This was the campaign slogan of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler when they ran on the Whig platform in 1840.

Running as the incumbent, Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party made the critical mistake of painting Harrison as a commoner, since this served only to bolster support for the Whigs among the lower class, who represented a sizable voting bloc in the 1840s. The Whigs pounced on this gaffe, advertising the virtually unopinionated Harrison as "a man's man" (in contrast to the cross-dressing Van Buren), a rough-and-ready, salt-of-the-earth kind of fellow. Imagery of log cabins and hard cider, symbols that "ordinary folk" could identify with, ruled the day. Harrison's campaign slogan clearly catered to workers and farmers, many of whom could only dream of having meat every day and a steady wage.

Of course, Harrison's public front was nonsense. The 68-year-old nominee didn't even drink cider (it gave him gas), and he lived, not in a log cabin, but in a sixteen-room mansion in Ohio. And far from being "one of them," Harrison was a direct descendent of King Henry III, and his family had founded the wealthy colony of Virginia. Nonetheless, common Americans accepted the Whigs' line of claptrap and turned out in record numbers (over 80% of eligible voters) to elect Harrison in an electoral landslide.

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