Would it work well? I can make a case either way.
“It” would be for Joe Biden’s campaign to reprise the greatest campaign song ever: i.e. to adopt as its own campaign song what FDR adopted for his first campaign — which he won in what was then the greatest landslide in American history -- in the depths of the Great Depression.
In other words, I’m proposing that the Biden campaign consider using “Happy Days Are Here Again” for this year’s contest, seeing it as possibly a dynamite choice for Biden’s purposes because:
- these times are dark and scary, just as when FDR chose it for his first campaign for President , and proceeded to continue to use it for all his other campaigns (all of them, of course, victorious);
- Joe Biden himself has been conjuring up FDR’s presidency to illustrate what he’s envisioning for his own hoped-for presidency, using the FDR image to convey how he sees his coming to the presidency as an opportunity — just as FDR had when he took office in the depths of the Depression — to “Build Back Better,” i.e. for Biden’s likewise to be a “transformational Presidency”;
- this song remained an anthem — a rallying cry — for the Democratic Party for many years after the Age of FDR, exciting the enthusiasm of many Democratic conventions (until I don’t know when).
The song is 90 years old, but musically — to my ear — it remains compelling and rousing. And it suits the times. As in the Great Depression, so also now in the Pandemic Depression: it could speak to the yearnings of the American people:
Altogether shout it now There's no one Who can doubt it now So let's tell the world about it now Happy days are here again
The case against it? Uncertainty about how well this reaching back into history would work with the American people generally.
It would be dynamite for people like me, who have been exposed to the long and inspired political history connected with the song. (People like me who know the history, and who have watched Democratic conventions back into the era where Democrats repeatedly used that song to celebrate “Happy Days Are Here Again” with the Democrats’ continuous 20-year occupancy of the White House.)
How would this play with those unfamiliar with the song and its great history? Would it be possible to introduce them to that piece of American history, where Democratic presidential leadership gave the nation hope and led the way out of the darkness into which the United States had plunged under Republican leadership?
If not, would the song nonetheless work in its own terms— freshly instilling hope and inspiration, and readiness to march to victory?
I think the idea at least worth seriously considering.