“If we’re going to have a clown in the White House, we might as well have a professional,” the culture critic Digby Diehl quoted a Pat Paulsen presidential fan saying during the 1968 election. Writing for the New York Times, Diehl pointed out the significance of Paulsen’s fringe candidacy when he continued, “This may be a tragicomic comment on the state of American politics, but it is also a tribute to the deadpan wit of a comedian who has waged the largest, most successful mock campaign in the history of presidential politics.”1
All of which is true—and to anyone who disagrees, I cite Paulsen’s trademark rejoinder, “Picky, picky, picky.”
Paulsen ran as the nominee of the faux Straight Talking American Government (STAG) Party. (For those of you who came of age in a less-sexist America, “stag party” refers to a men’s-only whoop-it-up.) In actuality Paulsen was the nominee of a television show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, his presidential stage being the CBS television network. A far cry from Louis Abolafia, an unknown artist seeking the spotlight, yet in other respects Paulsen was akin to Abolafia and to the other fringe candidates of that pivotal year. All either voiced dissent or, if not explicitly voicing it (Pigasus, for one, could only oink), implicitly conveyed dissent through performances that undermined prevailing views.
The arc of Pat Paulsen’s political career/act closely paralleled that of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Premiering in February 1967, it followed the format of other popular variety shows: a star or costars hosting various performers, often including comic skits. Tom and Dick Smothers, two clean-cut young men who sang folk songs that went comically off the rails into sibling issues, looked like two darling, if maybe a bit mischievous, all-American boys. An example of their mischievously undermining prevailing views through performance was the appearance during the show’s first month of George Burns, the husband and comedic partner of the 1940 fringe candidate Gracie Allen. Burns was enormously popular with a now middle-aged fan base of all political stripes. Among the acts in which he participated on the show was joining in with the shaggy-haired rock-n-roll stars Herman’s Hermits, thereby subverting the view that the country was politically divided by a “generation gap.”
The next week’s show undermined a prevailing view through a more explicit performance: an editorial by “Smothers Brothers Vice President” Pat Paulsen, his executive title and dour delivery mocking the demeanor of commentators who had recently become popular in television news. Paulsen weighed in on the noncontroversial topic of auto safety, opining with “logic” that occasionally soared into intellectually intoned babble such as this: “There are only two ways to go. One way is neither right nor wrong and the other way isn’t. We know that taking a firm grade is pledganous and facts will bare us out. . . . We suggest simply lowering the statistics, which implies we stop counting accidents. This is a necessity for all who trudge and all those who glog the gains of life and I think we should all ask ourselves this question: How Much?”2 Something must have been bugging America about television (if not all) editorials; some seventeen thousand fan letters followed.3
Needless to say, the show continued the bit. But Paulsen’s next editorial tread on more explosive turf: gun control. The issue was in the news at the time as Congress was debating a proposal that became the Gun Control Act of 1968. In March 1967 Smothers Brothers Vice President Paulsen weighed in:
Many people today are suggesting that restrictions be placed on the purchase and ownership of firearms. . . . No one questions that these are good solid citizens . . . and we will fight to the death against their right to express their opinions. . . . I ask you, what is our most cherished right since pioneer days? The right for every man, woman and child to carry a gun. This is not a statement of kration but has a man to meetings that even a child could understand. If you are old enough to get arrested, you’re old enough to carry a gun.4
In performance Paulsen’s editorials further ridiculed the authoritativeness of such commentators with physical comedy, such as his stiffly using fingers a moment too late to indicate his first and second points, or an emphatic tap on his executive desk hitting a saucer that caused his coffee cup to flip in the air, or, regarding gun control, pulling from his coat the revolver he carried and, at the close of his comments, accidently shooting the off-camera announcer.
The public loved it.
Indeed the public was taken by the whole show, in part because of its veering into realms of controversy. Along with editorial pokes at topics like gun control, those darling but devilish Smothers boys brought on performers such as the folk singer Pete Seeger, long blacklisted from television as a suspected communist sympathizer. Seeger sang of a training incident during World War II that resulted in a needless death—a song that resonated with what many thought were needless deaths in the Vietnam War. CBS censored the song, resulting in a rash of news reports in which Tom and Dick Smothers complained of a rash of network interference, resulting in a rash of viewers tuning in to see what all the fuss was about.
