Saturday, March 30, 2013

REPUBLICAN & DEMOCRAT: LOGOS . . .

Why are Republicans represented as elephants

and Democrats as donkeys?

The Republican Party started in the 1850's, formed from a split in the Democratic party, whose members, primarily abolitionists, felt the Democrats were no longer representing their interests. They decided to call themselves Republicans because they felt their ideals were very similar to Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party. After the Civil War, the upstart Republicans were perceived as the party that won the war. Now firmly entrenched in the federal government, they were ironically dubbed the "Gallant Old Party," which soon became the "Grand Old Party," which was soon shortened to the familiar acronym "GOP."

In 1874, it was rumored that U. S. Grant would run for an unprecedented third term. As the rumors were surfacing, there was also a contemporary urban legend that several animals had escaped from the New York Zoo. Thomas Nast, the most popular and influential cartoonist of the time, took the opportunity to combine the two in a cartoon for The New Yorkermagazine, representing the Republicans as elephants, docile but unmoveable when calm, unstoppable and destructive when excited. The cartoon, entitled "The Third Term Panic," depicted the Republican vote as an elephant running inexorably into a tar pit of inflation and chaos. Interestingly, the elephant was running away from the already established Democratic donkey, dressed in a lion's skin. This was Nast's take on the Democrats' view of Grant as Caesar, and their feeling that they had an obligation to play Brutus before he let the power of his office corrupt him.

The donkey predated Nast by three decades, when it was used during Andrew Jackson's campaign, initially by his opponents, calling him a 'jackass' for his populist policies. Well known as stubborn, however, Jackson decided to co-opt the mascot, and used it to his own advantage. After Jackson retired, he was still looked at as a party leader, even though the party refused to be led, and the 1837 cartoon "A Modern Baalim and his Ass" showed him leading a donkey which refused to follow. However, the donkey image was not popularized until the ubiquitous Nast adopted it, first depicting the party as a kicking donkey, attacking Lincoln's secretary of war Edwin Stanton even after his death in an 1870 cartoon for Harper's Weekly.

In other words, both animals were chosen for their negative qualities, such as stubbornness and willy-nilly destruction, and then adopted by the parties for their positive attributes, and neither party has been stubborn or destructive ever since.

Friday, October 12, 2012

1960 AMERICAN BANDSTAND WITH CHUBBY CHECKER . . .

1960 KENNEDY-NIXON DEBATE . . .

It’s been 50 long years since the first televised presidential debates in American history, but the four TV showdowns between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the fall of 1960 still hold a prominent — and well-deserved — place in United States political lore.

The details of the debates have been recounted innumerable times in the subsequent decades, with every hand gesture, every utterance and every close-up dissected and weighed for its significance. The stories, meanwhile, of how Nixon showed up to the very first debate looking pale and glistening with sweat beneath the glare of the studio lights, while JFK looked (literally) tanned and rested, haven’t lost any of their power simply because they’re true.

Nixon, after all, did look like death warmed over; Kennedy did look like a movie star. And while pundits and armchair historians like to assert that Kennedy’s media savvy won him the election while Nixon won the debates, it’s virtually impossible to unearth any raw data that positively proves either point.

The fact is, both men were formidable candidates. Each had a strong grasp of the major issues facing the country — the Space Race with the Soviets; America’s role in an increasingly complex global economy; the Civil Right Movement — and each man had very little trouble articulating his and his party’s position on any and all subjects that would bear on the daily lives of average Americans.

In the end, the four debates in 1960 did offer the nation a good, long look at two very different candidates, with two distinct visions for America’s future. It’s remarkable now, however, to recall that Nixon was just four years older than Kennedy: by the look of the two men in the photographs in this gallery, and certainly in the eyes of the tens of millions of people who tuned in to watch them debate, they might as well have been from entirely different generations.

The 1960 campaign for the White House is often called the first “modern” presidential election. All these years later, one would be hard-pressed to find another element of the entire race that feels more familiar than the image of a candidate standing at a lectern, trying with every ounce of his not inconsiderable political skill to connect with the vast, mysterious, invisible electorate out there, watching and listening, somewhere on the other side of that television camera’s unblinking, unforgiving lens.

Picture of John F. Kennedy, moderator Howard K. Smith and Richard Nixon, 1960: Francis Miller—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images