The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century

by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank

  This was an event that Lasker was already stage-managing toward another end. His most important job in the campaign was to develop and disseminate a strong core message for the Republicans—one that would motivate, but not necessarily inform. Again, this strategy meshed neatly with the candidate. Harding was by nature a conciliatory man; when challenged, he tended to retreat into generalities. But on the subject of the League of Nations, Lasker wanted unequivocal statements of opposition. Toward that end, he pushed hard to get the candidate and his campaign to adopt a central message: no more wiggling and wobbling. Lasker felt that the implied criticisms in the phrase (indecisiveness, evasiveness, even dishonesty) could be applied to both President Wilson and candidate Cox:

  In the course of the campaign, we want to show how Wilson wobbled from watchful waiting to peaceful penetration in Mexico, and how Mr. Cox is trying to wiggle from the Wilson League to a position where he is for a League with reservations, and he is trying to wiggle from being wet in wet states to dry in dry states, also how the Democrats both in legislature and administration have wiggled and wobbled on all responsibilities, whereas a Republican administration means surety.39

  Harding agreed to include the phrase in his League of Nations address on August 28.40 Lasker told his operatives it was important that they call the attention of reporters and editors to the phrase without making it appear that the “publicity end of the campaign had anything to do with the expression and the thought appearing in the speech.”

  Lasker had a great deal riding on “wiggle and wobble” gaining currency, since he had to begin exploiting the phrase even before Harding could utter it. He had to order a “wiggle and wobble” billboard campaign in mid-August to allow enough time for an October 2 unveiling of billboards nationwide—an enormous effort. He also wanted to mail the speech to Republican editors in advance of August 28, so that they would have time to “thoroughly digest it and get their bearings.”41 In the last week of August, therefore, he pressed both Will Hays and George Christian to make absolutely sure that Harding would use the slogan—preferably multiple times.

  Harding did indeed utter the phrase near the conclusion of his speech, but that was far from the end of Lasker’s concerns. Most worrisome, Hays had concerns about whether the message was compelling enough, and whether Lasker could get it to catch fire. Lasker admitted to no such doubts:

  Regarding your phone message on “WIGGLE AND WOBBLE.” Don’t worry, I will put it over with editorial cooperation and speakers cooperation if I can get it; if I can’t I will put it over without, though it will be mid-October until you can notice results, because I shall have to rely entirely on the force of the display advertising in the weekly magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, and the billposting. These two media alone will put it over . . .

  It would be better, of course, to get cooperation from speakers, editors, cartoonists, and in booklet work. The trouble is, I guess, that the editors and cartoonists won’t take it up until it is already popular, and since I have secured no speakers’ cooperation it has been hard to get it to catch on merely from the only speech where the candidate has used it. We will therefore have to rely almost entirely on its catching on through the display advertising which runs in October. But don’t you be afraid—I will get it over.42

  Lasker was frustrated that the Republican National Committee’s designated speakers did not seize upon the catchphrase. These speakers were critically important, in part because radio was still in its infancy. (The 1920 election returns were the first ever to be broadcast live, but the campaigns themselves made little use of the new medium.) In the time-honored tradition, the way most Americans heard political messages in the summer and fall of 1920 was through the legions of speakers who fanned out across the country—some five thousand Republicans (and a somewhat smaller number of Democrats)—spreading the word in person.43 But Lasker didn’t control the speakers; all he could do was push his phrase and hope that they picked it up.

  “Wiggle and wobble” wasn’t the only thing on Lasker’s mind in this period. Throughout the relatively short campaign, Lasker performed a host of duties, ranging from the momentous to the offbeat. In the former category, he commissioned and placed ads in the third week of August that would be put in the hands of 22 million women, who in that month had finally won the right to vote, and would be exercising that right in the fall election. He used his considerable clout with newspaper editors to secure favorable editorials.44 To increase the odds that those editorials might include a picture of Harding, he shipped 15 million pictures of the candidate to papers across the country, at a cost of $200,000.45 He facilitated the appearances of movie stars, opera signers, and circus magnates on the front porch in Marion, all designed to generate favorable (and tightly controlled) press coverage and newsreel footage.46

  In the offbeat category, he arranged for the purchase of twenty-five “animated busts” of Harding, at $100 apiece, for use in store windows. (“Mrs. Harding,” Lasker explained to Hays, “was very anxious we should give them a try-out.”) When the newspaper reporters marooned in Marion demanded that the Republicans supply them with a car to get around in—and perhaps out of—Marion, Lasker bought them a new Marmon with his own money.47 When the Marion-based press corps threw a banquet for Harding toward the end of September, Lasker arranged the catering.

  By October, Lasker’s work was largely done. The billboards went up: Let us be done with wiggle and wobble. The ads were prepared—Let us be done with wiggle and wobble—and the necessary magazine and newspaper space was reserved. The October 30, 1920, edition of Collier’s, for example, contained a full-page ad headlined “Harding and Coolidge,” with cameo photos of each that looked as if they belonged on folding money. The copy was standard fare, with unsubtle criticisms of Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations:

  This country will remain American. Its next President will remain in our own country. American affairs will be discussed by American public servants in the City of Washington, not in some foreign capitol . . .

