Donald Trump and the Art of the Nasty Political Nickname
Think he’s the first to hand out vicious epithets to his opponents? Just ask “Tricky Dick,” “the Beast of Buffalo” and “Rutherfraud.”
“Political discourse in the United States is characterized by high productivity of coining nicknames for US Presidents,” writes Dr. Anna Gladkova, who wrote a 2002 paper on the practice. She counts 430 nicknames for (at the time) 43 American presidents
.. The problem is, Democrats today don’t appear to possess the requisite adolescent glee necessary to finding just the right few words that will stick like napalm and burn, burn, burn.
.. Back in 1800, Federalists loved to refer to Thomas Jefferson as “Generalissimo Jefferson,” underscoring the fact that beneath that Republican veneer beat the heart of an aristocrat. Andrew Jackson dubbed Henry Clay “The Judas of the West” for his supposed “corrupt bargain” in handing over the 1824 election to John Q. Adams.
.. “Granny” Harrison fit William Henry Harrison pretty well—the latter was 68 when he bested Martin Van Buren in 1840 (“Martin Van Ruin,” as he was known, for presiding over the Panic of 1837). That’s younger than all three major candidates today, of course, although Harrison would die only a month after taking office, leaving things to “His Accidency,” the much-reviled John Tyler.
.. In the age of Twitter, just as in the age of Pony Express, a good nasty nickname counts for a lot, and the Democrats need to work on this. Gladkova’s paper can help. She lists five categories into which pejorative presidential nicknames typically fall—including “Undeserved Leader” (His Accidency, His Fraudulency); “Politicians Influenced by Others” (William Howard Taft’s surname, according to his detractors, was an acronym for “Takes Advice From Teddy” Roosevelt, his former boss); and “Person Not Able to Fulfill Promises.”
To this, I would even add another category: “Person Who Is Crazy As A Loon.” Political campaigns have historically done quite well in painting opponents as nuts. During the William McKinley-William Jennings Bryan contest in 1896, the McKinley-supporting New York Times published an interesting little article entitled, “Is Mr. Bryan Crazy?” The paper then interviewed several prominent “alienists” (that’s what they called psychiatrists in those days) who claimed that Bryan suffered from megalomania (delusions of grandeur); paranoia querulent (complaining too much); and querulent logorrhea (talking about complaining too much). In 1964, LBJ’s advisers agreed that the way to defeat Barry Goldwater was to portray him as “unstable, impulsive, reckless.”