BUTTONS PIN DOWN CAMPAIGNS OF PAST

Vintage political buttons -- the sound bites of yesteryear -- make you wonder whether the personal attacks in present-day presidential campaigns really have achieved any kind of nadir.

One of the four men Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated for the presidency is responsible for the following campaign button: "I don't want Eleanor either."

With the advent of mass communication tools, political campaign buttons are less useful to candidates and even difficult to find, but they were important in their day.

"They were a down-to-earth way at the grass-roots level to generate support for candidates," says Dr. Mitch Gerber, a political science professor at Southeast Missouri State University. "They would make a connection, a more personal connection."

And in their shorthand way, they tell the story of 20th century American political history.

A large exhibit of political buttons is on display at the Cape Girardeau Public Library. The buttons numbering many hundreds have been collected by Bill Adams, a Cape Girardeau postman.

The first known political campaign buttons appeared in 1896, Adams says. Every presidential campaign since 1900 is represented in the collection.

Some buttons are ironic in retrospect. Lyndon Johnson, who declined to run for a second term in the face of mounting Vietnam War protests, in 1964 promised "Peace, Prosperity and Progress."

One of Spiro Agnew's buttons declared him a champion of law and order before he resigned the vice presidency for evading income taxes.

Sometimes buttons have gotten really nasty. "Nobody drowned at Watergate" sought to skewer Ted Kennedy's presidential aspirations.

A Dukakis-Bentsen button from 1988 asks, "Where was George?" a challenge to then-Vice President George Bush's claim to have been kept in the dark about the Iran-Contra deal.

Some buttons backfired. "Nixon's the One" sought to identify the candidate as the right person for the times, but Democrats put the slogan on placards carried at rallies by pregnant women.

The Carter-Mondale button "Gritz & Fritz" referred to Carter's Southern heritage and Mondale's nickname. When Mondale ran for president, the opposition countered with the button "Fritz is the Pitz."

One of the more inventive buttons for Barry Goldwater requires just a bit of knowledge of science to understand: "Au H2O."

Some were just wrong. One button urged voters to "Re-elect Jerry Ford" even though Ford was appointed to the presidency and never was elected to the office. Democrats criticized Ford for pardoning Nixon by putting the disgraced president's image on a button with the words "Thanks, Jerry."

Americans these days seem less inclined to wear candidates' buttons because they are more inclined to distance themselves from politics, Gerber says. "They don't want to show a partisan identity. They feel the old clich that politics and religion are personal is right."

But as much as people decry presidential campaigns, we mark the events of our lives by remembering who was elected president that year or was in office, Adams says.

"The presidency is a timetable for people."