What's a prez to do? Harrison and campaigning

William Henry Harrison was old enough to remember when politics had been more genteel. He was an adult when George Washington was president, and he admired the stateliness and even the aloofness of the great man's bearing and presence. A Virginian himself, Harrison thought of the Virginia dynasty of presidents— Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe—as neighbors and family friends, as indeed some of them were. Occasionally, after winning recognition at the battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, and then being acclaimed a military hero for defeating Tecumseh at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Harrison imagined he might one day add a link to the Virginia lineage of chief executives.

But there was something that bothered him—that must have bothered anyone brought up in the old school of republican politics. Things had changed since Washington's time. The age of deference had ended, giving way to the age of democracy. Voters—such few as they had numbered—had been content to look up to George Washington, as though he were already a statue on a pedestal. But by the time Andrew Jackson was elected in 1828, voters—now many more—insisted on treating the president as their equal. In fact Jackson was known as the “people's president," and the people took every opportunity to make their proprietorship known. Jackson's inauguration turned into a riot. Ten thousand westerners descended on Washington City to ensure that their man was duly installed. They stormed the White House for the post-inauguration reception, muddying the carpets, tearing the drapes, and breaking the china in their drunken delirium. The worst of it was that they felt, or at least exhibited, no remorse whatsoever when they awoke from their hangovers the next day.

During the next decade Harrison had time to ponder what this meant for him. Jackson's opponents, the Whigs, approached him with fulsome offers of support to run against Martin Van Buren, Jackson's successor and protégé. Harrison was duly flattered but also somewhat torn. If he had thought he might be treated the way George Washington had been treated, elected by acclamation, he wouldn't have hesitated. But the path to the White House had become more grueling, more demeaning even. Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, had been subjected to the most scurrilous slander during his campaigns for president. Nor did the bile splatter Jackson alone. His wife had died from the stress of the insults directed at her. George Washington had merely stood for office; the successful candidate today had to run for it. And in the running the candidate had to lower himself to the level of the least educated, least refined voter.

Harrison weighed the matter, and went forward. The prize was worth the cost, he reckoned.

In those pre-railroad days candidates couldn’t get around much. Their fate often lay with the most vocal members of their party in different states, cities and towns. While taking their guidance from the candidate and the national party, these proxies put the message in their own words. The Whigs proclaimed that incumbent Democrat Van Buren wasn’t a Jacksonian man of the people, but an elitist impostor. "If he is vain enough to spend his money in the purchase of rubies for his neck, diamond rings for his fingers, Brussels lace for his breast, filet gloves for his hands, and fabrique de broderies de bougram à Nancy handkerchiefs for his pocket—if he chooses to lay out hundreds of dollars in supplying his toilet with 'Double Extract of Queen Victoria', Eau de Cologne, Corinthian Oil of Cream,” said one Whig blusterer, “if, I say, Mr. Van Buren sees fit to spend his cash in buying these and other perfumes and cosmetics for his toilet, it can constitute no valid reason for charging the farmers, laborers and mechanics of this country with bills for HEMMING HIS DISH RAGS, FOR HIS LARDING NEEDLES, LIQUOR STANDS, AND FOREIGN CUT WINE COOLERS."

Van Buren’s backers rejoined that Harrison was too old—sixty-seven—to be president. The Democrats answered the Whigs’ charge of elitism by saying Harrison was a hick. “Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle a pension on him and he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin by the side of the fire,” one declared.

Harrison’s men spied an opening and exploited it. Yes, a log cabin and some hard cider would suit their hero just fine, they said. Most of the Whigs  didn’t actually claim Harrison had been born in a log cabin—he hadn’t—but all averred he would have been quite happy to have been. Previous campaigns had employed posters; Harrison’s added memorabilia, including model log cabins and little kegs of cider.

At Harrison rallies, Whigs sang songs composed for the campaign. The lyrics of one contrasted salt-of-the-earth Tip (for Tippecanoe, referring to Harrison’s battlefield victory) with fat-cat Mat (Van Buren, who was six inches shorter than Harrison): “Old Tip he wears a homespun coat / He has no ruffled shirt / But Mat he has the golden plate / And he's a squirt, squirt, squirt.”

Harrison won. His victory had more to do with the depression that had set in after the Panic of 1837 than with the circus-like campaign he headed. Yet depressions are largely beyond presidential control (and certainly were in those days), and so the politicos concentrated on what they could control. Campaign circuses became the norm; even more durable was the conviction that a successful candidate had to market himself as a man of the people. In the age of democracy, the privileged aloofness that had characterized George Washington had been transformed from a compliment into an indictment. Authenticity—however spurious—was the winning formula.