Let Them Eat Election Cake!

I’ve only run for office once. It was for a class election in elementary school.

The only other time I’ve held office was for a student government position in grad school which I admit to finding faintly embarrassing. Since I was appointed and not elected, I like to think it shouldn’t count against me. Besides, I’ve always thought there are utterly powerless folks in a political system and then there are student governments vying for one step below that rung. I had a cause and a few friends in the org at the time.

I ran for fifth grade class president because I was required to run for an office; actually, the entire class was required to run for office. When the choices are president, vice-president, secretary of state, and treasurer, it’s pretty obvious that every kid is going to run for president. This was facilitated by the fact that the elections were held one at a time. So the first election was held for president, once that was decided, the vice-presidential elections, and so forth until all the offices were filled. In that context, pretty much everyone ran for every office till they were all filled.

Ostensibly, the exercise was part of our civics lesson in how U.S. national elections and the Electoral College work. In fact, I think it may have been imported from California. My sister and I had spent a brief four months living in Cupertino, California in fourth grade and our teacher, Ms. Nile (whose daily rendition of the song Waltzing Matilda I will never forget), had assigned each class member two states and held presidential elections. The Regnart Elementary School ‘s version was correct and instead of requiring us all to run for office, class members could field president and vice-presidential teams and then run more or less like the real thing. I believe a girl named Mardell won the presidency. She was nice, easy-going, and smart. I voted for her. Too bad real politics aren’t like that. Another girl, “M2” was a more typical candidate. I learned a lot from her. For example, it’s the first time I learned that there was an alternative meaning to the word “gay” that didn’t mean happy and carefree. M2 liked using the term a lot. Typically with people who weren’t voting for her (and that would have been the majority). Mrs. Roth and I troubled her by not thinking it was an insult, even with the secondary meaning attached. She also found “ya’ll” (a southernism for “you all”) inexplicably funny as well. We thought it was obviously superior to the whiny and nasal California phrase “you guys”.

Back we went to the vast metropolis of Bogalusa, Louisiana.

After moving back, my sis and I told our fifth grade teacher Mrs. Rawls, about the assignment. She must have liked it (or possibly already had a similar idea) because the next thing we knew, the entire fifth grade was having elections. Each class member was assigned two states. I forget which ones I got assigned at this point, but I do remember who had California! And instead of fielding teams, the fifth grade teachers made us all run. And they offered the full complement of offices with real duties attached. This wasn’t a bad strategy when you consider that there would be few stigmas to losing if EVERYONE was required to run for an office.

As an aside on a similar theme, I have pondered how elections would work if office-holders were selected by lottery, like jury duty. You would get slackers and people who “forgot” to open the envelope. But you might get a little less of the power-hungry smarminess. Perhaps some people would rise to the occasion. Or not.

Anyways, the salient point is that everyone ran for president, including me. We all had to give campaign speeches and then talk fellow classmates into voting for us. I remember preparing my speech in the backyard, while I walked around and around the vegetable garden and the rose bush. I spent a lot of time on it. And I’d already made sure that my campaign promises of obtaining water and bathroom passes were okay with the teacher. I thought it was pretty good. It was at least a handwritten page long. I took it to my grandfather (a southern Baptist minister) and read it aloud to him. He was very quiet. Then he said he liked it. He then proceeded to give me one of his rambling but potent speeches on the seductive and fickle nature of political power.

By way of background, Granddaddy once told me that he thought I could do anything, and he’s probably the only person who could say something like that and make it sound like a warning.

I told him we were required to run for office. That seemed to mollify him.

Of course, to be fair to him, I’ve always been fascinated by political power. I should say that I use that term loosely. For instance, I entertained the notion (very briefly at about age 9) of being a preacher because I liked the idea of having a lot of people listen to me. I admired that kind of influence. Granddaddy doubtless recognized this tendency and took care to warn me about the dangers of pride and ambition.

Years later, after my grandfather died, I discovered that the only Shakespeare he had in his considerable (for a modestly paid Southern preacher) library was a worn copy of Macbeth. It didn’t surprise me.

Back in the classroom, I remember everyone trooping up to the front of class and giving their election speeches. Some speeches were forced, with a lot of ums and ahs, others were jokes done in pure fun, and still others made wild promises like “no homework ever again!”. I remember going around the room and collecting votes along with everyone else. It was kind of odd really because everyone was running so you had to ask people to vote against themselves. Interestingly, very few people voted for themselves, probably because the voting was public. I think I voted for a girl named Angela. She voted for me.

