"Bring Us Together" was a political slogan popularized after the election of Republican candidate Richard Nixon as President of the United States in the 1968 election. The text was derived from a sign which 13-year-old Vicki Lynne Cole stated that she had carried at Nixon's rally in her hometown of Deshler, Ohio, during the campaign.
Richard Moore, a friend of Nixon, told the candidate's speechwriters he had seen a child carrying a sign reading "Bring Us Together" at the Deshler rally. The speechwriters, including William Safire, began inserting the phrase into the candidate's speeches. Nixon mentioned the Deshler rally and the sign in his victory speech on November 6, 1968, adopting the phrase as representing his administration's initial goal—to reunify the bitterly divided country. Cole came forward as the person who carried the sign and was the subject of intense media attention.
Nixon invited Cole and her family to the presidential inauguration, and she appeared on a float in the inaugural parade. The phrase "Bring Us Together" was used ironically by Democrats when Nixon proposed policies with which they disagreed or refused to support. Cole declined to comment on Nixon's 1974 resignation, but subsequently expressed sympathy for him. In newspaper columns written in his final years before his 2009 death, Safire expressed doubt that Cole's sign ever existed.
Background
The 1968 presidential campaign was one of the most bitterly fought in the nation's history. Set among national divisions over the Vietnam War, social policy, and against the backdrop of riot and assassination, none of the campaigns made healing divisions a major theme—an early slogan by Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, "United With Humphrey" had been scrapped. The incumbent president, Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson (often called L.B.J.) could give Humphrey little support because of his own unpopularity.
By 1968, candidates were appealing to the electorate through television, rather than through whistle-stop train tours. Nevertheless, Nixon had included them in his past national campaigns—he had broken off one such tour in 1952 to make the Checkers speech, and in 1960, had stopped at Deshler. The rural Ohio village, about southwest of Toledo, was popular among whistle-stopping presidential candidates as two main lines of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad crossed there—other visitors in search of votes had included Al Smith, Harry Truman, and Barry Goldwater. Deshler voters would respond in 1968 by giving Nixon an overwhelming majority of their votes.
Rally and sign
Vicki Cole was an eighth-grader in Deshler; her father was the local Methodist minister, while her mother taught third grade. On October 22, 1968, the day of Nixon's stop in Deshler, Cole attended class as usual. During the morning session, one of her teachers announced that any girls interested in being "Nixonettes" (girls asked to cheer and provide atmosphere at the rally) should report to the fire station after school. Cole did so, along with her friend, Rita Bowman, and the girls were provided with paper red, white, and blue dresses (to be worn over other clothing) and signs. Cole's sign read "L.B.J. Convinced Us—Vote Republican".
That afternoon, Cole attended the rally, wearing her dress and holding her sign. The Nixon train pulled in, and the police lowered the rope which kept the crowd clear of the tracks. In interviews, Cole related that as the crowd surged forward, she dropped her sign amidst the pushing and shoving. Cole stated, "I wanted a sign to wave. I had lost my own placard and as the crowd moved forward as the train approached I saw this sign lying in the street and I just picked it up and held it high, hoping Mr. Nixon would see it."
