It’s time to pick a president again. In a few weeks, we’ll know who’ll be moving into the White House next year. (Then again, as crazy as 2024 has been, we may not.)
Sixty years ago, one presidential hopeful stood out from the crowd. She was unlike all other candidates. Because she didn’t exist.
Meet Yetta Bronstein, the president we never had.
To understand this unorthodox candidate, you must first understand the genius who created her.
For over 50 years, the deviously brilliant mind of Alan Abel hatched hilarious hoaxes. He was a professional prankster who made a career of pulling fast ones on gullible news reporters who value sensational stories above journalistic standards. Such as checking to see if the story is real.
Abel burst onto the national scene with his first major prank in 1959. He created a (totally fake) organization called the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), whose mission was to put clothes on the world’s naked beasts. Its slogan was, “A nude horse is a rude horse.”
Abel had a gift for producing press releases so skillfully written that they made the preposterous sound plausible. Many professional journalists fell for it hook, line, and sinker. He even landed an interview for SINA on NBC’s Today show, resulting in many equally gullible viewers mailing contributions. (Which, to his credit, Abel returned. He wasn’t a conman, just a merry prankster.)
Emboldened by that success, he and his co-conspirator and wife Jeanne set their sights on an even bigger target: the 1964 presidential election.
They cooked up a candidate. Yetta Bronstein was a middle-aged Bronx housewife with a thick Yiddish accent who’d never held a job, much less run for office. (In the time before a peanut farmer, a retired movie actor, and a billionaire developer-turned-reality-TV-show-star sought the presidency, her candidacy seemed utterly improbable).
A candidate needs a political party, so the Abels gave her one. The Best Party, whose slogan got straight to the point: “Why not?” Its platform was bold. Yetta wanted to:
- Replace taxes with national Bingo to finance the federal government
- Take Congress off salary and put it on straight commission
- Allow gun ownership but decrease bullet velocity by 95 percent
- Put truth serum in all Senate drinking fountains
She had catchy slogans, too. “Vote for Yetta and things will get betta;” “A mink coat in every closet,” and even, “If you want simple solutions, then you gotta be simple yourself.”
They even designed a spiffy campaign poster. But first, they had to overcome a big problem. Jeanne agreed to play the Yetta, yet as a 20-something attractive blonde, she looked nothing like the image they had crafted. So they used a photo of Alan’s real-life Jewish mother instead. Problem solved.
The Abels began cranking out campaign press releases. Soon interview requests began pouring in. Reporters took those releases at face value and didn’t bother to check whether the Best Party or Yetta Bronstein even existed. The releases looked and sounded official, and that was good enough. Because of the physical appearance problem, TV interviews were declined. But Yetta did lots of newspaper and radio interviews. Even the venerable New York Times fell for the hoax. Its article quoted Yetta as saying, “I figure we need a Jewish mother in the White House. A mother will take care of things. Maybe our country could use a queen, you know? It certainly wouldn’t do any harm.”
The most hilarious moment came when Yetta sent a letter to the very real Lyndon Johnson as he prepared to attend the very real Democratic Party’s national convention in Atlantic City, offering to drop her campaign and become his running mate. She wrote: “Maybe I’ll see you on the beach in Atlantic City. That’s my home stomping grounds, and I’ll be happy to show you around. I can also get many things there for you wholesale.”
LBJ was reelected in a landslide that November. Still, several thousand people actually went to the polls and cast their vote for Yetta Bronstein.
The Abels produced a book about the experience called “The President I Almost Was” by “Mrs. Yetta Bronstein.”
Yetta’s 15 minutes of fame weren’t over yet. She went on to run for Congress and sought a seat in Britain’s Parliament … and was soundly trounced in those elections, too.
She even recorded a 45 RPM cover of the Beatles hit “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” The lads from Liverpool didn’t have to worry about competition from Yetta.
The Jewish mother threw her apron into the presidential ring a final time in 1968. Then Alan Abel’s fertile mind moved on to other pranks. Such as creating BREAD, the Brotherhood of Restaurant Employees and Dishwashers, which lobbied for diners to tip dishwashers instead of waiters and waitresses.
Yetta Bronstein isn’t a candidate for president this year, and that’s a shame. Because when you look at the mess professional politicians in both parties have made of things, the Best Party’s slogan resonates louder than then: “Why Not?”
Please run one more time, Yetta. America needs you—now, more than ever.
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