Another Women’s History Month is winding down just as the next presidential campaign is gearing up. That’s the perfect intersection for remembering a woman who not only didn’t occupied the Oval Office, she didn’t even exist.
This is the story of Yetta Bronstein, the president we never had.
For 60 years, Alan Abel’s deviously brilliant mind has hatched hilarious hoaxes. He’s a professional prankster, pulling fast ones on gullible news reporters who value sensational stories over journalistic standards.
Abel began in 1959 by creating a totally fake organization called the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, whose mission was to put clothes on naked beasts. The fake group’s slogan was, “A nude horse is a rude horse.”
Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But Abel had a gift for producing press releases so skillfully written they made the preposterous sound plausible. Many journalists fell for it. He even landed an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, resulting in equally gullible viewers mailing in contributions to SINA (which, to his credit, Abel dutifully returned).
Emboldened by this success, Abel and his co-conspirator and wife Jeanne set their sights on a bigger target: the 1964 presidential election. They cooked up a candidate. Yetta Bronstein was an upper 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 wildly improbable).
A candidate needs a party, so the Abels gave her the Best Party, whose slogan was straight to the point. “Why not?”
Bronstein’s platform was bold, too. She proposed:
- replacing taxes with national Bingo to finance the federal government
- taking Congress off salary and putting it on straight commission
- putting truth serum in all Senate drinking fountains
She campaigned on “Vote for Yetta and things will get Betta” and “If you want simple solutions, then you gotta be simple yourself.”
They even designed a spiffy campaign poster. But first the Abels had to overcome a big problem. Jeanne agreed to play Bronstein but, as an attractive young blonde, she looked nothing like the image they had crafted. So they used a photo of Alan’s real-life Jewish mother instead.
They cranked out campaign press releases and soon interview requests were pouring in. Reporters took those releases at face value and didn’t bother to check whether the Best Party or Yetta Bronstein even existed. Because of the physical appearance problem, Bronstein only did telephone interviews. Even the New York Times fell for the hoax — its article quoted Bronstein 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 Bronstein sent a letter to the very real President Lyndon Johnson as he prepared to attend the very real Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, offering to drop her own campaign and become his running mate. “Maybe I’ll see you in the beach in Atlantic City,” Yetta wrote. “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 re-elected in a landslide. Still, several thousand people actually went to the polls and cast their ballot for Yetta Bronstein.
The Abels produced a book about the experience called The President I Almost Was by Mrs. Yetta Bronstein.
Yetta’s fifteen minutes of fame weren’t over yet. She went on to run for Congress and even sought a seat in Britain’s Parliament — and was soundly trounced in those elections, too.
The fictional Jewish mother threw her apron into the presidential ring a final time in 1968 before Alan Abel’s fertile mind moved on to other pranks. He went on to create 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 next year, which is a shame. When you consider the mess professional politicians have made of things, the Best Party’s slogan resonates louder than ever. “Why Not?”
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former broadcast journalist and government communicator. His weekly offbeat look at our forgotten past, “Holy Cow! History,” can be read at jmarkpowell.com.
