So what’s in a song?
With the legislative session(s) behind us for now, I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about some of my totally useless information that tends to drive my wife crazy. Some kids grew up watching baseball games late at night, I always wanted to stay up late to watch the political national conventions that were going on. Yes, I was a disturbed little kid. To that end I have loved trivia about political national conventions. My favorite aspect of a convention is when each party nominee selects a theme song that at some point gets played during the final night of the convention. These songs typically are a reflection of the message that the presidential ticket is trying to convey. Here are just a few examples:
1984- Ronald Reagan had Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” to talk about how America had regained its pride in the world.
1988- Michael Dukakis had Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America.” As a greek immigrant he hoped this would wrap into his theme of attracting more immigrant votes to his campaign.
1992- Bill Clinton had Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop.” Probably one of the best campaign songs of all time because it wrapped nicely into the theme of a brighter future during bleak economic times.
1996- Bob Dole had Travis Tritt’s “A Sign of the Times.” This would go down for me as one of the worst political songs because Dole used as a reflection of his campaign being a “bridge to yesterday.” This just reinforced he was old as dirt.
2000- George Bush used Ricky Martin’s “Cup of Life.” This song was played not only at the convention but also at many rallies to appeal to Bush’s effort to attract more latino votes. The campaign was successful in the end in attracting 40% of the latino vote which was a record for a Republican presidential candidate.
2004- George Bush used Al Green’s “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” Not sure how they came up with this except I guess they were trying to soften the party’s image with this happy song. They won the re-election in the end but I think I would have picked a different song.
In the end I am not how much a song actually effects a campaign but it is fun to watch how they wrap into presidential campaign themes.
FDR’s “Happy Days Are Here Again”, seems to get played a lot at the Democrat’s conventions.
Comment by walt moffett — June 9, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Well, I think the theme song for the last Alabama 2008 Legislative session would have been that Old Jimmy Buffet standard, “Why don’t we Drunk and Screw” because that is all the Senate did was screw around. I think they may have had a drink or two along the way as well. For sure some of them acted like they were on something strong.
Comment by anomynous — June 9, 2008 @ 1:23 pm
whoops, meant “Why don’t we get Drunk and Screw”
Comment by anomynous — June 9, 2008 @ 1:24 pm