Donald Trump has certainly been winning the nickname battle this election season — “Little Marco” is still delighting the Internet; “Lyin’ Ted” helped bring down a candidate; “Crooked Hillary” is appearing on T-shirts and TV ads around the country. But if you think that Trump pioneered the art of nasty political nicknaming, you’d be wrong. As unusual a candidate as Trump is, this schoolyard behavior actually brings out his traditional side: For centuries, presidential candidates have been dishing out malicious nicknames with abandon; Trump has simply revived the highly effective practice. And his opponents have been slow to catch up.

“Political discourse in the United States is characterized by high productivity of coining nicknames for US Presidents,” writes Dr. Anna Gladkova, who wrote a 2002 paper on the practice. She counts 430 nicknames for (at the time) 43 American presidents. Many of these nicknames are complimentary, but aside from Honest Abe, the positive ones don’t stick around very long—quick, who was Handsome Frank? Smiling Bill? It’s the vicious ones that people remember.


Hillary Clinton has been having trouble countering her Republican opponent on this front. (The choices so far? “Dangerous Donald.” “Poor Donald.” Bernie Sanders has chimed in with “Mr. Macho”—which is, oddly, sort of a compliment.) The problem is, Democrats today don’t appear to possess the requisite adolescent glee necessary to finding just the right few words that will stick like napalm and burn, burn, burn.

Democrats would do well to get down in the sandbox with our political forbearers, whom Trump resembles, insult-wise, at least. Back in 1800, Federalists loved to refer to Thomas Jefferson as “Generalissimo Jefferson,” underscoring the fact that beneath that Republican veneer beat the heart of an aristocrat. Andrew Jackson dubbed Henry Clay “The Judas of the West” for his supposed “corrupt bargain” in handing over the 1824 election to John Q. Adams. “Granny” Harrison fit William Henry Harrison pretty well—the latter was 68 when he bested Martin Van Buren in 1840 (“Martin Van Ruin,” as he was known, for presiding over the Panic of 1837). That’s younger than all three major candidates today, of course, although Harrison would die only a month after taking office, leaving things to “His Accidency,” the much-reviled John Tyler.

James Buchanan became “10 Cent Jimmy,” for his insistence that 10 cents a day was a decent wage. It wasn’t, not even in 1856, but at least the nickname was probably a little better than “Aunt Nancy,” which is what Andrew Jackson called the supposedly gay Buchanan. (According to Gladkova, by the way, it helps to make child-oriented nicknaming worse if you can add an “ie” or “ey” to your opponent’s name.) Rutherford B. Hayes—a pretty upstanding guy, in his way—was dubbed “Rutherfraud” and “His Fraudulency” after his Republicans stole (and they really did) the election of 1876. Grover Cleveland was, one of my personal favorites, “the Beast of Buffalo,” for supposedly siring an illegitimate child when he was mayor of that fair city.

All of these nicknames caught on, inspiring sometimes ribald campaign cartoons (one 1840 illustration has “Granny” Harrison dressed in women’s clothing as he tries to “deliver” Martin Van Buren from his presidency with a long pair of forceps) and mean-spirited posters (one such Republican broadside in 1856 pictured an especially demented looking donkey over the caption, “A true likeness of ‘ten cent Jimmy’ Buchanan”). The labels were simple, they were catchy. And, most important, they all contained at least a dash of truth, which is the key to a good nickname. 1928 Democratic candidate Al Smith was opposed to Prohibition and liked a cocktail of an evening—he became “Al-coholic Smith.” In 1932, Time magazine mercilessly dubbed President Herbert Hoover “President Reject,” after the country rebelled against his perceived inadequacy in the face of the crushing Depression.

The granddaddy of all political nicknames was bestowed upon Richard Nixon during his 1950 California run for Senate against Helen Douglas. Nixon successfully labeled Douglas the “Pink Lady” during the course of a commie-baiting smear campaign. But it was a pyrrhic nickname victory, since it was in this campaign that a Democratic ad tagged Nixon “Tricky Dick” (he had, quite extraordinarily, sent out a mailer to 68,000 Democratic primary voters implying that he was Democrat—the envelope read AS ONE DEMOCRAT TO ANOTHER). “Tricky Dick” stuck with Nixon for the rest of his political life and, indeed, proved prophetic.

And then, of course, there is Hillary Clinton’s spouse, President Bill Clinton—who became “Slick Willy” and/or “Bubba,” epithets which perfectly captured, for those who hated him, his supposed hick chicanery.

In the age of Twitter, just as in the age of Pony Express, a good nasty nickname counts for a lot, and the Democrats need to work on this. Gladkova’s paper can help. She lists five categories into which pejorative presidential nicknames typically fall—including “Undeserved Leader” (His Accidency, His Fraudulency); “Politicians Influenced by Others” (William Howard Taft’s surname, according to his detractors, was an acronym for “Takes Advice From Teddy” Roosevelt, his former boss); and “Person Not Able to Fulfill Promises.”

To this, I would even add another category: “Person Who Is Crazy As A Loon.” Political campaigns have historically done quite well in painting opponents as nuts. During the William McKinley-William Jennings Bryan contest in 1896, the McKinley-supporting New York Times published an interesting little article entitled, “Is Mr. Bryan Crazy?” The paper then interviewed several prominent “alienists” (that’s what they called psychiatrists in those days) who claimed that Bryan suffered from megalomania (delusions of grandeur); paranoia querulent (complaining too much); and querulent logorrhea (talking about complaining too much). In 1964, LBJ’s advisers agreed that the way to defeat Barry Goldwater was to portray him as “unstable, impulsive, reckless.”

In both cases, these campaigns were successful (Johnson won by the biggest popular vote plurality in American history). So, Democrats. Demented Donnie? Republicans: Hysterical Hillary? Get thee to the playground.