Norman Rockwell at the Voting Booth

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company
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Norman Rockwell
November 5, 1960

“Here I am on November 8. As you can see, it’s not easy for me to make up my mind…” Norman Rockwell says in the caption of this 1960 Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company advertisement (left).

The ad was one in a series of 81 pencil drawings Norman Rockwell sketched in the ’50s and ’60s for the insurance company. The advertisements depicted family life and ran in magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and The Saturday Evening Post. His artwork graced many ads, if not from A to Z, then at least from Acme Market to Western Union. The insurance series was Rockwell’s largest body of ad work.

Though we don’t know if he cast his vote for Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy, we do know that he enjoyed working with both men in 1960, painting each of their portraits for The Saturday Evening Post covers. He found Nixon “as warm and friendly as the father of two pretty daughters could be.” And when he arrived to paint young Senator Kennedy, he found JFK still in his PJs. “The pajamas were rumpled, but he was wonderful,” Rockwell said. See “Post Presidential Covers” for both portraits.

Boy With Portraits of Taft and Bryan

Boy with Portraits of Taft and Bryan
J.C. Leyendecker
October 31, 1908

The third time was not the charm for William Jennings Bryan (portrait right). He lost the 1896 and 1900 presidential elections to William McKinley. And with the backing of popular incumbent Theodore Roosevelt behind William Howard Taft (portrait left) in 1908, Bryan lost again. J.C. Leyendecker, the Post‘s most prolific cover artist illustrated more than 320 Saturday Evening Post covers, from 1899 to 1943.

Leyendecker’s art ran the gamut, from lavish and elegant to humorous. Few covers were of a political nature, as Post editors preferred eye-catching portrayals of pretty girls or amusing scenes with children. However, Leyendecker depicted George Washington on five Post covers and did a memorable sketch of the corpulent William Howard Taft on the occasion of his 1909 inauguration (see “Post Presidential Covers”).

Votes for Women

Votes for Women
J.C. Leyendecker
December 30, 1911

For 37 consecutive years, J.C. Leyendecker welcomed the dawn of a brand new year with that famous New Year’s baby. Often, the cover was a reflection of the times: The 1910 New Year’s baby was flying a new-fangled biplane; the 1914 tot was riding a ship across the Panama canal. The precocious infants were aware of Prohibition and worried about the first global war and the Great Depression. The last New Year’s baby in 1943 wore a helmet and stabbed a swastika with a bayonet.

Our young lady (left) welcoming 1912 is ahead of her time; women didn’t get the vote until 1920. We’re reminded of Hillary Clinton’s quote from the 2008 primaries: “My mother was born before women could vote. But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for president.”

He Won’t Win!

He Won’t Win!
J.F. Kernan
Country Gentleman, October 25, 1924

J.F. Kernan illustrated nearly 30 covers for the Post and 28 for its sister publication, Country Gentleman, left. With arresting use of color, he depicted old sailors and frequently painted outdoor hunting and fishing scenes. It is indicative of his skill as an illustrator that he could move from a blue seascape or woodsy scene to a droll interior.

Four years before this issue of Country Gentleman hit newsstands, the 19th Amendment was passed, granting American women the right to vote. Women were still striving for political equality. In this cover, hubby is more than a bit skeptical of his wife’s choice. Clearly the artist was on her side: See Her Man Won! (below) which appeared on the very next cover (November 1, 1924).

Her Man Won!

Her Man Won!
J.F. Kernan
Country Gentleman, November 1, 1924

The Post’s sister publication, Country Gentleman occasionally ran two-part covers in the late 1910s and early ’20s. Part one of this scene appeared on the October 25, 1924, cover (see above). Left, the artist J.F. Kernan illustrated hubby having to eat crow after deriding his wife’s choice.

Another artist who had fun with the “wait until next week” concept was Norman Rockwell. Normally associated with The Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell did 35 covers for Country Gentleman.

The Losing Candidate

The Losing Candidate
Norman Rockwell
November 8,1958

The model for this cover (left) was indeed politician Bernard T. Casey of Boston. For some years prior to this cover’s appearance, Casey, a telephone company executive, had served eight terms in the state legislature. He then quit running, but this natural-born leader with the winning smile never did quit helping other people campaign and win.

The cigar-chomping man to the right was Tom Carey, a fixture in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Illustrator Norman Rockwell lived. Carey delivered the mail from the railroad station to the post office via horse and buggy for more than 50 years. During the summer, he also drove tourists around the countryside in his surrey, pointing out places of interest such as the Old Corner House, which served as the Norman Rockwell Museum for 24 years.