  Let’s be done with wiggle and wobble.48

  In the final days running up to the elections, the negotiations with baseball’s owners concerning the Black Sox scandal kept Lasker close to home in Chicago. Gradually, he delegated more and more of his responsibilities in the campaign.

  Three days before the election, on Halloween night, Nell Harding called Lasker into a room with herself and her husband and closed the door. “Albert,” she asked anxiously, “are we going to win?”

  Lasker burst out laughing. Everyone who was anyone knew that Harding was a shoo-in. The only question was, how big a landslide would Harding rack up? “I will guarantee that you are going to win,” he told the worried wife of the future president.49

  It was a rout of epic proportions. Harding carried thirty-seven of the forty-eight states, racking up a huge electoral margin and garnering more than 60 percent of the popular vote. The Republicans gained more than fifty seats in the House of Representatives. Lasker and other Harding confidantes celebrated the victory at the Mt. Vernon Avenue headquarters; Harding, for his part, sneaked out and enjoyed an election night tryst with Nan Britton in a deserted house down the street.50

  Given the nation’s eagerness to shrug off Woodrow Wilson, Cox and Roosevelt were almost certainly beaten from the start. But the Republicans, with the help of Lasker, adroitly exploited that impulse. They spent extravagantly, more than $6 million, while the Democrats raised only $1.3 million.51 And much of that $6 million went where Albert Lasker steered it.

  By most accounts, Will Hays was the leading political genius of his generation. He found in Albert Lasker a complementary kind of genius, who brought a new dimension to politics. “Lasker jumped into politics like a duck takes to water,” Hays said. “He is the super-salesman of the generation.”52

  By the fall of 1920, the Black Sox scandal was exploding on the front pages of papers across the nation. The Hardings invited Lasker to travel with them to Texas and thence t
o faraway Panama on a mid-November vacation; Lasker begged off, saying that he had to stay in Chicago and fight for his plan to save baseball.53 He declined to attend the Harding inauguration, and stayed away from the new president. “I figured a president was very busy,” he explained, “[and] that you shouldn’t see him unless you had something you wanted to take up with him.”54

  One of the more remarkable outcomes of the 1920 presidential race was that Lasker wound up being a personal friend not only of the winner, but also of the loser, James Cox. During the campaign, Cox had come to believe that Lasker was a nearly diabolical figure. The day after the election, though, he phoned Lasker. “I’m Jim Cox,” he began. “Remember me?”55 Cox went on to say that although he held Lasker largely responsible for his crushing electoral defeat, he believed that he and Lasker might overcome their differences, and perhaps even become friends.

  Flattered by this unexpected overture, Lasker canceled a meeting with President-elect Harding to meet with Cox. The strange bedfellows did indeed become strong friends. Every year for many years afterward, Lasker threw an elaborate birthday party for Cox at his country estate.

  The presidential campaign of 1920 was the last front-porch campaign, the last to rely heavily on legions of political speakers as proxies for the candidate, and the last before radio came into its own as a medium for mass communication. It wasn’t, as some have asserted, a revolutionary new approach to American politics.

  But the 1920 campaign was all new ground for Albert Lasker. He sized up a new territory, searched out the Big Ideas, spotted the most interesting and talented individuals in the new landscape, and established enduring friendships with those individuals. He genuinely liked and admired people like Will Hays, Ralph Sollitt, Warren Harding, and Jim Cox, and being considered the “super-salesman” of the generation by the likes of Will Hays must have been immensely gratifying.

  During the campaign, Lasker realized a number of things about himself. He had been lucky enough to “start at the top” in politics—first through his recruitment by Will Hays in 1918, then in the Johnson campaign, and finally in the Harding campaign. He had found himself in the “high command” almost overnight. But he had never played the role of foot soldier, didn’t really understand politics from the inside out, and could never become a master at the game of politics.56

  He also decided that he didn’t have the temperament for politics. “Every little thing worried me to death,” he reflected, “and as so many little millions of things happened, a man who worries to death over every little thing hasn’t much to contribute.”57

  Lasker knew that he had not personally elected Warren G. Harding; he also knew that the Harding victory was circumscribed by the candidate’s serious limitations. At the end of the day, billboards, mysterious slogans, and staged baseball games were inconsequential.

  So Lasker remained unfulfilled. He wanted to do something of consequence—something that would be a real and lasting contribution to humanity, enabling him finally to step out from behind the long shadows of his uncle and his father. And therefore, the question remained: To what task could he apply his prodigious talents that would be meaningful?

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Damnedest Job in the World

  ON JUNE 8, 1921, President Warren G. Harding sent his nominations for the United States Shipping Board to Congress. Six of the seven names stirred no debate. But the seventh—Albert D. Lasker, the proposed chairman of the board—drew partisan jeers from the Democrats. In the House, Representative Joseph W. Byrns of Tennessee rose to speak against Lasker:

  I understand that he is the author of the phrase, “Don’t wiggle and wobble,” and possibly on account of that great service which he rendered to the last campaign, as well as on account of the distinguished success that he had made in his private business, the gentleman may be qualified . . .

