Jumping on the Bandwagon for Snollygoster
I miss the Loco Focos. I can't help feeling that politics was more fun in an era that included a party named after a self-igniting match. The Loco Focos, a group of radical New York Democrats, acquired their nickname after a memorably raucous 1835 strategy meeting. During the height of the melee between opposing wings of the party, the meeting room's gas lamps suddenly blew out. Apparently having foreseen some such tactic on the part of their opponents, the radicals had come prepared with the recently invented Loco Foco matches and a supply of candles. These they duly lighted and continued the meeting, although with much tumult and shouting. The newspapers picked up the story and soon were referring to all New York Democrats as Loco Focos. Their nickname didn't keep the radicals from being serious players in the 1836 presidential election. On the contrary—their candidate Martin Van Buren won the election over the choice of the more blandly named Whigs.
And how about the Barnburners? These were another faction of reforming Democrats in nineteenth-century New York (then as now, a hot spot for rowdy politics). The Barnburners were so-named by conservative critics who accused them of behaving as insanely as the proverbial Dutch farmer who burned down his barn to get rid of the rats. The Barnburners' opponents were the Old Hunkers. Hunkers preferred to hunker down and stick with the status quo. Far from considering these labels insults, the factions themselves seem to have embraced their nicknames. It would be great fun to witness a debate between people proudly calling themselves Barnburners or Old Hunkers. The names alone are so promising—surely the rhetoric would be equally flashy.
It's hard to imagine modern-day politicos engaged in the kind of no-holds-barred word flinging that led to such pungent nineteenth-century political terms as mugwump and snollygoster. Mugwump, from an Algonquian word for a great chief, started out as a term for a politician who considered himself morally superior to the rest of his party. Eventually it degenerated into slang for a waffler—someone with his mug on one side of the fence and his wump on the other. Fence-sitter cannot compare for originality.
Snollygoster has even more pizzazz. In an example of the sort of spirited op-ed commentary you don't see anymore, the Columbus Dispatch for October 28, 1895 defines this term for an ambitious politician as "a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform, or principles, and who . . . gets there by sheer force of monumental talknophical asumnancy." If only today's pundits could command such linguistic sizzle!
This verbal energy was often inspired by physical energy. Some of the liveliest expressions came from actual nineteenth-century campaign activities. Keep the ball rolling, for example, gained popularity during William Henry Harrison's 1840 campaign, when staffers had the bright idea of rolling ten-foot high slogan-covered, paper-and-tin parade balls through small towns around the country. Cheering a parade ball through the streets has got to beat watching televised campaign ads any day. Jumping on the bandwagon also started out as a literal activity. One of Zachary Taylor's strong supporters during his 1848 campaign was a well-known circus owner and clown. He sometimes took Taylor up on the parade bandwagon, right along with the tubas and glockenspiels, and drove him around for meet-and-greets. Bandwagons would be even more fun for voters than parade balls.
Modern politics could use an injection of the inventive oratory that made the nineteenth century such a lively time. How about reintroducing snollygoster? It's bound to energize the debate. At the very least, it will add more zip than fence-sitter.