First Vote in the New States

First Vote in the New States
Constantin Alajálov
November 12, 1960

“This week, for the first time in history,” wrote Post editors in 1960, “the citizens of the Sandwich Islands and of ‘Seward’s Folly’ go to the polls to help elect a President of the United States.” It was a record-breaking ballot year, and Russian-born artist Constantin Alajálov couldn’t resist illustrating the contrast between the voters of the two recent additions to the United States, Hawaii and Alaska.

Concerning Alajálov’s subject, editors wrote, “And who knows, perhaps one of them, an orchid-picker or a seal skinner, is casting the vote that carries the state that swings the election. … This amalgam of people living together in harmony is bright evidence of the democratic way of life they’re voting to preserve.”

Classic Art: Voting in America The Saturday Evening Post

Every four years the air is ripe with speculation about what the presidential election—not to mention the new administration—will mean for the stock market. Will the Dow sink, swim, or soar?

While we can’t know the precise answer to this question, we do know one thing: For the average stockholder, attempting to game the market by radically reallocating your portfolio holdings is a bad idea at any time. But let’s look at some telling statistics about presidential elections. True enough, since the end of World War II, the market has risen in 12 of 16 election years. If that sounds like the market has a good chance of climbing this year, well, you’re right. But that would be no freak event. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has historically gone up in about 12 of any 16 years. But does it matter which party wins? Studies reported in Bloomberg News prior to the 2012 election revealed that the annualized return of the S&P 500 throughout the past 23 years of Democratic administrations has been 11 percent. Compare that to the 2.7 percent annualized return during the 28 years of Republican administrations. You might want to think twice before rolling the dice on party control, because in 2008, a Democrat won, and the stock market sank in the months following the election; in 2004, a Republican won, and the stock market soared.

What drives these market trends? According to Ned Davis Research and T. Rowe Price, the markets seem to like consistency. In the post-World War II period, when the incumbent party won elections, the market gained an average of 9.2 percent for the election year versus only a meager 2.2 percent when the challenging party won. But what’s happened in the past may have limited bearing on stock market performance over the next couple of months, and beyond.

John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group and author of The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation, says presidents influence markets. But, he adds, making bets based on presidential cycles is akin to speculating on stocks using tea-leaf readings or whether the NFL or AFL won the last Super Bowl. All of these “strategies” are parlor tricks, says Bogle, “statistical noise.”

What it comes down to is common sense: “The key to profitable investing is buying and holding a well-balanced portfolio,” says Bogle. “Market timing rarely, rarely works.” Using figures from Morningstar, he points out that the average U.S. stock mutual fund—whose manager does considerable buying and selling—underperformed the S&P 500 Index by 1.3 percentage points per year, over the past 15 years. Even more telling, the average investor—who tends to swap out almost a third of his portfolio each year—underperformed the average mutual fund by another 2.2 percent a year.

How can you beat the average investor? Invest your money largely in low-cost, broad-market index funds, says Bogle. Make sure you have a well-rounded portfolio, with stocks—U.S. and foreign, large- and small-company —and bonds. When the going gets rough and holdings tumble, don’t be so quick to sell. Trust that the market will come back, as it always has done.

Yes, who is in the White House, the President, as well as Congress, can affect the market. “We need to encourage our leaders, whichever ones are in power, to think long-term about the strength of the economy, for ultimately, the markets move with the economy,” says Bogle. “Strengthening the economy means tackling the federal deficit, improving infrastructure, creating jobs, and revamping a healthcare system that is costing our nation way too much.”

Such policies take time. “Patience,” says Bogle, “rather than taking wild bets on elections, is how to profit from the markets.”

Election-Year Investing The Saturday Evening Post

We are thick in the middle of a presidential election, which has been a rancorous affair, causing many Americans to long for the olden days when we were governed by clueless English kings. I wonder if it’s too late to apologize to the British, abolish Congress, and ask the queen to take us back?

When I was a kid, elections were a happy event, earning us a day off school if we assisted the candidates by passing out their pencils, pens, matchbooks, and rulers. Naturally, as the date neared, every child in town took a sudden interest in the body politic and its attendant obligations. We would rise early and hurry to the voting sites to eat the doughnuts intended for poll workers who were overweight and should have been grateful for our intervention but seldom were. At noon, we would walk to the Dairy Queen and eat hot dogs cooked by a light bulb and revel in the democracy that was America.

At 6 o’clock, when the polls closed, we would gather in the courthouse on the town square and watch through the evening hours as the county auditor climbed a stepladder every few moments to write the latest votes on a chalkboard hung high upon the wall. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, making me queasy, causing me to associate nausea with politics, a pattern that persists to this day.

