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GURNEY - FOR
- PRESIDENT Campaign
by
Editor-in-Chief David E. Davis Jr.
Car and Driver Magazine, May 1964
DAN GURNEY FOR PRESIDENT!
CAR and DRIVER'S Candidate for This Great and Honored Post!
As we sit in our office
watching the parade of poltroons, charlatans, earnest amateurs and
fuzzy idealists that constitutes the current assortment of
presidential aspirants, we rebel. We will not let the major
political parties lead us down the garden path again this year.
We'll run our own candidate, a man who can represent each of us who
counts himself a car nut.
Enthusiasts Unite! Join with
us in supporting the candidacy of Dan Gurney, running on a platform
of unbridled automotive enthusiasm. Neither the Republicans nor the
Democrats have taken any interest in the keen drivers' needs, hopes,
desires, or innermost dreams, so we say the hell with them! We'll
create a third stream—a vital new force in American politics that
will sweep old ladies and small town speed traps from the highways
and restrict winding two-lane roads to drivers of proved enthusiasm
and skill. All drivers will have to pass through something like
Carroll Shelby's school at Riverside, or one of the good English or
European driving schools—the failures to be banished to public
transportation. This will serve the dual function of improving local
and state revenues, making railroads, airlines and local surface
transportation companies solvent again, and clearing the jerks off
the roads so that we paragons of impeccable, high-speed driving can
have our way.
Who could possibly be better
suited to champion our cause than Daniel Sexton Gurney? He goes like
the wind. He can drive anything better than most anybody. He has the
enduring love of 300,000 fans at Indianapolis. His name inspires
countless stock car partisans in the Southeast. He is the patron
saint, of American sports car racing. European GP aficionados speak
his name in the most reverent tones imaginable. He has become a
legend in his own time.
Look at him from a purely
political, non-automotive standpoint. Say his name aloud. Daniel
Sexton Gurney. President Daniel Sexton Gurney. What a sound—as
though he was preordained to take the job. Dictionaries variously
define his given name as "An Exemplary Judge," or
"God has judged." Even if those definitions were not so
reassuring, we have to but point to Daniel in the Lion's Den, or
Daniel Boone, for further inspiration. His middle name, Sexton,
brings to mind selfless men laboring in little country churches,
working night and day for the benefit of their friends and neighbors—significance
that will not be lost upon the fundamentalist rural electorate. Then
Gurney—a solid Anglo-Saxon name borne with pride by countless
generations of soldiers and men of the soil, merchants and artisans,
the very stuff of which America was formed.
Daniel Sexton Gurney! The name
that shall be a rallying cry for thousands of disenfranchised
enthusiasts!
What about his competition?
Goldwater likes horses and Thunderbirds and doesn't stand a chance.
Rockefeller has been pictured with a variety of farm tractors and
Model A Fords, but he seems to lean toward various American-made
limousines, so we can disregard him. On form, Nixon's name is too
easily linked with Edsel and Studebaker and shares their
"loser's psychology." Lodge's car enthusiasm is pretty
well limited to jeeps and half-tracks and things, so he should be a
pushover for enlightened enthusiasts. Scranton refuses to commit
himself.
President Johnson has the
enormous advantage that accrues to any strong incumbent, but the
fact that he travels in helicopters, DC-8's and various ill-handling
bubble-top limousines ought to hurt him.
Besides, we've seen pictures
of him on horseback too, so he really suffers the same potential
mayhem at the hands of the muck-rakers as the junior senator from
Arizona. Let's face it, none of these men is worthy of Gurney's
steel. Dedicated, yes—honest, yes—capable, probably—but worthy
of our support as Car and Driver candidates? Never
We don't know why we didn't
think of this before. Gurney is a natural. He is the mold from which
all of history's strong, silent, American heroes were cast. He is
handsome enough to be a film star, with features rough-hewn from
native American Oak. He's as brave as Dick Tracy. He never says
anything dumb (in fact he hardly ever says anything at all, which is
one more powerful point in his favor.
We have included a coupon on
page 82, to make it possible for you to join our crusade. We are
offering campaign buttons and bumper stickers for one dollar, to
cover the cost of production, handling and mailing. Send your dollar
today—join us to form a tidal wave of public opinion that will
sweep the non-enthusiasts out, and our man Gurney in. Make 1964 the
Year of the Car Enthusiast! Send Dan Gurney to Washington!
—David E. Davis, Jr.
Gurney Button enthralls Ford and Iacocca.
Go With Gurney! Dan's Our Man!
We are proud, pleased and perfectly amazed to report
that our Gurney for President campaign is proceeding like a house afire.
We announced Mr. Gurney's candidacy not long after he had qualified at
Indianapolis, and the reception accorded our candidate was gratifying
indeed. Jim Clark donned a Gurney button and announced that he supported
Gurney for our country's highest office because "If he gets elected
he won't have time to come to Europe and run against me." Gurney
himself made an eloquent acknowledgement, moving in its simplicity. He
said "I'm only going to make one campaign promise. I promise that if
I get in, I'll send David E. Davis out of the country." Anything
else he might have said was drowned out by cheers and roaring applause.
We feel that this platform will find widespread support in all parts of
the country. (The overseas reaction may not be so enthusiastic.)
The orders for bumper stickers and campaign
buttons are rolling in like mad, and we're very pleased to relate
that we've seen several cars-including J. C. Agajanian's Cadillac
gaily bedecked with red-white-and-blue Gurney stickers. In this
connection, we'd like to answer a number of queries and say that we
are not above making special deals for bona fide car clubs, when the
number of stickers and buttons desired is fifty or more. Write to us
for full particulars.
Dan is involved in the campaign only insofar as
we're using his name. Both Car and Driver and Dan Gurney will derive
some intangible benefits from the promotion, but nobody is making
any money on it. Dan gets absolutely nothing, and Car and Driver
hopes only to recoup the cost of production, packaging, and postage
on the stickers and buttons. If we can help put Dan Gurney in the
White House, and help make his name a household 'word' in America,
that will be payment enough (unless he'd like to order the entire
nation to subscribe, of course).
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