The semiotics of campaign buttons

I've been fascinated with presidential campaign buttons all my life – or at least since I was a tyke who ran through the house wearing an Eisenhower flasher hollering "I yike Ike!" in 1956, a campaign junky at age 3. Every four years, I find myself scrutinizing TV coverage of campaign victory (and concession) parties to see how the faithful are expressing their political passions on their blouses and lapels. One type of button can tell you a lot about the candidate and their supporters: It's the genre of pin that features the candidate and a picture of a famous predecessor or other historical figure. Pictures of presidential aspirants are often paired with the likes of Washington, Jefferson, one of the Roosevelts, or John F. Kennedy. It's all just to help you see them in the glorious glow cast by the great men of history. This year's crop of buttons has produced some interesting bedfellows. Some buttons put Hillary Clinton alongside perhaps the greatest president of the 1990s: her husband, Bill. The pundits might be saying the Clinton's ought to be kept apart (some say they should have gotten divorced). But there are some in the nation's peanut gallery who love them as a couple – the best two-for-one deal in presidential history. Barack Obama might be frequently compared with John and Robert Kennedy and even Martin Luther King, when it comes to campaign buttons, but it's much easier to find him paired with a ticket-mate with more appeal than any potential vice president: Oprah Winfrey. Usually, GOP candidates like to be paired with Abraham Lincoln, but not Mitt Romney. One button features the former Massachusetts governor and Michigan born-and-raised Romney with two Lincoln enemies: Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Is Romney telling us he'd like to be first Mormon president of the Confederacy? More likely he's simply flip-flopping about being a Yankee. How about a pin showing Mike Huckabee with the sepia-colored ghost of William Jennings Bryan over his shoulder? This is clearly meant to underscore Huckabee's rural populist cred and remind folks that Huckabee thinks evolution is a crock (at least those who remember which side Bryan was on at the Scopes Monkey Trial). But there are two problems with this image. One, he was a loyal Democrat and would likely never have endorsed the Republican governor of Arkansas. Two, Bryan was nominated for president three times and lost all three elections. He's not exactly a political rabbit's foot. A number of candidates appear on buttons featuring not one or two presidents, but Mount Rushmore, usually with their heads strategically placed to look at home among the pantheon. The best one I've seen so far is of John Edwards, because when it comes to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt, he's got the best sculpted hair of the lot.