‘President Ed’ – A Treatise on the Failed Presidential Campaign of Mister Ed

In 1968 a horse came fourth in the Republican Party Primaries. Not since, William Howard Taft had eaten Meridian the 1911 Kentucky Derby winner after an argument with its owner, Richard F. Carman, over who should pay for the clams, had a horse had such a prominent role in US politics. This incident so enraged Theodore Roosevelt – a noted equine enthusiast – that he ran as an independent candidate in the 1912 Presidential elections, thus splitting the Republican vote, and allowing Woodrow Wilson to win.

The horse in question in 1968 was Bamboo Harvester (1949-1970), a name unknown to history and to voters alike. However, as his character name ‘Mister Ed’ he was beloved by millions. His exploits causing domestic chaos for his architect owner, Wilbur Post, were popular with millions of viewers throughout America and eventually led to 143 episodes over six seasons.

The children’s author, Walter R. Brooks, had created Mister Ed in 1937 as a direct response to growing anti-Semitism in the hosiery industry. Quite what his message was, was unclear, though it is notable that he foreswore nylon when it was first exhibited at the 1939 New York World’s Fair claiming it was ‘the next step down a dark path’.

Speaking to reporters on the release of his autobiography ‘Talking Out of a Horse’s Proverbial’, the actor and voice of Mister Ed, Allen ‘Rocky’ Lane, who had been a major force behind Mister Ed’s presidential campaign, said “I thought, rightly or wrongly, that Mister Ed would get the horse vote. I only came to realise later, thanks to an observation made by my orthodontist, that horses don’t actually vote. They can’t grip those little pencils. It’s the same reason why they don’t have bank accounts – those little pens. In fact, a lot of our society is not set up for horses – a kind of equine segregation. This was the ticket that we ran on, that we needed a fairer society for horses. We misread the public mood. It was felt that we were trivialising the Civil Rights Movement by focusing on getting horses onto buses and shaving the portrait of Rosa Parks into the side of an Arabian mare.”

Despite this, Mister Ed garnered enough signatures to be added to the ballot for the New Hampshire Primary. CBS hosted a live televised debate between the main candidates: Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan and Mister Ed. Here is a partial transcript of that event. The anchor of CBS’ Evening News, Walter Cronkite chaired it. Allen ‘Rocky’ Lane voiced Mister Ed’s answers from the wings. I Dream of Jeannie’s Emmaline Henry pulled the string to move his mouth.

Cronkite:       Thank you all for joining us this evening, Senator Nixon, if I could just start with you. What is your position on the war in Vietnam?

Nixon:                        Well Walter, firstly let me just say that  . . .

Mister Ed:     Wilbur!

Nixon:                        Let me just finish.

Mister Ed:     I thought you were finished.

Nixon:                        I’d only just started.

Mister Ed:     You seem finished to me.

Nixon:            A man is not finished when he is interrupted. He is finished when he stops talking.

Mister Ed:     You could have fooled me.

Reagan:          The trouble with our horsey friend is that he’s not ignorant; it’s just that he knows so much that isn’t so.

Cronkite:       Gentlemen please, let’s not resort to insults; this is a civilised debate.

Rockefeller:  Then why did we invite a horse?

Reagan:          I’ve often said that there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

Mister Ed:     What does that even mean? Does he want to eat me?

Nixon:            If I can just get back to the original question. Communism isn’t sleeping . . .

Mister Ed:     The audience is, Nixon, every time you open that mouth of yours.

Nixon:            Cronkite, can we get this horse removed?

Mister Ed:     What are you afraid of, Nixon? You just yakkity yak a streak and waste everyone’s time of day. But I never speak unless I’ve got something to say.

Nixon:            I will punch you in the teeth you walking glue factory. I will punch you in the teeth.

Mister Ed:     Oh real nice. That’s properly presidential right there.

Reagan:          Was I in ‘The Last Outpost’ with you?

Mister Ed:     No that was Rhonda Fleming, but we have the same agent.

Cronkite:       Let’s cut to a commercial break.

The fall out from this first televised debate meant that Nixon refused to do any further ones unless Mister Ed was not invited. The sway that Nixon had in the world of television media meant that Mister Ed was indeed barred from such debates and this undoubtedly severely damaged his campaign. That and the fact he was a horse.

The vitriol between Mister Ed and Nixon continued with Mister Ed’s slogans in his poster and TV advert campaigns that, rather focusing on any issues or manifesto ideas that the Mister Ed camp had, targeted belittling Nixon. Slogans such as: “Who would you rather have in the White House, a horse or an ass?”; “Better led by a horse than led by a donkey.”; and “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make Nixon take a bath.” made Mister Ed seem petty with Republican voters. Such a strategy was about sixty years ahead of its time for Republicans but at the time garnered him few supporters.  

“What really was the nail in the coffin for Ed’s campaign,” wrote Allen ‘Rocky’ Lane, “was when he crapped on the Ed Sullivan Show. As Tom Jones burst into a rousing rendition of ‘It’s Not Unusual’, Mister Ed let nerves get the better of him and relieved his prodigious bowels all over Studio 50’s floor. How Jones carried on I’ll never know as three of his band fainted with the smell and Ed Sullivan himself had to be propped up by two stage hands for the rest of the live broadcast, his eyes visibly streaming. It just shows you what a professional Tom Jones is. He just finished the song, took his bow, and walked off into the wings saying ‘there’s lovely, see’. Legend.”

The American Press had a field day. Mister Ed limped on with his campaign, but he was essentially lame election-wise by this stage, coming a distant fourth. He took retirement from public life and died a mere two years later in Anaheim where he’d taken to painting watercolours of the Orange Freeway. Allen ‘Rocky’ Lane briefly became the voice of Dignity Duck the mascot for Smucker’s jam (‘goes great on quackers!’), before his own death in 1973.

Not since then has any horse run for public office in America, although Secretariat did become Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux in 1976, a position he held until his death in 1989.