To some degree the fuss was about putting a dent in the ratings of Bonanza, an NBC western that had long dominated that time-slot until the Smothers Brothers got a grip on its audience share. Which, from the get-go, they did using controversy cloaked in comedy. “The first reaction to the new Smothers Brothers Show on CBS has been favorable, and the credit must go to Ernest Chambers and Saul Ilson, the producers,” one wire service report stated, going on to reveal, “They realize that being up against Bonanza is something like flying a kamikaze. . . . ‘You have to do something to shake the complacency of the viewers,’ says Ilson. ‘You have to make them say, ‘Did you see The Smothers Brothers show last night?’ To do that, you have to be different, maybe even controversial.’”5
While the show stayed in the news with disputes over CBS censorship of content ranging from the folk singer Joan Baez dedicating a song to her husband going to prison for draft evasion to a skit about (of all things) censorship, Paulsen’s editorials plowed beneath such explicit surfaces. Instead he seemingly nonsensically loosened the soil of prevailing views on topics such as sex education, the war on poverty, legalized gambling, and health care legislation. Where he went into nonsensical realms, however, is where he conveyed views through performance that would have been censored had he verbally stated them, as seen in the opening of his editorial on health care. From the time federal health care was first proposed, in November 1945 (referred to as President Truman’s “compulsory national health insurance” and as “socialized medicine”), to the equally contentious enactment of Medicare in 1964 (and through to, and after, the 2010 enactment of the Affordable Care Act), health care legislation has been a hot-button issue.6 But in Paulsen’s September 24, 1967, editorial we can see him burrowing beneath the reach of the censor’s red pencil even as he began, “Of late, more and more people are expressing the view that doctors are charging too much for their services. Now the complaints of exorbitant fees come almost without exception from those who have been going to doctors. I say these people are sick, and why listen to them?”7
The nation laughed and, slapping its collective knee, slapped medical fees.
The newspaper listings of television shows for October 1, 1967, reported that the Smothers Brothers show would feature film star Jane Powell, British stage actor Noel Harrison, Tom and Dick Smothers singing “Sweetheart, Sweetheart,” and Pat Paulsen entering the presidential race clad as Tarzan.
Much as with Paulsen’s first editorial, the show’s creators could only have dreamed the fan approval would be as huge. It wasn’t. It was huger. And politically edgier. “We talked to him for nearly an hour,” one columnist wrote of a Paulsen press conference that followed on the heels of announcing his candidacy. “At the end of that time, some half dozen reporters were hard-pressed to tell exactly what it was Paulsen was talking about or whether he was ‘putting us on’ or not.”8 What are you talking about? and Are you putting us on? precisely convey the way Paulsen and his Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour handlers undermined mainstream presidential bunk.
In a show that followed the press conference, Dick Smothers conducted a comic presidential preference poll among those in the studio audience. The upshot of this and other such antics soon surfaced in a news item that began, “The Smothers Brothers insist they are serious about nominating comic Pat Paulsen as a presidential candidate.”9 In that politically dizzying era, Paulsen’s candidacy had heads spinning from the moment he knocked his coffee cup into the presidential ring.
