Davy Crockett Was a Whig Op!

Our standard mental image of Davy Crockett is as the ultimate backwoodsman—a coonskin cap–wearing populist who embodied all the visual tropes of the age of Jacksonian Democracy. 

There's just one odd thing: the historical Davy Crockett wasn't a Jacksonian Democrat. He was a Whig. 

It was only recently that I learned this apparent paradox was not in my imagination. Indeed, it was intentional. 

As the Progressive-era historian V.L. Parrington describes it, the historical Davy Crockett was practically grown in a lab by Whig party operatives—specifically to cater to the homespun tastes of Jacksonian voters and win them over to the other side. 

The Whig Establishment, as it were, "needed a picturesque figure to draw the coonskin democracy to its standard," writes Parrington. "To find a native Tennessseean [...] was a find indeed to the hard-pressed Whigs." 

And so they set about concocting the myth of Davy Crockett that persists to this day—putting out a series of books that really doubled as campaign biographies—none of which Crockett wrote himself. 

"That in its later development, if not in the beginning, the Davy Crockett myth was a deliberate falsification scarcely admits of doubt," Parrington summarizes, "nor that its immediate purpose was frankly partisan."

So, you heard it here first people: Davy Crockett was a Whig op!

I bring this up not just because I find it interesting and I'll take any excuse to talk about my love of Parrington—but because it increasingly appears that this is what the Democrats were trying to do with Graham Platner (albeit with conspicuously less success). 

Platner first came on the scene purporting to be the ultimate outsider populist candidate running against the Party elites. 

But the true circumstances of his run appear more complicated than that. In fact, he was recruited and groomed for a run by two Gen Z Democratic Party operatives associated with the Sanders movement. 

They appear to have settled on Platner not because he had any political experience or interest in running for office—but because he possessed the visual signifiers and symbolic tropes they were looking for: tattoos, military experience, a blue collar aesthetic.

By finding a Maine oysterman who wore Carhartts, they figured they had a candidate on their hands who could peel away votes from Trump's core constituency. 

As Nate Silver sums up in a post yesterday: Platner "was recruited by consultants and activists who saw him in a video shot by a local ecological conservation organization."

In other words, Democratic strategists had found a "picturesque figure" whom they thought could draw Trumpian voters based solely on visual and symbolic appeal; just as the Whig operatives of the 1800s felt the need for a "coonskin" frontiersman they could call their own. 

It now looks increasingly like these operatives put so much weight on mere aesthetics that they missed some obvious weaknesses in their candidate. 

They somehow managed to overlook the early warning signs of a string of scandals that has now practically destroyed his campaign: the Nazi tattoo, the mean-spirited and crude Reddit posts, the sexting, the claims from women about unsettling behavior, and now, a seemingly credible sexual assault allegation. 

The most embarrassing aspect of this story is the way various leftist pundits carried water for Platner long after they ought to have sensed the larger pattern here. 

When the New York Times came out with reporting featuring claims from multiple people that Platner had been an unstable partner who engaged in "reckless" behavior and did not appear to respect women—progressive outlets sneered at this reporting as a right-wing or "Establishment" Dem op to torpedo Platner's campaign. 

It should be clear by now that the real "op" was Platner: it just happens to have been a failed one. 

Then there were all the progressive bro commentators who felt the need to minimize or airbrush the earlier claims about Platner's apparent marital infidelities and his ugly, dismissive comments about women and rape survivors online. 

These episodes, the left-wing "populist" bro writers assured us, just proved that Americans were fed up with "smoothgroined" politicians and didn't want any more "HR ladies" running their lives. 

In other words, Platner was living proof that we needed more big swinging dick energy in the Democratic Party, as they saw it. 

Well, that take sure aged terribly. 

I suspect the real lesson here is not to try to grow your candidates in a lab. Don't expect mere aesthetics and symbolic appeal to carry you all the way to Washington and to dupe swathes of voters who don't already agree with your party. 

If you want to win people over, try being yourself. People can usual see through the fakery of focus groups and consultants (indeed, according to the leftist bros, this was supposed to be the whole appeal of Platner—they just ignored that he was himself the creature of party consultants). 

As Nate Silver writes in his post on the Platner controversy: "I think voters tend to have some instincts for which candidates they feel are 'authentic'," and Platner didn't pass the smell test. 

Except... I guess the Davy Crockett op worked? Well, it was a simpler time.