A Losing Presidential Candidates Playlist

Yesterday, the BBC posted a surprisingly tame piece with Donald Trump’s thoughts on music; in it was an admiring reference to Steve Reich’s phase technique. (I first found out about it through a tweet by William Robin.) As others have pointed out, Trump himself probably didn’t write those lines. But it got me wondering. The musical tastes of presidents are well-documented; but what about those who never won? This playlist is dedicated to candidates who never had the honor of serving in a job that the 23rd president, Benjamin Harris, once compared to that of “the policeman at the opera.”