Campaign mudslinging - is it something new?

[RonOnGuitar]

This thread inspired by NRK's observation on negative TV ads and DT's observation that recent campaigns have been negative.

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If you have Windows Media or RealPlayer you can view some Presidential TV ads going back to the 1950s at:



The Living Room Candidate





Also, this from the "The San Francisco Gate" newspaper:



Yesteryear's political mudslingers put Bush and Kerry to shame



Bill Whalen

Sunday, June 20, 2004



A half-century ago -- and fast losing transatlantic clientele to the jet age -- the Cunard shipping line came up with a clever slogan: "Getting there is half the fun." If only the same could be said about this year's race for the White House.



With less than five months until America goes to the polls, the November election is anything but a pleasure cruise. The campaigns are in a perpetual state of high dudgeon. The odds of John Kerry and President Bush having a civil dialogue on the defining issues of the campaign are not robust. Clearly, we're not in for a repeat of "Morning in America" -- Ronald Reagan's optimistic theme when he ran for re-election in 1984 (In an ironic twist, while Reagan surrogates that year denounced the evils of "San Francisco Democrats," the upbeat TV spots were created by San Francisco ad whiz Hal Riney).



You can blame that on the nature of today's political beast. Twenty years after Reagan's positive run, when he captured 49 of 50 states, America's political landscape is positively divided: left and right, Republican "red" and Democratic "blue" states, voters for and against the war in Iraq.



Unfortunately, the divided electorate is also an invitation for divisive rhetoric. Still, as unpleasant and ungainly as are the accusations flying from the two candidates' camps, are they really all that negative? The answer is a resounding no -- not when today's "attacks" are compared to much uglier words from the earlier days of our republic.



Contested presidential elections and negative campaigning go hand in hand -- all the way back to 1796 and America's first competitive race between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.



Adams' foes accused him of being a closet monarchist. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was the William Jefferson Clinton of his time: You name the insult, he endured it. Jefferson's enemies portrayed him as an atheist, a Francophile, and a war wimp for not enlisting in 1775. In the 1800 election, with the same two participants, the slime only thickened. Adams was now a solicitor of women, having allegedly ordered a U.S. warship to fetch his mistresses from England. Jefferson added legal prostitution, incest and rape to his portfolio.



And so it went in America for the remainder of the 19th century -- no rules, but plenty of unruly behavior. Among the lower points along the low road of presidential politicking:



1856: Californian John C. Frémont runs on the slogan "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Frémont." His enemies add "Free Love" to the list, alluding to Frémont's illegitimate birth. His allies, in turn, bring James Buchanan's sexuality into play by alluding to his bachelor status.



1860 and 1864: Democratic newspapers picture Abraham Lincoln as a primate, calling him "Honest Ape." Lincoln is also illustrated as commanding a boat with a pair of black men groping a white woman. But Lincoln is a wartime president with his own political "war room," and he counterpunches. Republican newspapers in 1864 equate opposition to Lincoln with disloyalty to the Union, hinting that the Democrats have struck a secret peace with the Confederacy.



1868: Republican spokesmen allege that Democrat Horatio Seymour's family is prone to insanity (Seymour's father had committed suicide). Democrats caricature Republican Ulysses S. Grant as a slob and a drunk.



1872: Grant's not only a drunk, but now drunk on power -- an American dictator, according to Democratic spin. His challenger, newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, is an agent of the same Democratic Party that was on the losing side of the Civil War, Republicans remind voters. Greeley's take on the election: "I have been assailed so bitterly that I hardly knew whether I was running for the presidency or the penitentiary." Not that he had much else to say: Exhausted from the ordeal, Greeley dies less than a month after losing to Grant.



1876: An open seat and open season on both candidates. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, a Union general, is accused of robbing the Civil War dead and shooting his mother in a mad pique. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden is, in GOP words, "a drunkard, a liar, a cheat, a counterfeiter, a perjurer, and a swindler."



