Today's featured Wikipedia article: "Bring Us Together" (Nixon '68 slogan)

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"Bring Us Together" was a political slogan popularized after the election of Republican candidate Richard Nixon as United States President in 1968. The text was derived from a sign which 13-year-old Vicki Lynne Cole stated that she carried at Nixon's rally in her home town of Deshler, Ohio during the campaign.

Richard Moore, a friend of Nixon, told the candidate's speechwriters he had seen a child carrying a sign reading "Bring Us Together" at the Deshler rally. The speechwriters, including William Safire, began inserting the phrase into the candidate's speeches. Nixon mentioned the Deshler rally and the sign in his victory speech on November 6, 1968, adopting the phrase as representing his administration's initial goal—to reunify the bitterly divided country. Cole came forward as the person who carried the sign, and was the subject of intense media attention.

Nixon invited Cole and her family to the inauguration, and she appeared on a float in the inaugural parade. The phrase "Bring Us Together" was used ironically by Democrats when Nixon proposed policies they disagreed with or refused to support. Cole refused to comment on Nixon's 1974 resignation, but subsequently expressed her sympathy for him. Safire later expressed doubts that Cole's sign ever existed.

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The Inaugural Committee wanted to adopt "Bring Us Together" as the inaugural theme, appalling Safire, who said, "That wasn't the theme of the campaign."<14> Safire and other aides felt the administration should seek to advance its agenda, rather than seeking consensus on policy,<12> and White House Chief of Staff-designate H.R. Haldeman was able to change the theme to "Forward Together." Nevertheless, the phrase "Bring Us Together" was thrown in the face of the Nixon administration by Democrats each time something divisive was proposed, and was used as the title of a tell-all expose by Leon Panetta after he was fired from the Nixon administration for dissenting from the White House's "Southern strategy" on civil rights policy.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_Us_Together

(ETA) Panetta is now CIA director under Obama