Welcome to Whistlestop, a podcast of Campaign Curiosities. I'm John Dickerson, host to

Face the Nation. We're going back to 1840.

Get your booze, your hard cider.

Prop open the door of the log cabin and return with me to that raucous campaign

where a wig party showed that they had learned all the lessons from their rivals, the Democratic Party.

They learned how to tickle the public fancy, or make the so-called hurrah appeal

as presidential elections

turned into a competition for the affections of all white men.

You might notice some of this happening in today's

politics where candidates appeal to the popular sentiment

rather than perhaps the virtues of the underlying issue.

We spent time in 1840 in a previous episode of Whistlestop with William Henry Harrison,

the wig Victor of this contest, who became the first candidate to be elected on the

umbrage ticket, turning a slight or a

perceived slight into political gold. Now it's time to learn about Democrat

Martin Van Buren, political strategist from New York, old Kinderhook, as they called him, in the name of the town he was from.

Ben Burren had helped Andrew Jackson get elected in 1828 and helped form the new Democratic Party.

But in 1840, he fell victim to the kind of organization

and politicking he'd done so well,

including in this campaign becoming

the target of perhaps one of the best,

certainly one of the most baroque negative attacks

...