"Bring Us Together " is a political slogan popularized after the election of Republican candidate Richard Nixon as President of the United States in 1968. The text comes from the 13-year-old Vicki Lynne Cole marking that she carried the Nixon rally in his hometown of Deshler, Ohio during the campaign.
Richard Moore, a friend of Nixon, told the candidate's speech writer, he had seen a child carrying a sign reading "Bring Us Together" in the Deshler rally. The author of the speech, including William Safire, began entering the phrase into the candidate's speech. Nixon mentioned the rally Deshler and the sign in his victory speech on November 6, 1968, adopting the phrase as representing the original purpose of his reign - to reunite the fragmented state. Cole came forward as the man who carried the mark, and became the subject of intense media attention.
Nixon invites Cole and his family to the inauguration, and he appears in the buoy at the inaugural parade. The phrase "Bring Us Together" was used ironically by the Democrats when Nixon proposed a policy they did not approve of or refused to support. Cole declined to comment on Nixon's resignation in 1974, but later expressed his sympathy for him. In a newspaper column written in the last years before his death in 2009, Safire expressed doubts that Cole's mark ever existed.
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The 1968 presidential campaign is one of the fiercest in the nation's history. Stipulated among national divisions during the Vietnam War, social policy, and against a backdrop of riots and murders, no campaign made the division of healing the main theme - an early slogan by Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, "United With Humphrey" has been canceled. The ruling president, Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson (often called L.B.J.) can give Humphrey a little support because of his own unpopularity.
In 1968, the candidates appealed to voters on television, rather than through a whistle train tour. Nixon had included them in his previous national campaigns - he had canceled one such tour in 1952 to make a Chequers speech, and in 1960, had stopped at Deshler. The rural village of Ohio, about 45 miles (72 km) southwest of Toledo, is popular among presidential candidates who quit as the two major Baltimore & amp; Ohio Railroad crossed over there - other visitors in the sound search included Al Smith, Harry Truman, and Barry Goldwater. Deshler voters will respond in 1968 by giving Nixon the majority of their votes.
Maps Bring Us Together
Rally and sign
Cole is an eighth grader at Deshler; his father was a local Methodist pastor while his mother taught the third grade. On October 22, 1968, the day of Nixon's dismissal in Deshler, Cole attended the class as usual. During the morning session, one of his teachers announces that every girl who is interested in being a "Nixonettes" (girls who are asked to entertain and provide an atmosphere at a rally) should report to the fire station after school. Cole did it, along with his friend, Rita Bowman, and the girls were given red, white paper, and blue dress (to wear on other clothes) and signs. Cole said, "L.B.J. Convincing Us - Vote Republican".
That afternoon, Cole attended a rally, put on his dress and held his mark. Nixon's train pulled in, and the police lowered the rope that made the crowd untouched. In the interview, Cole recounts that as the crowd surges forward, he drops a mark in the midst of encouragement and encouragement. Cole declared, "I want a sign to wave, I've lost my own plaque and when the crowd is moving forward as the train approaches I see this sign lying on the road and I just pick it up and hold it high, hoping Mr. Nixon will see it."
Nixon gave a speech from the rear carriage platform. He praised the size of the crowd, stating, "There are four times more people here than staying in the city and over the amount that was here in 1960." The candidate insists that although his opponent, Vice President Humphrey, claims that Americans have never been so good, he should say that to the peasants. Nixon promised that he would pay special attention to agricultural issues and would make the Agriculture Secretary a farmer supporter for the White House. He promises to restore order: "The most important civil right is the right to be free from [local] violence." He noted many youths in the crowd, stating, "Young people know their future is at stake, they do not want four more years." She remembered that her father was from Ohio: "The roots are here and mine too!" When Nixon spoke, Cole watched him, and thought he was a nice family man, looking warm and friendly and looking as he wished. He then stated that he did not even see the mark until he was ridiculed by his classmate, who suggested the sign, "Bring Us Together Again" is about boys, not politics. He keeps the dress, but tells the media that he's throwing it away.
Nixon speech and inauguration
Nixon's speechwriter William Safire has been told about the mark by a Nixon friend, Richard Moore, who left the train at a campaign stop to mingle with the crowd and look for local color items for speech writers to use. Safire states in his book in the early days of the Nixon administration (originally published in 1975) that in Deshler, "Moore boarded the train with a mystical look that a writer got when he had something delicious to do, some parts of the color that could be more than just a gimmick. "According to Safire in the 2007 column, Moore put his head into the compartment occupied by Nixon's speechwriter and stated," There's a little boy out there with handwriting that I think says 'Bring Us Together'. " Safire wrote in the column that he put the phrase into Nixon's commentary for the speech to be given at the next stop.
Nixon used the phrase in concluding a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 31, 1968. Given a visit to Deshler, the Republican candidate stated, "There are many signs like the one I see here, but one sign that a teenager says, Bring Us Together Again 'My friends, Americans should be unified. "However, the use of the Nixon phrase received little coverage until after the election. The school attendant Deshler heard the speech, and asked the students about the sign, but nothing came forward.