We had a run-off between the two top presidential finalists, me and a boy named Donric.

I won.

At first I thought it was my great speech and I was proud.

Then I overheard one boy saying, “I voted for [Pretzel Bender] because she’s pretty."

Politics have never been the same for me after that.

Darn it, they were supposed to vote for me because I had real campaign promises and a good speech!

I wanted people to vote for me for reasons that I found compelling, but I discovered that elections don’t really work that way. You take whatever support you can get, and you don’t get too picky about the reasons people have for supporting you so long as they do. Only getting the position really matters.

I found that I had unreasonable expectations for the elections process. I only wanted to be elected to office on my own very narrowly defined terms. Even now, despite all of my anthropological training and close-hand observations, I remain irrational about how elections should work.

Possibly it’s because I still believe in federal self-government but get depressed about the degrading electoral practices which seem to end up as the lowest form of marketing on the planet.

Of course, Madison (my favorite federalist, sorry Mrs. Roth) had big ideas about intra-state factionalism and the means to limit its negative effects thru a federal system here in Federalist Paper No. 10. In fact, having read a lot of social theory on faction, I still think Mr. Madison’s is one of the more thoughtful and clearly written pieces out there.

Unfortunately, he remains silent on the nitty gritty of the electoral process and its issues. I dimly recall that there were times in American history when it was considered proper and appropriate to get everyone drunk and then take them to the polls. We live in more sober times.

And I’ve clearly lived too privileged a life to persist in thinking that I don’t need to use every advantage I can possibly obtain (including a glossy coat!) in the competition.

Incidentally, there were plenty of prettier girls in the class (who didn’t kick boys who pulled their hair) if they were going to go on such an arbitrary measure!

My sister, Mrs. Roth, won the vice-presidential elections. After all the elections were over we all had to give little acceptance speeches in preparation for the official inauguration (and more civics lessons) the next day.

I told the class I’d bring cake. That may sound strange to many people, but to a southerner, it might not. Potluck was typically a part of public celebrations and cake was a big feature of that. I don’t recall a single event, school or church, that didn’t involve cake in some way. It’s how I was brought up.

It turns out I accidentally revived an older American tradition of serving Election Cake. Apparently election cakes were part of the celebrations and food items surrounding election days in colonial times. This tradition might be inherited from Britain, I don’t know. Election cakes were typically fruit cakes and, like all early cakes, required some kind of yeast in order to rise. So if you tried one now you’d probably think it was more like sweet fruit bread and be terribly disappointed that it wasn’t remotely like the much beloved American butter cake.

I found out about the existence of election cakes recently when I got this interesting old cookbook for xmas from my father and step-mother, Ice Cream and Cakes, found within the Katherine Bitting collection of food history at the Library of Congress.

Here are some pictures of the front and side of my book. It’s fairly elaborately decorated, which I understand is common for books of the period.

Written by “an American”, the book is full of old and interesting looking recipes, including two versions of election cake and two versions of federal cake.

Here’s the one for election cake:

I think an early recipe for election cake can be found in the famous Fannie Farmer cookbook from the early 20th century. As you can see it’s pretty similar in idea to the one from my cookbook.

From some minor web sleuthing, it seems clear that federal cake is simply the same old election cake idea but dressed up and named “federal” in honor of the new federal constitution back in 1780s and 90s. Actually, when the new American constitution was passed, I think a lot of rather silly public celebrations in which everything was named “federal” this or that. One mention in book about L’Enfant, the erstwhile and only partial designer of the city of Washington, D.C., mentions a huge federal cake created as a confectionary celebration of the new government (scroll down to paragraph 20 here).

Here’s the federal cake recipe from Ice Cream and Cakes here:

I found another recipe for federal cake on the web here.

My own brief election experience did result in my own election cake. I brought enough lemon butter cake with a lemon sugar frosting for the entire class. I don’t recall much else about my brief time in office, other than that the cake was well received.

Perhaps I would like American election politics better if we revived the tradition of the Election Day holiday complete with Election Cake. Would more people participate if they knew there was cake at the end?

I’d like to think so.

It’s better to end something contentious and often bitter with something sweet!