... when I moved to Washington five years ago to attend graduate school at Georgetown, I resolved to get a job with Senator Edward Kennedy. I hoped to become an assistant at least, or an adviser or perhaps even — dare to dream — a speechwriter.I wonder what Weber would say about the rise of - and manufactured personality (blogs, memoirs, interviews, email) for - The Presidential Pet and its senatorial epigones.
Instead, I became Splash, the senator's Portuguese water dog.
Having begged my way into an internship with the senator, I spent most of my time making copies, keeping records and answering phones. But then on a quiet winter afternoon when there was not much else going on, my supervisor came to me with an apologetic look on her face.
The senator, she explained, had recently written a children's book called My Senator and Me. The book depicts a day in his life from Splash's perspective. Someone — I'm not sure who — suggested including an e-mail address where curious young readers could reach the supposedly computer-savvy Splash.
That's where I came in. Someone had to reply to Splash's e-mails, in his voice, lest the children think the dog had let the thrill of being a published author and Washington power broker go to his head.
I'd taken Splash on walks on more than one occasion. Once, near the Russell Senate Office Building, we happened upon a mysterious pile of pellets that appeared to be some kind of fertilizer. Splash lurched toward them and devoured a mouthful before I could stop him. As I ferociously tugged on his leash, a headline ran through my head: "Intern Returns Poisoned Dog to Living Legend".
But beyond Splash's indiscriminate eating habits and love of tennis balls, he was little more than a furry mystery to me. What would he say in response to the hundreds of e-mails that came to him from children across the country? School simply hadn't prepared me for this.
Most of his messages went something like this:Dear Splash,After checking with the senator's assistants on Splash's preferred dog food brand, and then reading the book myself to better prepare for my role, I answered every single e-mail, ending each reply with the mandatory "WOOF WOOF!! Splash".
My teacher read us your book. You are so cute! Can you come over and play with my dog? What kind of dog food do you like? My mom says your senator is a great man. I hope he feels better.
My feelings on this assignment were conflicted, to say the least. On the one hand, I was impersonating a dog. On the other, I was heartened by the warmth that people from so many other states felt for the senator from mine.
In time I found a strange satisfaction in writing back to these puppy-crazed children, one that I never got from answering the office phones. None of Splash's correspondents cared about or even knew Senator Kennedy's position on the estate tax, or whether he'd invoke cloture on a resolution to incrementally finance the defense budget. In fact, a simple "Woof!" seemed to be all the constituent outreach they needed to be assured that the senator was on their side. ...
'The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Role of Canines in the 2008 Campaign' by Diana Mutz in 43 PS: Political Science & Politics (2010) 707-712 comments that -
American presidents have always had pets, although their political significance is vastly understudied. White House occupants have long included many species, from John Quincy Adams' pet alligator to Jefferson's pet grizzly cubs to Madison's famed parrot who attended the inaugural ball. According to one authoritative source, around four hundred pets have lived in the White House to date. In fact, if one counts horses, Barack Obama is the very first elected president to be petless. Moreover, Obama's petlessness was widely publicized during the election through his public promise to his daughters of a post-election canine companion. While some pundits felt this promise only made him appear more charming to the pet-loving American public, it may have unintentionally highlighted a key point of difference between the candidate and the public. Republican John McCain, on the other hand, had a menagerie that included two dogs, a cat, two turtles, a ferret, three parakeets, and some saltwater fish. Moreover, given the attention that the campaign promise drew to pets (and Obama’s lack thereof), it is not surprising that the American public was well aware of this point of difference between the two candidates.Mutz goes on to explain that -
Presidential pets, and canines in particular, have been widely acknowledged to play a significant role in the political success of their masters. Many presidential pups have become celebrities in their own right, exceeding even their masters’ success in the White House. President Harding’s Airedale, Laddie Boy, became a national celebrity and was given a chair at cabinet meetings. Roosevelt’s black Scottie, Fala, traveled abroad and joined the president at international meetings promoting world peace. Pushinka, a fluffy little white dog given to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Khrushchev, was long suspected of being infested with bugs. However, after an extensive Secret Service clearance process, she was allowed to have intimate relations with the Kennedy’s Welsh terrier, Charlie, and the two went on to produce four pupniks. Roosevelt’s dog, Fala, later gave Nixon the inspiration for his infamous “Checkers speech” about his own dog. In short, canines have clearly played an important role in presidential politics, affecting both a politician’s image and effectiveness.
Despite their high profiles once in office, there is little empirical evidence as to whether or why dogs matter either to electoral prospects or to a president’s success once in office.
Using the most extensive dataset available on the 2008 election, I examine the impact of dog ownership on presidential vote preference. Canines were elevated to the status of a campaign issue when, during the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama publicly promised his daughters a dog after the election was over, a campaign promise that has since been fulfilled. However, this announcement appears to have unintentionally highlighted the absence of a key point of potential identification between this candidate and voters, and thus to have significantly undermined the likelihood that dog-owning voters would support Obama. I elaborate upon the implications of this finding for future presidential candidates. ...
In Obama’s case, the negative impact of his petlessness is clearly driven by the dog-owning public’s inability to identify with a president who didn’t know Frontline from a filibuster. I found no evidence that the votes of owners of other kinds of pets with more Obama-like personalities (e.g. cats) benefited his candidacy. In fact, the impact of owning other kinds of pets was either negative or negligible throughout, thus casting greater support for canine group identification theory. The dog-owning portion of the electorate appears to agree with Calvin Coolidge's admonition that "any man who does not like dogs and want them about, does not deserve to be in the White House".
In short, Democrats should be wagging their tails over the arrival of Bo Obama, who could play well to potential swing voters in 2012. It is probably no accident that a seasoned politician like Ted Kennedy gave the Obamas the dog as a gift when the public was just about to give up on this long-awaited campaign promise. On the one hand, Obama supporters may feel some relief at knowing that the White House now has a canine resident, particularly in advance of the 2010 midterm elections. But if he is to reap the benefits of this change in lifestyle, President Obama would be well advised to give the pooch a much higher public profile than he has to date.
Thus far, Bo Obama has spawned a lookalike Beanie Baby and two children’s books, but he has yet tomanifest a strong presence among the adult, voting public. The fact that he makes so few public appearances has prompted at least one blogger to speculate that this Portuguese water dog might be a Vietnamese water torture dog instead. Dog owners cannot be brought on board unless they are reminded of Bo’s presence. Assuming Bo does not bite (and perhaps even if he does), the president needs to parade him in front of theWashington press corps regularly to remind the American public that he, too, has a best friend.