Technically Paulsen had not announced that he was running; rather he parodied politicians who coyly announce that they are not announcing they are running.10 “Clubs seem to be springing up in my behalf all over the country,” he separately told the press. “But although I am unable to say anything at this time, I am glad of an opportunity so early in my campaign to deny that I am running.” At which point he asked the reporters to attribute any further statements “either to a ‘spokesman’ or a ‘close associate.’” The news media ate it up. One wire service report of these remarks stated, “A spokesman explained that the candidate would represent the ‘Straight Talking American Government party,’ or ‘STAG party.’”11
Others in the media, seeing an opportunity for themselves, played along in similar ways. Radio station KRLA, for example, mock-editorialized, “Pat Paulsen formally announced that he is not a candidate for the presidency, thus placing himself in the company of other such non-candidates. It should be obvious to everyone that Pat Paulsen is out of place in such rich company.” The editorial continued to slam Paulsen in this manner before concluding, “In accordance with the equal time provisions, we now present Mr. Pat Paulsen with a non-rebuttal to a KRLA non-editorial.” Paulsen’s mock rebuttal began by telling “the millions of Americans yelling for me to run, save your breath. Simply sign one of the petitions . . . floating around your neighborhood.” And concluded by saying KRLA’s listeners should “feel free to turn your dial to some other radio station that has some class.”12
Amid nonsensical candidate platitudes such as “If elected, I promise I will win,” Paulsen threw in zingers aimed at actual candidates. His campaign slogan, “We Cannot Stand Pat,” was a traditional rallying cry; its humor resided in its simultaneously insulting the candidate himself. But it also jabbed at Republican candidate Richard Nixon, who frequently said, “I’ll stand pat on that.” (And perhaps another layer for wags who pointed out that the name of Nixon’s wife was Pat.)
Meanwhile Paulsen’s editorials on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour continued, now also serving, in effect, as his campaign platform—and taking on increasingly controversial issues. Three weeks into his presidential campaign, he editorialized on an issue that was triggering often violent protest, the military draft, which included his observing, “A good many people feel our present draft laws are unjust. These people are called soldiers. . . . What are the arguments against the draft? We hear that it is unfair, immoral, discourages young men from studying, ruins their careers, and their lives. Picky, picky, picky.”13
Capitalizing on their bonanza, the producers of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour took Paulsen’s candidacy on the road. They arranged for speeches, rallies, and even parades in cities across the country, accompanied by a film crew preparing a one-hour documentary special that the show aired shortly before Election Day. They arranged for the sale of campaign paraphernalia and a book, Pat Paulsen for President. In Los Angeles and New York they arranged campaign dinners for Paulsen’s candidacy at which donors had to pay eighty-nine cents a plate, the proceeds going to the cafeterias at which they were held. Many of the biggest stars in show business attended, pausing for the news media and paparazzi before entering.14
Amid the hoopla Paulsen maintained both his genuine modesty and the false modesty of mainstream candidates. Of the genuine modesty, one interviewer noted, “Pat’s conversation was low-key, diffident but friendly; his manner totally without pretension.”15 Likewise, except not, candidate Paulsen repeatedly assured voters and viewers, “I will always be aware of my humble station in life. A common, ordinary, simple savior of America’s destiny.”16
Paulsen’s widespread appeal rested largely on his low-key delivery and the ability of the show’s writers to crank out benign jabs that cloaked the occasional satirical stiletto. Paulsen’s speeches, for example, often mocked political claptrap with the relatively safe joke: “I know what the average voter wants. In fact, I’d like to get a little myself.” Amid such lines, however, he’d periodically deliver far sharper punchlines, such as, on the divisive Vietnam War, “A lot of people don’t understand our problems there, and these people are our leaders.”17 Other lines seemed benign, but their humor actually detonated in realms of fundamental protest, as when he went Lincolnesque by declaring he would be elected “for the people, by the people, and in spite of the people.”18
Just how finely attuned the staff writers were to their audiences can be seen by comparing Paulsen’s remarks when he went to Miami during the Republican National Convention to those he made in Chicago during that year’s tumultuous Democratic National Convention. With the more conservative Republicans, his comments were predominantly benign. Speaking as a candidate to delegates from his home state of Washington he said, “I was glad to hear the Washington delegation is uncommitted. I hear some of the delegations have been committed, and that’s a shame. Just because they’re a little oddball in their political thinking is no reason to have them committed.”19 The writers scripted him only a bit more pointedly when, after his request to address the Republican Convention was turned down, he told the press, “I’m not a vindictive person, but I am revengeful. Naturally, I didn’t want to interfere with the solemnity of a political convention—the seriousness of popping balloons, tooting horns, and parading around.”20