  [But] I became pessimistic, indeed, when I read that we are to have as chairman of the board a man who says he knows nothing about ships . . . What qualifications does the management of the Chicago Cubs enable one to bring to the direction of the affairs of the Shipping Board, or Quaker Oats or Van Camp’s pork and beans, or Lord & Thomas’s advertising agency, when the man begged to be relieved because he knew nothing about ships?

  I should have liked to see [U.S. Steel’s president] Mr. [James A.] Farrell made chairman of the Shipping Board. It is a great descent from steel to soup and pork and beans. It is a great descent from brains to beans.1

  Lasker’s detractors had a point: he had a lot to learn about ships and shipping. But at the same time, those who assumed he was only a sloganeer—or that he lacked brains, or vision, or determination—had a lot to learn about him.

  Following the victorious presidential campaign of 1920, Lasker knew that it was past time to revive his flagging agency. Always in the back of his mind, however, was the urge to serve—instilled in him by both his uncle’s example and his father’s exhortations. Almost immediately after the election, Lasker began trying to land a job in the incoming Harding administration. The job he wanted was Secretary of Commerce: then a relatively low-status cabinet post, but the one most suited to his background and interests. He made his case directly to Will Hays when Hays visited him in Chicago on November 6. But Hays had already told Harding that he wanted Commerce for himself.

  Harding had announced on November 5 that he was taking a month’s vacation in Texas and Panama, and that he wouldn’t even start thinking about cabinet appointments before getting back to Marion in December.2 Upon his return to Ohio, Harding began receiving a parade of job-seekers—not including Lasker, who maintained his stance of not bothering the incoming president. The process was choreographed by Hays—which didn’t bode well for Lasker’s cabinet hopes.

  Through the beginning of the New Year, Will Hays continued to covet the Commerce post, and therefore kept fending off Lasker. But on January 17, Harding offered Hays the choice of Postmaster General or the chairmanship of the proposed Commission to Reorganize the Government. Hays settled for the Post Office job, and began encouraging Harding to consider Lasker for Commerce—and also for an alternative post:

  Having in mind the long talk which we had the day in Marion we took the walk in the snow about your idea as to the importance of the Chairmanship of the Shipping Board.

  No doubt you have thought of Albert Lasker in this connection. Should you find it impossible to appoint him Secretary of Commerce, he could do a hundred per cent job as Chairman of the Shipping Board. As I have thought over the matter since that time, continually he comes to mind in this connection. As you indicated to me then, I know, of course, that you realize the almost unexcelled business acumen and industry, loyalty and sheer efficiency which Lasker possesses. It is probable that you have considered him in this connection, but I have thought so much about it, I want to send this word.3

  Harding, then vacationing in St. Augustine, Florida, wrote back positively about the idea of installing Lasker at the Shipping Board. “I have often thought of him in that connection,” the president-elect confirmed. “I have not yet taken the matter up but I will in due time. Frankly, I am just as anxious as you are to call Mr. Lasker to the service of the government, because I have very great respect for his ability and hold him in very high personal esteem.”4

  Lasker—then on one of his rest sojourns to Pasadena, during which his six-year-old daughter, Francie, nearly died of pneumonia—still dreamed of the Commerce position. But there was one compelling reason why Harding might “find it impossible” to give Lasker the job: Herbert Hoover had gotten there first.

  Hoover, the future president, had made a fortune as a mining engineer in the first decade of the twentieth century and then distinguished himself in public service, first by supervising Belgian relief efforts from London and subsequently by serving President Wilson as head of the United States Food Administration. At the end of the war, the internationally acclaimed Hoover returned to Europe as head of the American Relief Administrat
ion, and—although a lifelong Republican—was briefly considered as a potential presidential candidate by both parties in 1920. Harding, determined to bring the famous and formidable engineer into his cabinet, offered him the Commerce post in early February. His appointment as Secretary of Commerce was announced on February 24.

  A scaled-down presidential inauguration, in keeping with the impression of simplicity that Harding hoped to convey, took place on March 4. Harding’s inaugural address was the first ever to be amplified, ringing out across the Capitol’s broad plaza and reinforcing the new president’s image of vigor—a striking contrast to the outgoing Woodrow Wilson, so enfeebled that he couldn’t even attend Harding’s swearing-in ceremony.

  Just over a month later, on April 12, Harding addressed a special session of Congress to outline the policy initiatives of the new administration. Among dozens of other proposed programs, Harding declared himself in favor of building a “great merchant marine.”

  At first blush, the private shipping industry wasn’t an obvious focus for a Midwestern politician. But those who had followed Harding’s Senate career weren’t surprised. Harding’s political mentor, Ohio senator Mark Hanna, had made a fortune in Great Lakes shipping. Harding also had been strongly influenced by Theodore Roosevelt’s and naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s advocacy of a powerful navy. Throughout the campaign, he had spoken forcefully in favor of U.S. shipping.5 “I want to acclaim the day when America is the most eminent of the maritime nations,” Harding declared in December 1920, between his election and his inauguration. “A big navy and a big merchant marine are necessary to the future of the country.”6