The James Logan Courier

By Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

AMHERST, N.H. — In California and most other states, a Fourth of July parade may be just a parade. But here in New Hampshire and Iowa, the states that hold the first presidential contests, politicians with higher aspirations know parades are serious business.

More than an hour before Amherst's parade, volunteers for GOP presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman gathered at the route, ready to rumble.

Huntsman, a presidential campaign newcomer, had followed the parade organizer's rules and capped his group at 30 volunteers — leaving them stretched thinly across the parade route. He was trailed by a Jeep.

But with one presidential run under its belt, Romney's campaign left nothing to chance, ignoring the rules to marshal more than 130 blue-shirted volunteers. A massive float bearing the state seal trailed the candidate.

When it came to impressing voters Monday, no detail was too small — which parade the candidates would attend, their choice of clothing, their skill at skirting Amherst's candy-tossing ban (Romney's camp put small boys on scooters to ride the route offering sweets from blue buckets).

From wikipedia:
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.

He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to those drawn by W. Heath Robinson in the UK and Storm P in Denmark. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.

Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year. He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to make a complex machine to perform a simple task.



Read an interview with Rube Goldberg, free from the Archives of American Art.