Safire included the incident in a draft statement of victory, which Nixon saw before speaking of the nation as the elected President. In his victory speech on November 6, Nixon remembered the sign:
I see many signs in this campaign, some of them unfriendly; some very friendly. But what touched me the most was the one I saw in Deshler, Ohio, at the end of a long day of stop whistles. Small town. I think five times the population is there at dusk. It is almost impossible to see, but a teenager lifts a sign, "Bring Us Together." And that would be the great goal of this administration at the beginning, to unite the American people.
Reconciliation among Americans is also the theme of the Humphrey concession statement. "I've done my best I've lost, Mr. Nixon has won The democratic process has worked with his will, so now let's continue with the urgent task of uniting our country."
The school official again asked the students about the sign after Nixon mentioned his visit to Deshler in a victory speech, and this time Cole came forward. He declares that he has not done it before because he did not write the mark. Journalists interviewed girls in the principal's office. Cole claims he feels Nixon is the one who can unite the country again. Interviewed by reporters from Washington, New York, and Chicago, he says, is more fun than sitting in history class. Toledo Blade is investigating the matter, but can not confirm who made the mark, or what happened after Cole threw it away. John Baer, ​​the village police chief, stated, "I think this should be the most important thing that ever happened here." Paul Scharf, editor of Deshler Flag , declared he did not believe in the mystery of origin or the fate of the mark will be removed. Safire claimed he was told by Moore that the sign was prominent because it was clearly handmade and not produced by local Nixon campaigns.
At the beginning of November 7, Northwest Signal, a local newspaper for nearby Napoleon, Ohio, reported that Deshler traders were considering collecting to send Cole to Washington; the next day the newspaper put forward that he, along with whoever actually made the mark, was sent to Washington to see the inauguration. On 19 November 1968, Nixon's long-time advocate of Nixon's campaign and advisor, Murray Chotiner, proposed inviting the Cole family to the inauguration and making Vicki Cole ride a floating theme. The elected president then invited Pastor and Mrs. Cole and their families to attend the inauguration; families were taken to Washington by the Inaugural Committee. Vicki Cole brings recreation marks on floating themes at the prime parade.
Carla Garrity, a fourteen-year-old girl from Burbank, California, objected to Cole's invitation to an appointment on the grounds that Cole did nothing to deserve it. In a letter to his congressman Ed Reinecke, Garrity said he had worked very hard for Nixon and other Republican candidates, "Therefore, I am strongly against the 13-year-old girl in Ohio who holds the 'Bring Us Together' sign for reinforcement. Reinecke forwarded the letter to Nixon's assistant John Ehrlichman with a comment, "I suspect Carla's reaction may be shared by other young people working in the Nixon campaign." Nixon's assistant Charles E. Stuart responded to Reinecke, saying, "Vicki Lynne was invited to the inauguration not because he carried a mark, or even because he made a mark, but because the sign he brought proved to be an inspiration. to Mr. Nixon "and expressed his belief that the invitation would be well received by other Nixon young partisans.
Political use and effect
The Inaugural Committee wanted to adopt "Bring Us Together" as the inaugural theme, the terrible Safire, who said, "That's not the theme of the campaign." Safire and the other assistants felt that the government should try to advance its agenda, rather than seek consensus on policy, and White House Chief H. R. Haldeman was able to change the theme to "Forward Together." However, the phrase "Bring Us Together" was thrown before Nixon's administration by the Democrat Party whenever something divisive was proposed, and was used as the title of a whole lecture by Leon Panetta after he was dismissed from the Nixon government. to distinguish from the White House's "Southern strategy" on civil rights policies. According to Safire, the use of phrases against Nixon shows an emotion-evoking slogan that can cut both.
Nixon's advisors denied that he had abandoned the desire to unite Americans. However, they are divided between those seeking national unity, and they, like campaign managers and Attorney General John N. Mitchell, feel Nixon should concentrate on keeping voters who have voted for him, and must try to win the voters who have voted Alabama's presidential candidate George Wallace, as key to re-election in 1972. According to Safire, after taking office, Nixon and his advisers decided he did not need to unite the state, but only need to work to secure re-election by applying to voters who were not hostile to Nixon and its policies - they are known as the Silent Majority. Historian Stanley Kutler suggests in his book on the Nixon administration that Nixon's policies widen the divide in America, but that the nation finally came together at the end of his presidency - to deny Nixon and demand his dismissal.
In the late 1970s, Vicki Cole indicated in an interview, Nixon did the best he could. During the 1972 campaign, Cole served as Ohio chairman of a future voter organization for the Nixon campaign. He then left politics, devoted his spare time to practice and show horses. In 1974, Cole declined to comment on President Nixon's resignation after the Watergate scandal, but declared in 1977 that he felt sympathetic to him, although he believed his resignation was necessary.
Safire, in his political dictionary published in 2008, recalled that when he asked Moore, a few years after the inauguration, did he really see the girl holding the mark, or did he imagine it, "his eyes staring in the far direction." In the column written in the last years before his death in 2009, Safire commented that the sign was "almost too good to be true", and said about Moore, "[h] e may have made it up."
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Source of the article : Wikipedia
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