Around 10, the results from the outlying polls were called in, the numbers adjusted to allow for chicanery and error, and the victors announced. They would step to the podium and humbly thank, in order, God, their family, the long-deceased founders of our town, then end with an unrehearsed and lengthy speech on the general wonders of America and the specific virtues of Danville and Hendricks County, Indiana.

My father, the town board president, had raised the speeches to an art form. In my mind it was the acme of representative democracy, watching the votes accrue beside my father’s name on the board overhead, then listening to him extoll the town that had opened its arms to our family in 1957. With the presidency came the responsibility of keeping the groundhog population at bay, lest they destroy the backyard gardens that everyone had in those days. My father was a crack-shot, like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the terror of groundhogs everywhere. Most townspeople thought any man unable to exterminate rodents was unfit for public office. To this day, I still half expect presidential candidates to tell us their stance on groundhogs.

Being Indiana, everyone in our town was Republican, except for Bob Pearcy who owned The Danville Gazette newspaper. He also had a maple tree in his front yard that had been twisted a quarter-turn by the 1948 tornado. Pug Weesner, the owner of The Republican newspaper, lost his house in the same tornado, causing some in our town to believe God was a Democrat, temporarily swelling the ranks of that party and ushering Harry S. Truman into the White House.

There was a luster to government service in those days—a regard not only for the office, but also for those who held it. World War II was still fresh in our collective memory, a cataclysmic event resolved by government’s know-how and young men’s courage. If today the less capable are attracted to office, and there does seem to be a weakening in the strain, that was not the case then. The words, “I work for the government” were a statement of pride. One did not run for Congress for the lifetime healthcare; one ran to serve, to help, to make America the “shining city on the hill.” Service to the country was a calling, not a last resort when employment in the private sector didn’t pan out.

Election night, that holy night, was the one school night my parents let me stay up late. By 9 o’clock I would be flagging, so would curl up behind the pillar next to the marble staircase and fall asleep in that cradle of democracy. At 10 o’clock, the last precinct would phone in, and the cheering would waken me.

I would listen to the victory speeches, as one would a bedtime story, lulled to sleep by the soft cadence of freedom.

Voting Back in the Day The Saturday Evening Post

Well, those days are gone, we’re glad to report. A fresh breeze is blowing money into town—about $6 Billion’s worth. That’s the amount that will be spent on this year’s elections.

But what will they get for that $6 Billion, beside mountains of flyers and hours of TV ads? Will it change the outcome of a presidential election?

No one can tell for certain. But back in 1948, George Gallup was convinced presidential campaigns didn’t change voters’ choices.

In a very real sense, presidential elections are over before they begin.

They are decided to a great extent by events that have occurred in the entire period between two presidential elections, rather than by the campaign.

In politics it is always later than you think.

Gallup had polled voters before and after the presidential elections of 1940 and 1944. He found very few voters switched their choice of candidates between June and November.

Of course, it would be foolish to claim that campaigns have no effect or change no votes. But they appear to have less effect and to change fewer votes than the average party leader would like to think.

Voters listen to campaigns pretty largely to confirm what they already think.

[Yet] in presidential races today, everything is made to depend on the campaign—as if the voters lived in a mental vacuum for three and a half years, and only snapped out of it between June and November of the fourth year.

The ineffectiveness of presidential campaigns prompted Gallup to ponder—

Is this wise—this pitching of all effort and money into a campaign and then coasting along for four years?

Perhaps all the hullabaloo, the verbal blasts and counterblasts, the rallies, parades, blaring of bands, kissing of babies, the feverish rushing about of stump speakers and the millions of dollars spent are not entirely necessary.

[Could] a political party give up campaigning and win? Probably not. Some kind of campaign would be needed to keep in line the voting intentions of those who do make up their minds early.

Perhaps political leaders could profitably spend more time trying to increase public acceptance of their party between elections.

Is this still true today? Will those billions of dollars and hours of politicking ultimately change no one’s mind in the 2012 presidential election?
One recent study indicates that presidential advertisements could persuade voters, but did little to inform or motivate them to vote. Another study found that campaigns could influence voters “but the nature of this influence appears to be rather complex”—a meager return for such a high cost.

Gallup’s 1948 article— “Do Campaigns Really Change Votes?” — challenged several assumptions cherished by politicians. Party platforms, for example, were useless (“most people don’t read them”) and political speeches had almost no impact on voters (“n the course of thirteen years of polling, covering more than 190 state, local, and national elections, we have found little evidence that one speech or even a series of speeches changes many votes”).

He also made this claim:

Don’t worry too much about the women’s vote or “how to win the women over.”

They don’t vote in a bloc and they don’t vote any differently from men.

