Put on a Happy Face

On occasion, the electorate may need some tough messages, but the political reality is that people want to vote for a positive candidate with a positive message. We also want to believe that the future will be better than the past. Consider the examples below. While it is true that voters throw governments out more than they elect them, it is also true that they vote for positive messages. Even if we hate the other guys, we still need a reason to believe that times will be better with the people who get our votes. When President W.H. Taft mocked Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt and activist government in the 1912 campaign, he said A National Government cannot create good times... It cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, or the crops to grow. The president reaped only 23 percent of the popular vote and eight electoral votes. Taft was in the rare position of running against two formidable opponents, but the speech didnt help. Formidable speaker and egghead Adlai Stevenson tried a little tough love in 1952. He said Lets talk sense to the American people. Lets tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions... He was not a successful politician, winning only one of his campaignsfor governor of Illinois. And then theres Kennedy. In the same way as Hoover called for a return to normalcy after World War I, Kennedy could have done the same after World War II and Korea. He could also have gone on about technological progress and the promises of the modern world. But he attacked and asked: he attacked the boring 1950s American society and asked for sacrifices from voters. In fact, he said his New Frontier ... holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security. He mocked those who promised a golden future and hectored the electorate by saying too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose. The reason why this worked in a squeaker election was that the stakes were high in the Cold War. Moreover, Kennedys charm and wit tempered his tough-love message. Barry Goldwater was not a happy man, but he was a happy warrior in 1964. He pointed out Democratic failures at the Bay of Pigs, in Laos and Viet Nam and at the Berlin Wall. He criticized rules without

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responsibility and regimentation without recourse and the bullies and marauders who roamed the streets. Showing the same prescience that Winston Churchill showed about the European Union in the 1940s, Goldwater said he could see a day when all the Americas ... will be linked in a mighty ... a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. I dont recall the Arizona Senator getting any credit years later for the North American Free Trade Agreement or similar deals in South America. Jimmy Carters malaise speech, made while he was president, was a stark contrast to Ronald Reagans sunny outlook on Americas capabilities, and Carter paid the price. Mario Cuomo found out that it was hard to criticize Ronald Reagan in 1984. He asked the electorate to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship and to separate the salesman from the produce. It didnt work. People liked Reagan, and fully half the population was happy with his policies. Then Cuomo rubbed Americas nose in its problems, speaking of the elderly people who tremble in the basements ... people who sleep in the city streets ... ghettos where thousands of young people ... give their lives away to drug dealers. America didnt want to focus on the negative and returned Reagan for four more years. Nor did the electorate in 1984 want to hear Jesse Jackson say that In Detroit ... babies are dying at the same rate as in Honduras, the most underprivileged nation in our hemisphere. One presidential candidate who embodied the positive and the possible as much as FDR, Kennedy and Reagan is Bill Clinton, whose 1992 speech was called I still Believe in a Place Called Hope.

Newness
The theme of the new is important to America. As in Canada with the fur trade, in 19th century America an enterprising young person could always run west or into the woods to start a new life. For generations in both countries, people with get-up-and-go and a bit of luck could fire a gun, stick a shovel in the ground, cast a fishing net or swing an axe and obtain riches beyond their wildest dreams. This lasted for about three hundred yearsin some remote places, into the 1950s. This desire to reinvent our life situation, and even reinvent ourselves, creeps into political speeches. After the turn of the 20th century, when the frontier had begun to close, Teddy Roosevelts New Nationalism and Woodrow Wilsons New Freedom meant activist government (of different sorts) to improve the human condition. This may have provided a substitute for the individuals ability to move west, or the opportunity of a new industry to improve personal conditions.
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Herbert Hoover was way behind the curve in 1928 with his slogan of rugged individualism, because there was no longer a frontier for the individualist to exploit. He was, however, on target in rejecting the European philosophy of ... paternalism and state socialism. FDR made the case for government action by pointing out that westward expansion was no longer possible, natural resources had been exploited, industrial capacity had reached its zenith and inventions had been discovered. What the new age called for was the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, of seeking to reestablish foreign markets ... distributing wealth [and] enlightened administration. Roosevelt also proclaimed that America is new. It is in the process of change and development, and he still invoked the frontier metaphor in 1932, when he recalled that in earlier times there was always the possibility of climbing into a covered wagon and moving west where the untilled prairies afforded a haven for men to whom the East did not provide a place. In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy shrewdly combined the concept of newness and the frontier spirit with the New Frontier, which he defined as not a set of promises [but] a set of challenges. He also said that there were ... uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus to be addressed. As recently as 1992, Bill Clinton was speaking of his New Covenant. In a continent with our history, it makes sense that the electorate seeks out the new, the bold and whatever validates individual initiative.

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