At the Democratic Convention, however, where police and protestors were battling in the streets and the national guard had been called in to contain the violence, Paulsen’s writers ratcheted his remarks up a notch toward resonating with the protests against the Vietnam War. “Personally, I believe we should limit the ground fighting and send our troops home as soon as possible,” he opined. “In fact, I see no reason to keep them here past Friday.”21 Other remarks he made in Chicago detonated in more fundamental realms of protest, as when he proclaimed, “We must preserve the current system with its checks and balances which prevent the majority from obtaining control.”22
The conflicts between The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and CBS continued throughout Paulsen’s year-long presidential campaign. These disputes provided the news media with an ideal story, as it enabled journalists to raise the important issue of censorship while at the same time marginalizing its controversial aspects. The New York Times, for example, stated, “Industry observers point out that the Smothers Brothers highly publicized battle with the network over censorship might not be entirely unrelated to their ratings battle with the National Broadcasting Company’s long running ‘Bonanza.’ There is also some evidence for believing that not everyone in high places at the network is unhappy about the publicity given the show over the censorship issue.”23
Still, the fact that it was a great way to raise and evade a controversial issue did not make such reports wrong. Indeed Pete Seeger was back in the news when CBS permitted him to return to the show and sing the song it had previously censored.24 The Washington Post cut right to the chase when its TV columnist wrote, “The Brothers and their manager simply must be aware of TV’s first rule: Almost anything can be forgiven or overlooked if audience ratings are sufficiently large.”25
The fact that the conflict made for good ratings was further evidenced when CBS permitted the conflict itself to become part of Paulsen’s campaign. On the January 7, 1968, show, he editorialized:
The time has come to quit [BLEEP]ing around and talk about censorship. We of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour have had our share of censorship problems, but we are not against censorship because we realize there is always the danger of something being said. . . . Many people feel that censorship is a violation of Freedom of Speech. Bull feathers. . . . The Bill of Rights says nothing about Freedom of Hearing. . . . There is nothing in the Bill of Rights about Freedom of Seeing. . . . Let’s face it, there have to be some realistic taboos—especially with political comment. After all, the leaders of our country were not elected to be tittered at. . . . You can’t say anything bad about President Johnson because you shouldn’t insult the President. But if you compliment him, who will believe it? So in conclusion, you can see that there is a place for censors, and we only wish that we could tell you where it is.
Through the lens of the fringe candidacy of Paulsen as a proxy of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour we can see the nation’s political landscape shifting amid the upheavals of that era. On Election Day the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, narrowly edged out his Democratic challenger, Hubert Humphrey. In the executive suite at CBS it is quite likely they were also eyeing the vote count for Paulsen: less than .01 percent. Or, in showbiz terms, less than his fellow comedian and fringe candidate that year, Dick Gregory, who garnered .06 percent of voter and audience share.
The results, albeit close, were in and indicated that The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was trending out. Five months later CBS canceled it.26
For the 1972 election Paulsen again announced he was a candidate. Seeking to recapture the spotlight as he had in 1968, he upped the ante by officially getting on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary. In so doing he nearly upended his career since he was now, in the eyes of the Federal Communications Commission, a “legally qualified candidate” and consequently was subject to the equal time provisions of the Federal Communications Act. That law was also interpreted to mean that whenever he appeared on television—even on a show like Walt Disney’s Mouse Factory (for which he was scheduled)—the broadcaster was obligated to offer equal time to the other legally qualified candidates. Paulsen commenced a lengthy legal battle against the ruling but, in the meantime, withdrew from the race.
In the 1976 and 1980 elections Paulsen reprised his 1968 announcement that he was not a candidate, but he now limited his noncampaign, incorporating it into his stand-up comedy act.27 Likely he saw the handwriting on the wall back in 1972, when the news coverage he got was almost exclusively in regard to the equal time provision, not his satiric campaign. Communications professor Steven Alan Carr aptly describes what Paulsen’s 1968 fringe candidacy—and the network television stage that served as its headquarters—brings into focus: “Only in the context of shifting norms and collapsing boundaries did The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour become publicized. Only in this context was it politicized. And only in this context could the results have been so drastic.”28