Made In America - Bill Bryson [187]
Among the other parties or sub-parties that passed through the busy scene that was the 1800s were the Buttenders, Roarers, Huge Paws, Copperheads, Ringtails, Ball-rollers, Barnburners, Anti-Masons, Free Soilers, Anti-Nebraskans, Anti-Renters, Pro-Bank Democrats, Constitutional Union Party and People’s Party – though many of these appellations, it should be noted, were bestowed by antagonists and weren’t necessarily used by the adherents themselves.
The watershed year for political parties was 1836 when two sides coalesced into pro – and anti-Andrew Jackson factions. The pro-Jacksonites styled themselves Democrats. On the anti side, National Republicans, Anti-Masons and Pro-Bank Democrats rallied to the resuscitated name Whigs – a decidedly odd choice since during the Revolutionary War whig had designated a person who supported the British cause, and thus had long had a whiff of treachery about it. Despite its long-standing currency in both Britain and America, Whig is of mysterious origins. The Oxford English Dictionary says only that it ‘probably’ comes from Whiggamores, a term applied to the members of a military expedition against Scottish insurgents in Edinburgh in 1648, but no explanation as to the source of Whiggamores is adduced.
The Jackson Democrats remained Democrats after 1836, but the Whigs had further turmoil, and eventual dissolution, to face. In the 1850s the party splintered into an unhappy plethora of factions with names like the Conscience Whigs (those who were against slavery), the Cotton Whigs (those who were for), and the Barnburners (from a comic parable about an obstinate Dutch farmer who rid his barn of rats by burning it down). In 1855, the Whigs emerged from this internecine squabbling as Republicans, and thus have they remained. The respective symbols of the two main political parties – the elephant for the Republicans, the donkey for the Democrats – were the creation of Thomas Nast, the cartoonist who also gave human form to Uncle Sam.13
In this century, new political terms have been fewer in number, but no less resourceful. Among those that have arisen in the world of politics since 1900 and found a role in the wider world are smoke-filled room, grass roots, pork barrel, square deal, new deal, keynote speech, off the record, egghead, brain trust and countless, mostly short-lived words ending in – gate: Koreagate, Lancegate, nannygate, Quakergate, Hollywoodgate and Irangate, all of course inspired by Watergate. Even Britain has had its Camillagate.
Pork barrel had its roots in the 1800s. Throughout that century pork was a common political shorthand term for any kind of dubious abundance (it evidently alluded to the fattiness of pork). Early in this century, for reasons unknown, the term grew into pork barrel, and became particularly associated with federal largesse that a Congressman or Congresswoman managed to bring back to his or her home state.
Off the record was coined by the New York politician Al Smith in 1926. Egghead arose during the 1952 election campaign. It appears to have been inspired by Adlai Stevenson, or more precisely by Stevenson’s dome-like pate, and by late in the year was in common currency as a flip synonym for an intellectual.
The century has also seen any number of slogans and catchphrases emanate from political circles, from Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’, to Woodrow Wilson’s ‘little group of wilful men’ and ‘to make the world safe for democracy’, to Coolidge’s ‘the business of America is business’, to Truman’s ‘the buck stops here’, to Kennedy’s ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’. Some much quoted twentieth-century political phrases are actually mythical, however. Hoover never said ‘prosperity is