“More stories and less textbooks!” was the cause for which educator Charlotte Mason rallied. She claimed that stories and fun sayings kept things in your head better than reading the dull facts off of a page. She was right. Even a child can pick up a funny phrase or a slogan, and repeat it back on demand. Ask a child today what the McDonald’s slogan is, and I’ll bet he can sing the catchy “Badadada, I’m lovin’ it!” jingle at any moment. This basic philosophy was also used by the Presidential candidates throughout the years! Starting with the Van Buren vs. Harrison elections, most Presidents have had slogans.
Sometimes, the slogan professes something that is not fulfilled (“Barry Goldwater - In your heart you know he’s right”). Sometimes, it states an incredibly brief version of what that president stands for (“McKinley - A full dinner pail for all!”). Though very often, the slogan is senseless (“Stay Cool with Coolidge”). So what is the point of this jingle? What is it about those few words that nearly all of the presidents since 1840 just had to have them? There are three primary reasons.
Have you ever had just a few words of a really annoying song stuck in your head? Those songs are often called cognitive parasites. It’s not that they are actually parasites, but they do fill in the brain’s need for rhythm or pattern. The same philosophy applies to slogans. If you repeat something often enough, you begin to sort of like it. Imagine hearing Dwight Eisenhower’s “I like Ike” slogan being chanted at a rally or something of the sort. It would get lodged in your mind, where it would begin to grow. There is also the never-diminished fact that these slogans give candidates something to put on t-shirts and bumper stickers.
Did you ever notice that young children love to repeat a word that sounds cool, or plays funnily on their tongues? I myself was obsessed with the word “popsicle” for a week a while ago. I repeated it often and loudly, regardless of others in the room. I didn’t even know what it meant. So my family put up with a week of sporadic repetitions of the word, imagine if it was something like “I like ike” that I was repeating. My parents would have heard it constantly, and conversation might have formed around it.
In the end, political slogans are beneficial to the political candidate because it is, in a way, a form of subconscious mind control. It could even make or break a campaign. Slogans are a tradition dating back to William Harrison, the cries of “Forward” and “Believe in America” echo in every part of the United States!
Here’s my slogan for this post:
“Slogans: an unbroken tradition since 1840.”
Sometimes, the slogan professes something that is not fulfilled (“Barry Goldwater - In your heart you know he’s right”). Sometimes, it states an incredibly brief version of what that president stands for (“McKinley - A full dinner pail for all!”). Though very often, the slogan is senseless (“Stay Cool with Coolidge”). So what is the point of this jingle? What is it about those few words that nearly all of the presidents since 1840 just had to have them? There are three primary reasons.
Have you ever had just a few words of a really annoying song stuck in your head? Those songs are often called cognitive parasites. It’s not that they are actually parasites, but they do fill in the brain’s need for rhythm or pattern. The same philosophy applies to slogans. If you repeat something often enough, you begin to sort of like it. Imagine hearing Dwight Eisenhower’s “I like Ike” slogan being chanted at a rally or something of the sort. It would get lodged in your mind, where it would begin to grow. There is also the never-diminished fact that these slogans give candidates something to put on t-shirts and bumper stickers.
Did you ever notice that young children love to repeat a word that sounds cool, or plays funnily on their tongues? I myself was obsessed with the word “popsicle” for a week a while ago. I repeated it often and loudly, regardless of others in the room. I didn’t even know what it meant. So my family put up with a week of sporadic repetitions of the word, imagine if it was something like “I like ike” that I was repeating. My parents would have heard it constantly, and conversation might have formed around it.
In the end, political slogans are beneficial to the political candidate because it is, in a way, a form of subconscious mind control. It could even make or break a campaign. Slogans are a tradition dating back to William Harrison, the cries of “Forward” and “Believe in America” echo in every part of the United States!
Here’s my slogan for this post:
“Slogans: an unbroken tradition since 1840.”
I used three articles for this research:
http://www.history.com/news/10-winning-presidential-campaign-slogans was my primary one.
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