SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Today's political junk is tomorrow's collectible - lawn signs, bumper stickers. Curators from the Smithsonian are combing Iowa and New Hampshire to gather campaign memorabilia. As NPR's Scott Detrow reports, they'll bring it back to Washington, D.C., and add their haul to a collection that dates back to George Washington.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: We're on the fourth floor of the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.
HARRY RUBENSTEIN: Hold up. We got it. OK, go on in.
DETROW: It's a locked, windowless white room jam-packed with political artifacts.
RUBENSTEIN: In this room, there's probably about 100,000 objects that go from a little bit before the American Revolution to probably last week.
DETROW: On the table in front of chief political curator Harry Rubenstein, there are coat buttons from George Washington's inauguration. There's an I Like Ike dress and the flip-flops Republicans used to mock John Kerry in 2004. There's also a miniature log cabin, a key symbol of William Henry Harrison's 1840 campaign. The idea behind the image - Harrison would just as soon sit on the porch of his log cabin than run for the White House.
RUBENSTEIN: This is really the beginning of trying to create some sort of simple identity for candidates.
DETROW: And with that, Rubenstein disappears down a corridor. He comes back a few moments later brandishing a large wooden axe. It's from a much more consequential election 20 years later. The brand-new Republican Party was framing Abraham Lincoln as the rail splitter.
RUBENSTEIN: And this has become a real staple of campaigns, and you can see that being played out in contemporary campaigns today.
DETROW: Candidates may not grow up in log cabins anymore, but Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz highlight their parents' immigrant journeys. And Hillary Clinton spends a lot of time talking about her middle-class roots.
RUBENSTEIN: I'm going to put this axe down.
(LAUGHTER)
DETROW: The curators say they're often struck by constants in campaign memorabilia - the shape and form may evolve - a brass William Howard Taft figurine will morph into a plush, fuzzy George W. Bush elephant. But many of the basic themes remain the same. Curators are in Iowa right now and will be in New Hampshire next week. Lisa-Kathleen Graddy says she'll be on the lookout for schwag, both mass-produced and personal.
LISA-KATHLEEN GRADDY: We're the most brazen people on Earth. Hi, I'm Lisa-Kathleen. I'm with the Smithsonian Institution. I love that shirt you're wearing. Can you tell me why you have it? I don't suppose you'd want to give it to me, would you?
DETROW: The answer's often yes, but Graddy says logistics sometimes get in the way of patriotism and history.
GRADDY: One, you're still using it. I'm still at this rally. I still have this sign. I still have my shirt on. We distribute a lot of business cards.
DETROW: One thing Harry Rubenstein says the curators won't be hunting down - the hashtags, memes and posts where more and more of the political conversation is taking place. Rubenstein says one reason the Smithsonian isn't going there is that a lot of other organizations are already archiving digital material.
RUBENSTEIN: And so we decided we would focus on, in a sense, our strength, which are strange pins and funny hats and signs of all shapes and forms.
GRADDY: These are the things that make you know that history is real, it happened. We touched it. We used it. We wore it. These are the things that memories are really made of.
DETROW: Lisa-Kathleen Graddy says there's no set agenda for what specific items the curators will look for on the campaign trail this week. But one safe bet among the items she'll probably bring back - a certain red hat promising to make America great again. Scott Detrow, NPR News.