In today’s Impromptus, I write a little about politics and music — together, I mean. Music in politics. Let me show you what I mean:

My entire life, I have seen this play out: Some conservative politician uses a pop song at some event. The pop singer or group is on the left, of course. And said singer or group objects, loudly. This is so tiresome. You see this story every couple of years or so.
The latest iteration involved Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. At an Iowa conclave, he walked out to a song from a Celtic punk band. (For details, go here.) The band said, “Please stop using our music in any way. We literally hate you!!!” Not even two exclamation points would do: It had to be three.
I thought of David Cameron, the British prime minister, who handled a similar situation brilliantly. Evidently, he liked a particular band. And the band said the PM was not allowed to like it. One of the guys said, “I forbid you to like it.”
So, a Labour MP brought this up during Prime Minister’s Questions. She taunted Cameron about the band and its reaction to him. The PM responded with cool, nonchalance, and wit — as you can see here.

After I wrote this column, I thought of an essay I wrote eons ago, for NR. And, mirabile dictu (as WFB would say), it was on the Internet. There is a slightly funky, hard-to-read version on the Vanderbilt University site. I wrote this piece in 2000, after the political conventions. It is called “American Sounds” (a phrase borrowed from Reagan).

Have just three morsels, about men who became president:

Gerald Ford provides an interesting case (really). For him, they have always played “Hail to the Victors,” the University of Michigan fight song. Problem is, the song features the word “hail,” sung over and over, always accompanied by the thrusting out of an arm. When a stadium, or an arena, gets rockin’, it looks unnervingly like the rally at Nuremberg.
For Jimmy Carter, they often played “Marching Through Georgia,” until the candidate complained that this was, after all, a northern song, celebrating the South’s — particularly Georgia’s — most ignominious hour.
When Ronald Reagan entered a hall, they usually used “California, Here I Come,” which was a little awkward, because — at least in 1976, 1980, and 1984 — he was trying to get to, or return to, Washington, D.C., not wanting to be sent “right back where I started from.”

There may well be ten candidates on the Republican side alone this time ’round. I invite imaginative and enterprising people to nominate campaign songs for them. For example, there must be several songs with a “cruisin’ [Cruzing] to victory” theme in them. In the world of song, there’s everything, right?