Campaigns Past: Cowboy Hats and Hard Cider

With Election Day just around the corner, we go back in time to figure out how early presidential candidates got their message, and their image, in front of voters. It wasn't easy. Asking directly for people's vote was seen as undignified, so candidates mostly stayed home in the early 1800s. As a result, most Americans didn't know for sure what their candidates looked like, or sounded like.

Kim speaks with curator Claire Jerry from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History about the stream of new technologies-- from printing to photography to radio-- that transformed political advertising and gave candidates a more direct line of communication with the American people.

See the portraits and campaign materials we discussed:

William Henry Harrison campaign button

Abraham Lincoln, by Mathew Brady

Abraham Lincoln campaign button

Franklin D. Roosevelt at microphone

Ronald Reagan poster