Campaign Theme Songs

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has garnered more than its share of attention. Most recently she has been soliciting assistance “from the people” in choosing her official campaign song. Among the songs up for consideration are “I’m a Believer” (Smash Mouth), “Rock This Country!” (Shania Twain), “Beautiful Day” (U2) and “Suddenly I See” (KT Turnstall) — plus write-in candidates like “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (The Police) and “Are You Gonna Go My Way” (Lenny Kravitz). For Hillary, choosing a campaign song is a delicate proposition, because she needs a song that’s strong and upbeat, and at the same time feminine but not too girlie.

Naturally, people who aren’t fond of Hillary have picked up the torch and offered up their own subversive suggestions — “The Bitch is Back” (Elton John), “Bitch” (The Rolling Stones), and “Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” (Motley Crue) — being a few representative samples. Of course, it’s easy to pick on Hillary; not only has the conservative media been working overtime (for the past 15 years) to demonize her, there’s no shortage of popular songs demonizing women in general.

That’s why a more interesting and less obvious question is what songs Democrats would choose to assign to the 2008 Republican presidential candidates — including Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain — if given the chance. This would appear to be a considerably more challenging proposition, for at least two reasons: Ideally, the songs would remind listeners of the corruption, dishonesty and failure of the past six years of Republican leadership, while at the same time reflecting the personalities (or lack thereof) of our white bread Republican candidates.

Nevertheless, we invite you to offer suggestions, either for individual candidates, or the group as a whole. Feel free to submit them as “comments” below.