1884: Grover Cleveland becomes the Democratic president in post-Civil War America, but it's an ugly victory. After a newspaper reveals that Cleveland fathered a child out of wedlock a decade earlier, Republicans chant: "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" "Gone to the White House, ha-ha-ha" (GOP campaign parades also feature a baby carriage). Cleveland backers go into damage-control mode, alleging that Republican James Blaine was the groom at a shotgun wedding. And they insinuate that the GOP candidate is a dishonest influence peddler, chanting: "Blaine, Blaine, the Continental liar from the State of Maine."



Fast-forward now to the presidential campaigns of the modern era. There are still instances where candidates crossed the line.



In the 1948 election, Harry Truman linked Thomas Dewey to unnamed "gluttons of privilege ... the undemocratic forces of the right. The dangerously concentrated economic power of a few men in the United States," and suggested that President Dewey would be "the potential stooge of a fascist elite.'' Dewey didn't fight back per his wife's request, who had insisted that her husband stick with an upbeat script: "If I have to stay up all night to see that you don't tear up that speech," she told him, "I will."



Campaigns soon found a new venue for making their "comparative" point: television. And in this "cool" medium, the accusations became more nuanced, and less heated.



Ironically, the first victim of a presidential TV attack may have been a man whose name is synonymous with dirty tricks. In 1956, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack the previous year, Democrats came out with a TV spot that asked: "Nervous about Nixon? President Nixon?"



Call it "what goes around, comes around.'' In California's 1950 Senate race, Nixon had called Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas "the pink lady" for her leftist voting record.



Eight years later, the 1964 election produced the fabled "Daisy Spot" linking the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater to an atomic blast -- not in so many words, but rather by image and metaphor. Aired only once, the ad showed a little girl counting petals on a flower, followed by the countdown to a nuclear bomb explosion, as mirrored in her eye. Subtle, huh?



Even the now-infamous Willie Horton ads from the 1988 election pale in comparison to 19th century tactics. The Horton ads against former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis didn't come directly from the elder George Bush's camp (the conservative National Security Political Action Committee produced the spots). The ads linked a Horton murder-and-assault spree to a Massachusetts weekend prison-pass program. A century earlier, Dukakis himself would have been portrayed as the rapist.



So where does the 2004 election stand in this scheme of presidential mudslinging? Look no further than the gold standard of vicious campaigns: the elections of 1824 and 1828 pitting Andrew Jackson against John Quincy Adams.



Let's suppose Kerry were so bold as to directly blame Bush for soldiers' deaths in Iraq. Jackson was accused of executing his own troops in the War of 1812. Maybe the Bush campaign would then suggest that Kerry is an opportunist for twice marrying a wealthy woman. Adams was called "The Pimp" for allegedly providing a woman to the czar of Russia.



Everyone loves Barbara Bush, the queen mother of Republican politics. Would a pro-Kerry newspaper write the same as a pro-Adams newspaper: "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson one!!"



Would either side go negative against either Laura Bush or Teresa Heinz Kerry with the same savagery that was directed against Louisa Adams? (Democrats claimed Adams was an illegitimate child and had premarital sex with her husband.) Or against Rachel Jackson? (She discovered through opponents' attacks that her husband's divorce wasn't finalized before they wed. Mrs. Jackson, already in poor health before the 1828 election, died just days after the election; the new president blamed his opponents for his wife's death.)



The 2004 election won't stoop that low, but it won't have the same raw emotion or inventiveness, either. It will thrive on choreographed complaints.



Like professional wrestling, voters will have to differentiate between genuine wounds and feigned injuries.



America the Beautiful? Not in this campaign. Welcome to Whine Country.



Bill Whalen, a former speechwriter for Gov. Pete Wilson, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution.

[DreamTone7]

Yes, there have always been negative tactics historically used in campaigns...but today it is something different. There is a very personal meanness to it. It is somehow nastier than it has ever been. Senator McCain is a prime example. Even though he's a republican, he would love nothing more than to take a crack at Bush due to his losing the republican nomination 4 years ago. He took the whole thing personally...as do many today. Perhaps it's more a reflection of our culture today than anything else.