by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As we are four-and-a-half months out from the presidential election of 5 November, the campaign is under some of the most intense scrutiny, as well as under the most unusual of circumstances, of any in American history. Hopefully, turnout will be as robust or more than four years ago, when two-thirds of eligible voters went to the polls, and it is notable that more than 550,000 of those who could vote didn’t because of concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Census Bureau, 155 million people cast votes, with women representing 68.4% of them and men at 65%. Asian-American turnout was at a record high for that group at just shy of 60%. Not surprisingly those better than 65 years of age had the highest level of turnout at 76%, while equally as expected, those aged 18 to 24 had the lowest at just over half their number.
Those with a college degree voted at a percentage of 78% of their eligible numbers, while those with high school diplomas were at just north of 55%. Higher income voters, at between $100K and $150K, turned out at a clip of 81%, while those in the $30K-$40K range did so at just under 64%. Veterans turned out at nearly three-quarters of their eligibility, while non-veterans turned out eight percentage points lower. It will certainly be interesting to see what this election reveals when the Bureau completes its report next spring compared to 2020.
We turn the clock back to 1928 and the election between Republican Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce for Calvin Coolidge, who declined to seek a second term, and New York Governor Al Smith. The Republicans ruled the roost politically through the Roaring Twenties, dominating in all three presidential elections (1920 and 1924 being the others), but Democrats hoped that dissatisfaction with enforcement (not, however, seeking repeal) of the social experiment of Prohibition, concerns of the concentration of wealth and what is claimed was rampant G.O.P. corruption would help the party.
Republicans, however, touted the booming economy of the decade as evidence that its policies were eminently successful and worth continuing under Hoover, long considered an organizational and financial genius, while it also promoted cutting the national debt and taxes, while keeping a significant protective tariff on imported goods. The GOP held its convention in Kansas City the week the LIFE issue was published, while the Democrats held theirs in Houston at the end of June.
This year, the Republicans hold their party conference in Milwaukee in mid-July at which Donald Trump will formally be declared its candidate, while the Democrats gather a month later in Chicago to affirm incumbent President Joseph Biden as its candidate. The first of two debates is scheduled two weeks from yesterday and, of course, looming over all of this is Trump’s recent criminal conviction in New York City, while the ages of both men are frequently discussed. What remains to be seen, as well, is whether Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s independent campaign will have significant support and what it will do in terms of affecting the tallies of the other candidates.
There was a third candidate in 1928, as well, but of a very different and almost unique nature (comedian Pat Paulsen, who was born in 1928, mounted a mock 1968 campaign that actually yielded 200,000 write-in votes, despite his admonition to not vote for him, and he mounted similar, though far less noteworthy efforts, each election thereafter through 1996). Humorist Will Rogers attained fame on vaudeville for his impressive rope tricks and folksy comedic asides and then became a star in the Ziegfeld Follies and in film. A truly ubiquitous media master, Rogers also wrote a popular syndicated newspaper column and had a prominent presence in the new world of radio.
Politics was always an important part of Rogers’ humor and, while he was a lifelong Democrat, he voted for Coolidge in 1924. Among this chestnuts of comedic commentary was “I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat,” while another gem was “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” When he decided to launch his mock campaign in 1928, LIFE became the primary vehicle for his Anti-Bunk Party, bunk meaning nonsense. He stated in the pages of the humor magazine on Memorial Day and had just one campaign promise: if elected, he would immediately resign.
Previous posts here during the 2020 campaign included coverage of his campaign in the 12 October and 2 November issues of LIFE, which was launched at the start of 1883 and which focused on humor with striking illustrations and cartoons and a mild application of social commentary along with jokes.
After the 1918 death of co-founder John Ames Mitchell, famed illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (of the famous “Gibson Girl” personification) became president, while three years later, Clair Maxwell began a two-decade stint as publisher and was vice-president of the publishing company in 1928. Notably, this issue announced the retirement of chief editorial writer Edward Sanford Martin, who joined LIFE at its outset and wrote every editorial since then, except for a three-year period.
Aside from the editorial page, the magazine had a roster of regular sections dealing with politics, radio, the theatre, sports, news from various American metropolises, and letters to the editor (under the heading of “Roses and Raspberries”), along with plenty of jokes and witticisms. We’ll focus here, however, on Rogers and his run for office, including the cover image with the caption of “For President, Will Rogers” and five rows of elderly gents reading newspapers in overstuffed easy chairs with each uttering editorial comment from their respective sheets.
The first noted that the candidates were decidedly in favor of keeping Prohibition the law of the land, while the second observed that they also claimed the need for personal liberty, and the third noted that they were insistent that the law be enforced. When the fourth utters that his editorial determined that the candidates were scared of the issue, the last exclaimed, “Why Not Stop Arguing And Vote For The Only Candidate Who Says What He Thinks—Will Rogers!!!!”
One editorial section piece was a cartoon by George T. “Gee Tee” Maxwell for the Alabama paper, the Birmingham Age-Herald labeled “Our Candidate’s Hat” and which showed Rogers’ familiar ten-gallon cowboy hat looming large over those in a “Presidential Ring” of Hoover, Smith and many other potential candidates, while one was labeled “Cal?” and evidently raising the possibility that Coolidge might change his mind.
