What’s With All the Slogans?

Karen Hull asks why the idea of big campaign slogans has caught on:

The most frequent and overarching campaign slogans used have been “Forward” by the Obama campaign and “Believe in America” by the Romney campaign. While I understand the reasons for “Forward”: keep taking this path and we’ll succeed, we’ll overcome, we’ll make it through; I’m not exactly sure what the “Believe in America” slogan means (other than the obvious).

Romney's "Obama isn't working" line is obviously a Thatcher snatch: Maggie's 1979 campaign staff used the Saatchi-coined "Labour isn't working" line on their posters. Perhaps the irony of the phrase was lost on the Romney crowd.

On the other hand, Obama's slogans were beginning to seem a little queasy by the end of 2008. "Yes we can" and the unusually laconic "Hope" don't even really count as slogans, but they seem especially vapid and infantile in retrospect. In David Remnick's The Bridge, we learn that even Obama thought so. It's an encouraging sign that he managed to resist the charming vacuity of his own propaganda. Something tells me Romney isn't quite so astute.

(Image: "Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney delivers a speech at the National Gypsum Company January 24, 2012 in Tampa, Florida." Chip Somodevilla/Getty)