let’s Make it a Landon-slide.”

    Personally, I’ve always wanted RI Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to run, regardless of issues or politics, just for the slogan “Put Whitehouse in the White House.”

    1. rachaar +5

      I feel like there’s an Olympia Snowe/White House joke waiting to be made there too but as I am terrible at puns I am not the woman to make it.

        1. rachaar +3

          Dang, that’s a really good point. I feel like that officially means she can NEVER run. Not that she’s expressed interest in doing so, mind.

  20. bird_internet +36

    I knew about “Give ’em hell, Harry,” which I think is a legitimately good slogan, but I did not know until reading that wikipedia page that they also used “Pour it on ’em, Harry!” Wait, what are you pouring?

    2. Mrs_Peel +22

      Maple syrup (that we stole after our invasion of the Canadian strategic reserve).

  22. alula_auburn +32

    I feel sure that somewhere some enterprising person must have made porn based on “We Polked you in ’44, We shall Pierce you in ’52.”

    “Turn the Rascals Out — 1872 anti-Grant slogan against the Era of Good Stealings” is weirdly adorable. Rascals! Scamps!

  23. bird_internet +42

    Oh great, I clicked on this article, opened a few wikipedia tabs, and not 15 minutes later I find myself purchasing a historical campaign button on ebay.

  25. stirringsofconsciousness +33

    Technically, Blaine’s slogan was only “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa” — Cleveland’s Democratic supporters were the ones who joined in with “Gone to the White House, Ha Ha Ha.” (Democrats also would march left-left-left-right-left while yelling “burn, burn, burn this letter,” a reference to actual words in a letter Blaine wrote to a Boston businessman linking him to a corrupt railroad deal. These are the Mulligan letters, which my AP American History textbook delightfully describes as “fishy-smelling”. Cleveland himself is describes as “a burly bachelor with a soup-straining mustache and a taste for chewing tobacco.” My history textbook is the best, which is why I still have it and consult it twelve years later.)

  26. jennycieplak +16

    I must admit, though, that though I do love Henry Clay unreservedly, “Who is James K. Polk” is not a good campaign slogan for the candidate that is NOT James K. Polk. It also strikes me as very similar to “Who is John Galt” and we all know what that leads to.

      1. jennycieplak +6

        OK I’d be in favor of that, but what I really think it leads to are boring speeches that would take hours and hours to actually give.

  27. bighairnoheart +24

    Vote as you shot.

    Got it. So blind terror is what I ought to be going for here.

  28. catoclock +21

    I am really loving how much people seem to know about this subject. Bless u, Toast.

  29. catoclock +14

    The entire progression of 1936 slogans is pretty great:

    Defeat the New Deal and Its Reckless Spending — 1936 U.S. presidential campaign slogan of Alfred M. Landon
    Let’s Get Another Deck — 1936 U.S. presidential campaign slogan of Alfred M. Landon, an answer to the “new deal” of Franklin D. Roosevelt
    Let’s Make It a Landon-Slide — 1936 U.S. presidential campaign slogan of Alfred M. Landon
    Life, Liberty, and Landon — 1936 U.S. presidential campaign slogan of Alfred M. Landon
    Remember Hoover! — 1936 U.S. presidential campaign slogan of Franklin D. Roosevelt

    WELL PLAYED FDR

  30. zwol +11

    Relatedly, the Smithsonian will sell you an entire CD of presidential campaign songs, one song for every campaign from 1789 through 1996 inclusive. And it appears that you can listen to them right there on the website, if you want.

    “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” is, in fact, the name of the song for that campaign!

  31. Rusty Shackleford +44

    I always have a lot of love for the 1840 Presidential elections: ‘When asking voters whether Harrison should be elected, they asked them what his name backwards was, which happens to be “No Sirrah”. Democrats cast Harrison as a provincial, out-of-touch old man who would rather “sit in his log cabin drinking hard cider” than attend to the administration of the country. This strategy backfired when Harrison and his vice presidential running-mate, John Tyler, adopted the log cabin and hard cider as campaign symbols. They used the images in banners and posters, and created bottles of hard cider that were shaped like log cabins, all to connect to the “common man”.’

    Harrison backwards being No Sirrah is one of the most fantastically, gloriously weak and convoluted disses I’ve ever heard.

    1. Rusty Shackleford +25

      Just read a little bit further down in the William Henry Harrison article, and…

      ‘A Whig chant from the time of the election exhibited the difference between candidates:

      Old Tip he wore a homespun coat, he had no ruffled shirt: wirt-wirt,
      But Matt he has the golden plate, and he’s a little squirt: wirt-wirt!

      People singing the chant would spit tobacco juice while singing “wirt-wirt”.’

      Beautiful

    2. catoclock +31

      but like… who WOULDN’T rather drink hard cider in a log cabin than run the country?

    3. turpentinechai +16

      “Harrison backwards being No Sirrah is one of the most fantastically, gloriously weak and convoluted disses I’ve ever heard.”

      Time to go immediately ruin the reputations of all Harrisons I know. They make a strong case there.

    1. jennycieplak +9

      Yup, I think that one is my favorite. As a catchy slogan at least. Not, like, as a thing to do.

  33. demachaut +22

    The anti-Van Buren song of 1836 is moderately awesome:
    “Who never did a noble deed
    Who of the people took no heed
    Who is the worst of tyrants breed?
    Van Buren!
    Who would his friend, his country sell
    Do other deeds too base to tell,
    Deserves the lowest place in hell?
    Van Buren!” http://www.folkways.si.edu/oscar-brand/van-buren-…

    1. JGlows +8

      Geez, and people used to get mad at us for saying Fuck Bush. That song has so much more epic hate than our succinct phrase. I approve.

  35. dancingcrowdesigns +1

    the Nixon ones I remember (I’m old) are

    Nixon: Nixon sticks to ’76
    McGovern: Nixon’s through is ’72

    and then neither one was right, but!
    I still have a McGovern button

    1. dancingcrowdesigns +2

      nice!

      We had “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts” on our cars until the cars died.

  37. manulpika +7

    “Good Money Never Made Times Hard” is a pro-gold standard slogan!

    By 1896 the gold standard really only benefited super rich people with lots of assets, but it was deflationary and slowing down the economy as a whole. So rich conservatives campaigned to keep it on the basis that gold-backed currency was the most real, authentic currency, and that inflation (which would for sure happen with a silver-backed or fiat currency like we have today) was creepy and unpatriotic.

    So basically this slogan is the 1896 version of your conservative uncle claiming that because foreign countries and companies own so many US dollars and treasury bonds, “one day China is going to collect on all the money we owe them and we’ll have to give up half the country.”

  39. mrtafadhali +4

    I am spending a lot of time in the Kennedy Library this summer, and I had just succeeded in getting his campaign songs out of my head when I read this post

    (“Who can fight and fight ’til he wins? Kennedy can (clap clap), Kennedy can!”)

    (That wasn’t even a presidential one; I think it was from his first Congressional bid.)