17 October—The dear old 20^th century saw a number of interesting (sic) campaign slogans, some of which even made sense.

In 1904, incumbent Republican president Theodore Roosevelt gave the voters To Assure Continued Prosperity and National Unity. Prosperity. Advancement. Republicans were the good guys in those days, but platitudes were inevitable.

In 1908, William Howard Taft’s campaign stuck with platitudinous A Square Deal For All but took the gloves off with Vote for Taft now, you can vote for Bryan any time, referring to the so-called Great Commoner Democrat William Jennings Bryan’s two previous unsuccessful presidential runs. Bryan’s campaign stuck with the obvious Facing the Future. Bryan’s future was losing to Taft.

In 1912, the catchy doggerel It is nothing but fair to leave Taft in the chair lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s prosaic Win with Wilson and topical Vote for 8 Hour Wilson and The man of the eight-hour day, with reference to reducing what was a considerably longer workday. Former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, having formed the Progressive (a.k.a. Bull Moose) Party, ran as its candidate, also pushing the eight-hour day, among other rather anti-Republican reforms ,with A Square Deal All Around. The Republican split helped Wilson claim the White House.

In 1916, Charles Evans Hughes quit the Supreme Court expecting to easily take back the White House for Republicans with claptrap like America First and America Efficient. (America Efficient? Seriously?) But Wilson’s He proved the pen mightier than the sword (Also seriously?) and War in Europe—Peace in America—God Bless Wilson, before America entered World War I in 1917, got him re-elected. Hughes went on to become Chief Justice of the United States in 1930.

In 1920, the Great War over, Republican Warren G. Harding’s Return to Normalcy and America First, both alluding to stereotypically Republican isolationist and anti-immigrant sentiment, got him into the Oval Office. Perennial socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs ran from prison (he should never have been sent up the river for sedition for a decade, simply for protesting the draft), so the GOP (and probably the Dems) had fun with From Atlanta Prison to the White House, 1920. Debs got over three percent of the popular vote. Against the wishes of his wife (to whom he was habitually unfaithful anyway) and many others, Harding commuted Debs’s sentence in 1921, along with the sentences of other prisoners of conscience.

(Where will Donald Trump go? Not back to the White House, no, no, no.)

Harding died in office in 1923, passing the presidency to Calvin Coolidge. So in 1924, Silent Cal’s punny Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge kept him and the Republicans in the White House.

In 1928, Herbert Hoover kept the GOP in the White House with Who But Hoover? and A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. The stock market crashed in 1929 and of course President Hoover absorbed the obloquy. (In a 1931 radio broadcast, announcer Harry von Zell famously called the president Hoobert Heever, perhaps thinking of the 1928 slogan.) But in 1932 he put up a bold front with Play Safe with Hoover, We Are Turning the Corner, and Don’t Change Now. Predictably, Franklin Roosevelt won easily. So Happy Days Are Here Again and America is on the path to prosperity and full employment. Or not. Sound familiar?

In 1936, Republican Alf Landon’s slogan was, predictably, Defeat the New Deal and Its Reckless Spending. He also punned on the New Deal with the Let’s Get Another Deck metaphor. But nothing equalled Let’s Make It a Landon-Slide. Except Roosevelt’s Remember Hoover!, which voters did and gave FDR a second term . . .