The division of sentiment among women is almost identical with that among men. Rarely in recent years has it amounted to more than two percentage points. There does not appear to be any such thing as the woman’s viewpoint in politics as distinguished from the male viewpoint when it comes right down to voting on Election Day.

That may have been true in the 1940s, but the granddaughters of those women voters are showing far greater independence in their choice. The “gender gap” has become significant. In 2008, Barack Obama received 49% of his votes from men and 56% from women. Interestingly, 55% of the votes for George W. Bush came from men, 48% from women—again, a 7% difference.

The gap reached 10% in 2000 (43% of women, 53% of men voted for Bush), and in 1996, the difference between men and women voting for Bill Clinton was 11%.

When the gender gap was just 2%, Gallup made several conclusions that—we hasten to add—might have been valid for their time.

Men and women, dissimilar biologically and to some extent emotionally, tend to think almost exactly alike politically.

The reason seems to be that, on political matters, women generally accept the judgment of their men-folk. They take their cue from the opinions or prejudices of a husband, a father, a son or other male member of the family. Of course, this is not true of all women. But in the average household the woman goes on the theory that her man knows more about those things than she does.

This is 1948, remember.

Polls have found that when a change of political sentiment takes place, it almost always starts with the men, not the women. The women catch up with the trend later—after they’ve talked to the boss.

In all fairness, it should be said that there is no real reason why women should vote differently from men, even if they paid no attention to the ideas of the allegedly dominant male. No one would argue that women ought to vote differently just for the sake of being different. The only point here is that one must be cautious in talking about the woman’s viewpoint in politics. Although the average male candidate running for office usually makes quite an effort to win the feminine vote, it may be questioned whether such pains are necessary. If the male voters can be won over, the women will generally come along too.

Presumably, some of those billions of dollars are being spent right now to understand just why women don’t vote the same as men.

Big Money and Women Voters: Who Really Chooses the President? The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what Ben Franklin would say: “Been thither, done that.”

During the winter of 1755-56, Ben Franklin, a civilian like Obama, raised and commanded the largest militia in British North America.

Raids by Native Americans on towns in western Pennsylvania stimulated the action. The Shawnee, distressed by incursion into their territory by Europeans, responded as one would expect. Tales of massacres soon reached Philadelphia where pacifist Quakers, reluctant to engage in combat themselves, gave financial support to Franklin’s call to establish a militia, which would march westward to aid settlers with fort construction (and warfare with the natives if necessary).

Franklin suggested that the militia’s soldiers elect their own officers. As he put it: “It seems likely that the people will engage more readily in the service, and face danger with more intrepidity, when they are commanded by a man they know and esteem, and on whose prudence and courage, as well as goodwill and integrity, they can have reliance, than they would under a man they either did not know, or did not like.”

Needless to say, the men elected Franklin to lead them. He was, after all, Pennsylvania’s most prominent citizen. Ben Franklin declined the term “general” for his position, accepting “colonel” instead. Nevertheless, when Franklin and his brigade visited the Moravians en route west, the locals addressed him as “General Franklin.”

After successfully constructing forts in three Pennsylvania locations, Franklin and his army returned to Philadelphia. Soon thereafter, on March 16, 1756, Colonel Franklin marched part of his militia past Pennsylvania’s Royal Governor—a man who viewed Franklin with suspicion. (Franklin wanted the Pennsylvania family—owners of much Pennsylvania land—to pay their fair share of the militia’s cost, something they refused to do.) This show of strength did not go unnoticed by the governor.

The next day, when Franklin left Philadelphia to attend a meeting in Virginia, his troops gave him a military send-off, accompanying him to the ferry terminal with swords drawn — an inappropriate gesture, according to proper military etiquette. When Franklin found this out, he decided that he had had enough of martial displays. As he wrote about the incident: “For tho’ a great number met me at my return, they did not ride with drawn swords, having been told the ceremony was improper. … I who am totally ignorant of military ceremonies, and above all things averse to making show and parade, or doing any useless thing that can serve only to excite envy or provoke malice, suffered at the time much more pain than I enjoy’d pleasure, and have never since given an opportunity for anything of the sort.”

I wonder if President Obama was thinking the same as he reviewed the troops, knowing that in less than 72 hours he’d be asking generals to prepare a plan to withdraw soldiers from Iraq and redeploy them into Afghanistan.

President Obama’s Inaugural Parade The Saturday Evening Post

August 18, 1956

November 7, 1936

October 30, 1948

November 12, 1960

November 12, 1955

November 8, 1958

November 4, 1944

March 6, 1920

August 18, 1956

Classic Post Election Covers The Saturday Evening Post