The Campaign Trail

There are as many ways to campaign for the Presidency as there are to skin a cat—or an elephant or donkey. These two pages suggest the variety of things a candidate, sometimes to his surprise, may find himself doing. At upper left, Franklin D. Roosevelt shakes a miner’s hand in Wheeling, West Virginia, while holding a local moppet on his lap (1932). Next, William HlcKinley makes his nomination acceptance speech from his own front porch in Canton, Ohio—a rostrum from which he would address thousands during the campaign of 1896. In a fascinating innovation, Joint F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon debate before television cameras and an audience of millions (1960). Wendell Willkie rides gallantly through enthusiastic crowds in his home town, Elwood, Indiana (1940). Al Smith confronts a pair of microphones in 1928. The “raddio,” as he called it, may have done him more harm than good. Estes Kefaitver, capitalizing on his Tennessee origin, made the coonskin cap his trademark in 1952 and again in 1956. William Howard Taft piles on a few more ounces at a barbecue after his victory in 1908. Teddy Roosevelt suits bellicose gesture to bellicose oration in a. warm-up for the campaign of 1912. President Harry Truman demonstrates that tlie whistle-stop speech is still a highly effective device (York, Pennsylvania, 1948).

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