Presidential Memorabilia

BRIAN: Modern political campaigns generate a lot of stuff, t-shirts, buttons, baseball caps. And for some of these campaigns, the memorabilia lasts longer than the memories. I have my own collection of presidential memorabilia. So what do we learn from the detritus spawned by our democratic process? Ken Rudin runs the Political Junkie Podcast, and we’re very fortunate to have him here today. Ken, welcome to BackStory.

KEN RUDIN: Thank you so much, Brian.

BRIAN: I want to know when presidential candidates started giving out stuff, stuff that became memorabilia.

KEN RUDIN: Well, going back to George Washington, when I was really young, they had tokens, and ribbons, and things like that. And often, the kind of tokens that you would sew onto your clothing.

Then, it wasn’t until 1896– that was the William McKinley versus William Jennings Bryan campaign– that that’s where the actual buttons started. But before that, it was tokens, and ribbons, and things clothing related.

And a lot of them had slogans on them talking about slavery, and tariffs, and things like that. But the word “buttons,” we didn’t know them until 1896.

BRIAN: I’ve always wondered what preceded the bumper sticker. Were there carriage stickers?

[LAUGHTER]

KEN RUDIN: You know, it’s funny. There’s so many dishonest collectors and people who try to swindle you. You always know that if somebody’s trying to spout, offer a bumper sticker before there were cars, you know there’s something suspicious about that.

[LAUGHTER]

Most people don’t collect bumper stickers, but I have a great collection of it. Like, I have a one that says, “This car is solid Goldwater,” things like that.

BRIAN: Oh, I love it.

KEN RUDIN: “Don’t blame me. The driver of this car voted for Stevenson.” So sometimes, stickers can be clever. Usually other than that, it’s just like, “Nixon’s the one,” and “all the way with LBJ.” But sometimes, they can be clever.

BRIAN: Well, how long have you been collecting memorabilia?

KEN RUDIN: Well, I started in 1966 when I was six months old. And back then in 1966, I would write to all the candidates running for governor and senator that year. So I would write to George Romney, and Nelson Rockefeller, and George Wallace, and Pat Brown, and California, Ronald Reagan. And by the end of the campaign, at the end of the ’66 campaign, I filled a shoe box filled with buttons. I couldn’t believe how many buttons I had.

And matter of fact, one of my favorite letters was when I wrote the governor Ronald Reagan, who was running for governor for the first time in 1966. I got a letter saying, hey, here’s your button, and I hope you enjoy it. Sincerely, Edwin Meese, who later became the attorney general. So you never knew that Edwin Meese got his start by giving out campaign buttons for Ronald Reagan.

BRIAN: Well, we have to start somewhere in politics, Ken.

KEN RUDIN: That’s right, exactly.

BRIAN: Well, Ken, I’m pouring out some of my campaign buttons. I have to say my favorite set is the set that a former graduate student gave to me, and it is pro-Nixon buttons, but it’s Hungarians for Nixon, and Irish for Nixon. Nixon, as you know better than anybody, made an appeal to white ethnic groups. And man, I didn’t know there were ever so many white ethnic groups as I have buttons.

KEN RUDIN: Well, I have that said. And actually, Ronald Reagan duplicated that in 1980. There’s also all those nationalities for Reagan as well. And they’re kind of great, but they’re not the first to do that.

Barry Goldwater came out with a bunch of buttons. There are picture buttons of Barry Goldwater and his running mate William Miller, who was a congressman from upstate New York, and in about 50 different languages. Some would say Goldwater Miller, which was English. But then it would be all those other language, some of them that if you didn’t look at the curl of the button, you’d have no idea in the world what language they were. And that was always fun.

BRIAN: You’d think that after Goldwater’s performance they would have stopped those ethnic buttons.

KEN RUDIN: Well, I believe there were more Goldwater buttons than they got votes. That’s for sure, considering he only won six states in 1964 against Lyndon Johnson.

BRIAN: Which president had the best memorabilia?

KEN RUDIN: The best memorabilia. Well, something, you have to go back. Back in the old days– and of course, id’ be even before I was born, and that’s going back a long, long time– some of the McKinley buttons in 1896 and 1900, the colors were just magnificent. They were multicolored and all caricatures.

Well for example, I have this William Howard Taft button from 1908, and it’s a caricature of Taft inside maybe it’s a Model T Ford, because obviously, cars were new then. But it’s an inch of a quarter in size. But the colors of it are magnificent. And it says “From Chicago to DC,” basically from the convention to the nation’s capital. And you see Taft in this little automobile with multiple colors.

Maybe it’s just so simplistic in its beauty and innocent in its beauty. You know, it’s not a simple slogan but. They really put a lot of interest and effort into it, and it’s just stunning stuff. And sometimes, I’ll look at these things and say, boy, they sure don’t make them like they used to.

BRIAN: And what do you think people collect these? What is it about presidential memorabilia?

KEN RUDIN: Well, certainly that’s a good question. And I think it reminds me of why people collect baseball cards. When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards because I just loved baseball. And when I started collecting–

BRIAN: It wasn’t for the chewing gum?

KEN RUDIN: Well, OK, I’ll just tell you a great story about chewing gum quickly. 1972, I go into Nixon and McGovern headquarters, and I bought a box of 50 or 100 Nixon bubble gum cigars and McGovern bubblegum cigars for my collection, but I wound up eating all of them within a day or two. That was not smart. I think my dentist was very happy, but that’s about it.

But I think if you love politics and you love the history of politics, you can just– what I do often, which is because I’m very lonely– but I’ll just look at some of my collection of the Willkie campaign, or the Truman stuff, or Eisenhower. I mean, I have “I Like Ike” sunglasses. I have “I like Ike” license plate attachments.

They were clever, and they were beautiful. And it reminds me of a day long gone in politics. So I think it reminds me the same reason baseball fans collected baseball cards, I think Political Junkie just love presidential campaign buttons.

BRIAN: So what’s so attractive about the politics of yore? There was lots of corruption. Lots of people weren’t even eligible to vote.

KEN RUDIN: You know, that’s a great question. I think I have a feeling that a lot of people in any kind of walk of life, whether you’re talking about baseball, or politics, or business, or entertainment, everybody goes back to the golden days because they’re not happy with what’s going on now. And you’re absolutely right, there was corruption back there, Warren Harding with Teapot Dome, and all the racism that went on, the open racism now.

But at least now, it seems to be a time where people are not talking to each other. People are yelling at each other. It’s us against them. And sure, George was controversial, and sure, other candidates in the past were controversial. We could talk about Richard Nixon’s southern strategy and things like that.

But I still think that there was a decency in our candidates, a decency in our political system that sadly, we’re not seeing as much today, and I don’t know how we get that back. Maybe the only way to get it back is to go collect old campaign buttons.

[LAUGHTER]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRIAN: Ken Rudin is host of the Political Junkie Podcast Ken, thanks so much for joining us on BackStory today.

KEN RUDIN: Brian, it was my absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed it.