Hermeneutics of bumper stickers
By 
Boulder, Colorado, October 2025.
Car: Fairly recent model Subaru Crosstrek.
License plate: Washington DC
Bumper sticker:
I did some internet sleuthing, and the first reference I found to this bumper sticker was a story in a Montreal newspaper around the 30th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, that claimed that by 1963 “placards had started to appear saying, “I Miss Ike – Hell, I Even Miss Harry.” (I assume “placards” are Great White North-speak for bumper stickers).
It seems a bit odd that somebody would be sporting this sentiment on a Subaru in Boulder, CO., 62 years later, but at this point I guess it translates as something like “I wish we still had decent Republicans like Eisenhower, or even Democrats, as long as they were like Harry Truman.”
This in turn reminds me of how historically elongated the politics of nostalgia have gotten. I don’t think you would have seen a bumper sticker in 1963 referencing a longing for the golden age of Chester A, Arthur, which was as far away from that year as Truman’s presidency is from today. 50 years ago, Truman was already in the gauzy distant past if pop music charts teach us anything. Some LGM commenter pointed out to me once years ago that Chicago’s tribute song is actually a pastiche of Randy Newman, and now I can’t unhear the song in Newman’s voice. Also too, “American Graffiti,” George Lucas’s classic nostalgia vehicle of that same era, was set all of 11 years in the past, because in 1973 1962 seemed so far away (doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?.)
I’m not sure what the point of any of this is, but at least this isn’t another post about Donald Trump (whoops).