Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Get Yer' Campaign Buttons Here

Campaign season is a tough one for those that follow along too close. Of course it is great to be invested in a candidate that you believe in, but sometimes it can be draining. One small way that the true believers pick themselves up is by seeing a like-minded individual pass them by on the street or in their car. Seeing a campaign button or bumper sticker does the trick. So what if you were able to see a button for a candidate that you believed in no matter who you agree with....even if you had to go all the way back to George Washington?

Personally, I'd want to see that:

Americans routinely used to wear their political hearts on their sleeves — or at least on their lapels. George Washington proudly displayed his own on his chest when he was inaugurated as the nation’s first president, where Federal Hall now stands in Lower Manhattan.

Nearly two centuries later, in 1968, a 10-year-old Manhattan student named Jordan M. Wright glommed a handful of Bobby Kennedy for President buttons from a Midtown campaign headquarters. Since then, Mr. Wright, a New York lawyer and magazine publisher, has amassed a collection of political paraphernalia that he estimates now includes more than one million items.

He has donated the collection to a foundation he created to establish a Museum of Democracy in the city. He lent many of the items promoting local candidates and causes to the Museum of the City of New York for an exhibition, “Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election,” scheduled to open in June.


Damn, I'm headed to the Museum of NYC next weekend, so I will definitely have to go back in June. This political junkie definitely wants a fix of that. I wonder how long it would take to look at over a million different pieces of what field organizers call "chum."