Must Love Dogs to Be President? Not Really.

Must Love Dogs to Be President? Not Really.

Jonathan S. Tobin
04.01.2015
Commentary Magazine


It’s very early in the 2016 presidential cycle but already the editors of the New York Times seem to have run out of coherent story ideas. That’s the only rational conclusion to be drawn from a feature that appeared on the front page of the flagship institution of the mainstream liberal press today. It’s subject: the impact of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s allergy to dogs. This is ripe territory for humor circulated on Twitter or other comedy forums and it is April Fool’s Day, but the Times isn’t kidding. Written in a deadpan style, the piece actually attempts to measure the impact that Walker’s lack of a canine pet might have on his candidacy. In it experts, such as someone from what we are told is a Presidential Pet Museum, informs us that dogs humanize candidates and make them more approachable. But though dogs have often been useful political props, the notion that this is a real problem for Walker’s candidacy is a joke. He may not win his party’s nomination or the

It’s true that consultants love for their candidates to have pets. A successful mayoral candidate’s rented dog was a feature in the classic novel and film The Last Hurrah which detailed the way an insubstantial figure who was created by and for television could defeat a traditional political boss. Franklin Roosevelt used a supposed insult to his dog Fala to good use in his 1944 reelection campaign. Richard Nixon helped save his political career by pulling on the heartstrings of viewers when he told them of the gift of a puppy named “Checkers” to his children instead of discussing allegations of a slush fund.

In recent decades, presidential dogs have been used to good effect by presidents of both parties. George H.W. Bush’s dog Millie was credited as the author of a best-selling book. Most political observers thought Bill Clinton’s decision to get a dog during his second term was motivated by the need to help distract the public from less wholesome scandals that threatened to destroy his presidency.

But though most presidents or their family members have had pets of one kind or another, the idea that the absence of one in a Walker White House would actually impact the outcome of an election is a bit of a stretch even for the Times.

Americans generally love dogs. Moreover, the pet industry has become a huge business in a country where many people often treat their animals as if they were their children. But that doesn’t mean everybody is happy about this state of affairs. I have a sneaking suspicion that there are a lot of voters who not only wouldn’t hold his lack of a furry friend against Walker, but also might identify with him more than the editors of the Times and the proprietors of the Presidential Pet Museum might think.

After all, allergy sufferers might be just as potent a demographic group as any in a presidential election. Moreover, it could also be that people who send their dogs to spas and summer camps are likely to be liberal Democrats who would never vote for a tax-cutting governor who is a conservative folk hero for standing up to municipal worker unions.

Actually, I have no more idea whether that assumption is true than the editors of the Times have for their assumptions about dog ownership equaling likeability. Which is to say that all speculation about the dog vote in 2016 is as uninformed and ridiculous as much of what often passes for straight political coverage in the Times.

But Walker can take one piece of consolation from this bit of nonsense from the Times. If he wasn’t a serious political contender whose ability to engender support from mainstream Republicans, Tea Partiers, and evangelicals is scaring both his GOP rivals and Democrats, the Times wouldn’t have wasted space on its front page poking fun at his allergies.

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