Who will win the 60th U.S. presidential election? On Tuesday, November 5th, Americans will cast their votes for the highest level of leadership. They’ll choose a president and his or her running mate—the vice president. For this election, many other government offices are also open for votes too. Before that day, each candidate has to make a case for why he or she should be elected. All need to get their messages across quickly and in ways people will remember. The best way to do that?
Slogans.
A slogan is a short, memorable phrase. It tries to shape how you think about a product, group, or person. Can you think of slogans not related to elections? Maybe, “Subway, eat fresh” or Burger King’s “Have it your way”? Presidential slogans work the same way.
Think carefully about what each candidate’s slogan says. What does it make you think? Does the candidate seem to act and speak in a way that makes you trust the slogan? Why or why not?
Slogans Gone By
Campaign slogans have one main purpose: Get votes. One of the most famous goes back to the presidential election of 1928.
Americans were enjoying a good economy. Republican candidate Herbert Hoover promised to keep things that way and even allow prosperity to increase.
The slogan? “A chicken in every pot.”
Problems: 1) Herbert Hoover never said “a chicken in every pot,” though the phrase did appear in some Republican newspaper ads. 2) The Great Depression began during the Hoover presidency. For most Americans, prosperity evaporated!
Some other slogans:
Abraham Lincoln: “Vote yourself a farm.” He promised to support the Homestead Act, which offered free land to willing homesteaders. He won.
Woodrow Wilson: “He kept us out of war.” But President Wilson entered the United States into World War I a year after he was reelected.
Calvin Coolidge: “Keep cool and keep Coolidge.” (He won reelection.)
Lyndon Baines Johnson: “All the way with LBJ.” (Mr. Johnson beat Barry Goldwater, who used the difficult-to-say abbreviation AuH20—the chemical symbols for gold and water—on campaign buttons.)
Why? Election years remind us of our great freedoms and all it takes to preserve them.
