Who was the last President before George W. Bush to lose the popular vote but win the electoral vote? If you said "Benjamin Harrison," go to the head of the class because you paid attention to your history teacher. When did President Harrison last visit Mechanicville? If you answered, "August 1892" either you are exceptionally lucky, or you have been reading old newspapers too long, like me. The visit was no earth-shaking event by any means, but recalling the "visit" - more like a "pass-through" - allows us to make some observations about how presidential politicking has changed over the past 120 years.

The late nineteenth century witnessed some of the closest elections in American History, and four contests in a row (1880, 1884, 1888, and 1892), resulted in the election of "minority" presidents, that is, presidents who were elected with less than 50% of the popular vote. When President Cleveland ran for re-election in 1888, he actually increased the percentage of the popular vote he had gained four years earlier, yet wound up losing the Electoral College count - and the presidency - to Benjamin Harrison. Thus, three times in the first 100 years of our national history, the popular vote winner wound up as the presidential loser. The fact that Al Gore is the fourth such victim of electoral numerology is probably less surprising than the fact that our clumsy election process has not broken down before this.

Today, a warm personality and a willingness to wade through crowds and "press the flesh" are absolute necessities for anyone hoping to become president. However, such traits hardly mattered in 1888. The large-girthed Cleveland was a no-nonsense tobacco chewer who had cuspidors lining the walls of the White House, while Harrison's lack of warmth led many to call him "the Human Iceberg." Fellow Republican Theodore Roosevelt even went so far as to describe him as "a cold-blooded, narrow-minded, timid old psalm-singing politician." All of this made little difference to voters at the time when the tradition was observed that "the office seeks the man, the man does not seek the office." To compensate for his lack of personality, and to create an image of a popular groundswell on his behalf, Harrison's supporters devised a technique that Republican candidates would use for the next forty years: the front-porch campaign. To protect their candidate from making any verbal slip-ups (an off-handed anti-Catholic slur by a tired Republican campaigner probably cost the party the presidency in 1884), Harrison's handlers brought the audience to him rather than bringing him to the audience. Various representative groups, including farmers, laborers, Indiana, railroad conductors, and yes, little children, were transported to the Harrison homestead in Indianapolis where they heard the candidate give "spontaneous" speeches from his front porch. Of course, the press was on hand to report what was said, thus permitting Harrison to run a national campaign without ever having to leave home. Given his lack of spontaneity and his inability to warm up to any audience, the strategy was effective in winning support for a candidate whose chief electable attribute may have been that his grandfather, William "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too" Harrison had been elected president in 1840.

Four years following his tainted election, President Benjamin Harrison passed through Mechanicville on his way to Loon Lake for an August respite before restarting his second campaign after Labor Day. His heart was probably not into it because Mrs. Harrison was suffering from tuberculosis, which the family hoped would be alleviated by the fresh Adirondack air. Despite this, the stopover in Mechanicville gave the President an opportunity to speak to his constituents and to fire them up for the coming election, a reasonable expectation given this area's penchant for supporting Republican national candidates. Not surprisingly, a sizable group of local luminaries was on hand. In view of the fact that two presidents had been assassinated in the previous 27 years (Lincoln and Garfield), it is a bit surprising that there was no discernible security group accompanying the President.

Editor Farrington L. Mead of The Mechanicville Mercury set the scene in his August 12, 1892, issue, noting that the President "stepped out on the car platform [on North Second St.] and evidently expected to make some remarks or shake hands with his fellow citizens." Mead, who had recently broken with the Republican party over the tariff issue, seemed to delight in describing what then transpired: "Some 60 or 70 gentlemen, mostly Republicans, stood about the depot and stared at him [Harrison] but no one spoke or offered to shake hands .... The awkward position of both President Harrison and the staring but speechless crowd was painful," One of those not pained by all of this, of course, was Editor Mead, who capped his report by concluding sarcastically, "The President's ice wagon finally started and its occupant waved his hand and went inside for relief." Thus ended Mechanicville's role in the Presidential campaign of 1892, and if later candidates didn't flock here, who could blame them with that kind of reception?

Harrison's lack of hoopla may not have been all that unusual, and Mechanicville residents appear to have been a tough audience to impress back then. Twenty years earlier, in August 1872, President Grant passed through town under similar circumstances and earned nothing more than an off-handed comment in the Mechanicville Times. As far as is known, no one was standing around to greet him. Life was simpler then, and presidents were more approachable, unencumbered by a Secret Service force, an army of newspeople and photographers, and a cadre of public-relations advisors hoping to orchestrate every step the president might take.

The passenger trains don't pass through Mechanicville anymore, and even if they did, they would not be likely to be carrying the President of the United States on board. However, should a stray Chief Executive happen to wander into town in the future, the probability is high that he - or she - will get a more heralded reception than those accorded either Grant or Harrison.