With the current presidential campaign and all of its sniping and finger pointing in full swing, you might be wishing for the days of old, when campaigns were civil and attack ads were non-existent. Pick up this book compiling Presidential Campaign Posters and you might be surprised to find that things weren’t as civil as we’d like to believe.
Image: Quirk Books
The book includes posters from elections beginning with the 1828 race between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams and continuing through history to the iconic HOPE image made famous by President Barack Obama. The back side of each poster offers a look into the campaign, how many electoral votes and popular votes each candidate received, and additional graphics. Talk about taking a walk through time. I found it fascinating to see how the graphics and illustrations changed over time, but looking at some of the older posters I was reminded of my junior high civics class, where I learned (and quickly forgot) about the Whig party. Some things have certainly changed over the years.
But about that old time civility. One of the posters from 1856 – a race between James Buchanan (Democrat), James Fremont (Republican), and Millard Fillmore (American) – was put out by Fremont who makes this limerick-style promise about his opponent Buchanen:
Old Jimmy Buck goes in for to win,
But we go in for to beat him,
We’ll hit him on the head
With a chunk of cold lead
And land him on tudder side of Jordan.
This book would be a great addition to a classroom or homeschool library, but it’s also pretty enough to work as a coffee table book that will surely start a conversation or two. The posters are perforated for those who’d like to remove them and measure roughly 10″ x 12″.
The publisher provided a review copy of this book.
