Deals on plane tickets, finding old friends or potential spouses, webisodes, car parts, conspiracy theories, sea level updates, ancestral charts, cheap meds, Berlin Wall pieces, out-of-print books, new pictures of Neptune, way way too much information…and presidential campaign songs. And… Read More ›
Individual Presidents
The Twinges and Twang of George W. Bush’s 2000 & 2004 Campaign Music
All through the twelve years of his father’s four campaigns for the highest national offices, George W. Bush was at his father’s side: 1980, when he lost the presidential nomination but won as the vice-presidential candidate with Reagan, their 1984… Read More ›
A Reagan Country Song & California Classic by ABBA: His 1980 & 1984 Campaign Music
The presidential campaign year of 1980 marked the beginning of what might be termed “theme music” being adopted by presidential candidates, rather than the traditional campaign song. 1976, the year Ronald Reagan lost his challenge to incumbent President Gerald Ford… Read More ›
FDR’s Four-Times Happy Campaign Song & A Home Movie Showing Him Paralyzed
It didn’t start out as his – but like so much else, Franklin Roosevelt claimed it for himself because he saw its value of association. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, his wife’s first cousin, loved telling the story of a couple in… Read More ›
The Engineered Beat of Herbert Hoover’s 1928 Campaign Song
Having won the presidency in 1920 and overcome a post-war economic depression, to then survive the Teapot Dome and other Harding Administration scandals to win the presidency again in 1924, the Republicans went for a third try in 1928, nominating a man… Read More ›
Cool but Contemplative: Jolson Jazzes with Coolidge’s 1924 Campaign Song
He came back – with another song. This time, however, when the legendary screen and stage actor, Al Jolson first performed the official campaign song of a Republican presidential campaign, he didn’t have to march the streets of small-town Oho and… Read More ›
The First President To Win With Actors: Al Jolson’s 1920 Campaign Song for Harding
George Clooney, fundraising and providing thematic strategy for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign or Clint Eastwood speaking at the convention nominating Mitt Romney: neither story causes a blink in either Hollywood or Washington. Yet preceding even the famous efforts of… Read More ›
Swedish Roots: Mamie Eisenhower’s Iowa-Sprung Ancestry
This article is the last in a series on First Ladies and ancestral identities. It began with Michelle Obama and has included Jacqueline Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Florence Harding, Pat Nixon, Hillary Clinton and Edith Wilson. In 1953, when the White… Read More ›
The First President Captured on Film: McKinley’s 1896 Campaign Song & Commercial
William McKinley is often seen as an important transitional President – at least to those interested in studying some of the real stories behind the headline version of history. It’s true he didn’t have the charisma or excitable speaking style of… Read More ›
Jimmy Carter’s Green “Country” Brand: His 1976 Campaign Song
Few run for President on a set of promises to the people which they then insist on keeping once they are elected, with such conviction that it then helps them lose re-election. It was an important storyline underlining the phenomena which… Read More ›
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