Around this was “Wanted: Ten Million Votes for Rogers” subtitled “Professional Voters Need Not Apply” and which began with “they laughed when Will Rogers threw his ten-gallon hat into the ring, but when they discovered the kick contained in those ten gallons, their laughter turned to cheers.” Because of Rogers, it went on, Americans throughout the political spectrum “and previous condition of servitude are hailing the Bunkless Party and its sterling candidate as deliverers from the tyranny of hokum [trite sentiment as usually offered by politicians.]”
Asserting that the Republicans and Democrats sought to have Rogers join their parties, the magazine replied that he wanted to go alone, though “he doesn’t care how many voters go along. But they must be amateurs!” When it came to the question of who would be the humorist’s running mate, the piece noted that “the answer to that is easy: we haven’t any, and we don’t intend to have one.” This was because the Anti-Bunk Party proposed to save $15,000 annually by eliminating the position; after all, “all that the Vice-President does, anyway, is to sit behind a desk in the Senate, and break a gave now and then.” Besides, “Will Rogers is competent to handle the Senate single-handed.”
It was mentioned that Helen Keller was asked her views on the election and she stated that “if I had my choice, I would nominate Will Rogers and [Charles] Lindbergh” because the former “would think of so many nice things to do and Lindy would fly around and tell everyone about them.” The combination would mean “the whole country would be full of laughter, and laughter is good for people.”
Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University for over forty years, and a last-minute vice-presidential candidate with William Howard Taft in 1912, seconded Keller’s idea and offered the (rather weak) campaign platform of “we talk and fly.” Butler, an admirer of Benito Mussolini and yet a Nobel Peace Prize winner, with Jane Addams, in 1931, felt that “this ticket would sweep the country, but LIFE demurred suggesting that the famed aviator had “done too much for this country to be rewarded with a sentence of four years in the United States Senate.”
After averring that Rogers would announce his cabinet before the election, so that the public would know beforehand who would serve, the magazine claimed that any Republican not nominated in Kansas City or Democrats similarly rejected in Houston would join Rogers’ cause as “the Bunkless Party is the Haven for Dissatisfied Voters, and the number of those is increasing every day.”
Rogers’ feature, “Our Candidate in Kansas City: Mingling with the Riff-Raff,” began with his claim that “I am conducting my Campaign along novel and dignified lines” including his attendance at the GOP confab even though candidates did not typically attend rivals’ conventions. He added that he did so “along the lines of the regular business man” by checking out what the opposition was up to, though he noted that “after being here a few days, it doesn’t look like our party will have much opposition, for I haven’t seen these do anything yet.”
Rogers followed by commenting “and then to show the people that I am really ‘common,” in fact, almost ‘ordinary,’ I am going right on down to mix with the Democrats.” By venturing to Houston, he allowed, it was a matter of degrading his dignity but, because doing so wouldn’t make any difference come election day, “I just want to be well posted even on inconsequentials.” By seeing the Dems’ convention, he noted, “I am going right to the bottom of politics.”
As for potential cabinet members, Rogers discussed, for secretary of the treasury, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a 33-year old actor and socialite who’d just gone through her fourth divorce and apparently lobbied for the position, but he added, “I may have to marry her to get rid of her,” though he also concluded, “she feels that in four years she could pull off enough marriages to put this country on its financial feet.”
Judge Benjamin B. Lindsey was a notable reformer with juvenile courts, prisons, probation and elections and child labor, but was best known for his 1927 book on “companionate marriage,” in which he proposed people live together in a trial marriage for a year to determine compatibility. The idea horrified moralists and his reputation suffered, including after he was removed from his Denver judgeship for being paid for separate legal work, though he was later elected as a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. Rogers considered Lindsey for a secretary of “Domestic Relations,” though stated that he didn’t care about morals, only votes.
The humorist also mentioned “William Randolph White” of Emporia, Kansas, a lampoon of William Allen White, the well-known editor of that city’s newspaper and writer of biographies of presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge, leading Rogers to joke that White “don’t care who will be elected as long as he can write the next President’s Autobiography, he has it already written, all he had to do is to put in the name.”
Idaho Senator William Borah had designs on the Republican presidential nomination in 1928, but his reputation as a maverick led Rogers to say that “Borah is for me . . . but he has been connected with the minority so long that his support would put us on about the level with the Democrats.” The humorist made brief references to Charles Curtis, who became Hoover’s running mate, and Ambassador to México Dwight Morrow, whose daughter Anne married Lindbergh and concluded, “well, so long. Today is the day they nominate him, so I guess I’ll run over and see who he is.” An editorial note informed readers that the next two issues of LIFE would feature Rogers’ reports from Houston and the promise that, because he would announce his platform after the other candidates, “whatever they offer you I will raise ’em at least 20%.”
The amusement provided by Rogers is, befitting its appearance in LIFE, mild and muted compared to the more pointed, barbed humor from his comedic competitors today, so it seems archaic and quaint. At the time, though, he was immensely popular in those various forms of media mentioned at the outset and he garnered tremendous interest in a way that Paulsen, clearly inspired by Rogers, could not achieve four decades later. How wit and humor will develop further this election year will certainly be interesting to observe as the fifth of November approaches.