The 2012 presidential campaign is in full bloom. Hooray for us! Actually, the fun began from both sides more than a few months ago when it became apparent that Mitt Romney would be the Republican candidate choice: the name calling, the contrived scandals, the personality attacks, the placing of personal blame for world poverty and global warming. We no longer wait until after the conventions for the ink to splatter against the wall. Now we know months beforehand whose seats will be the dunking cage targets. I think it is safe to say that the name-calling began right after the last election, and now a catch-up game is being played on Romney’s behalf. The same amount of invective name calling spews from both parties. Both are just as guilty. Even at its best, a presidential campaign is covered with a thick film of sludge.
It might be worthwhile to remind ourselves that negative campaigning is not a new phenomenon. Political mud has been slung for hundreds of years. To perhaps gain a better perspective, let’s take a look at past mud fights, starting with our more recent history, working our way back in time:
During the 2004 George W. Bush vs. John Kerry campaign, the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" produced a commercial, "Any Questions?" (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2004/any-questions/) which cast doubt on Kerry’s Viet Nam War experience claims. “He is lying about his record.” “John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star.” “When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry.”
Also in that 2004 campaign, the subject of gay marriage was brought up at one of the debates. Kerry raised the issue of the sexual orientation of one of Vice President Dick Cheney's daughters. He thought he was making a point to criticize the Bush administration, but it backfired and the reaction was furious. The outrage that Kerry would bring up a family member was so harsh that it led to him sinking in the polls.
George H. W. Bush’s campaign in 1988 used what is referred to as “The Revolving Door” commercial against Michael Dukakis (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1988). While Governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had supported a prison furlough program under which a murderer was released who committed a rape and an assault after being furloughed. In the commercial, which follows prison guards, the announcer states, "His revolving door prison policy gave weekend furloughs to first-degree murderers not eligible for parole." Then a revolving door formed by bars rotates as men in prison clothing walk in and back out the door in a long line. "While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape." "And many are still at large." "Now Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he's done for Massachusetts."
In September 1964, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign ran a television commercial (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy), what is referred to as: "Peace, Little Girl/Daisy," to make a point about his opponent, Barry Goldwater. From watching it, it seems that the point was that a vote for Barry Goldwater was a vote for nuclear annihilation. A cute little girl plucks petals from a daisy while counting from one to nine, messing up her numbers a bit as she does so; a male announcer counts down from ten. At zero, a nuclear blast fills the screen, and Johnson speaks: "These are the stakes–to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." This ad was so incendiary (no pun intended) and controversial, it was only aired once.
1912 must have been a fun year with its four-way contest between Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Eugene V. Debs. Taft called the previous president, the third-party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, a “dangerous egotist” and a “demagogue.” Roosevelt called his formerly hand-picked successor (Taft) a “fathead” with the brain of a “guinea pig” and a “flubdub with a streak of the second rate and the common in him.” Wilson labeled Roosevelt “the most dangerous man of the age.” Roosevelt countered that Wilson was “a damned presbyterian hypocrite and a Byzantine logothete,” “an infernal skunk in the White House.”
During the 1884 race between Grover Cleveland and James Blaine, Cleveland was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock, which led Blaine supporters to chant what became a national slogan: “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” After Cleveland won the election, his supporters answered: “Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!” A Presbyterian minister, spoke at a gathering of pro-Blaine clergy in New York City just days before the election: “We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellions.” Accusations of Blaine’s corruption, as well as charges of his own sexual scandals, also dominated the debate. At campaign rallies, Democrats chanted, “Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!”
In the 1872 election between Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley, a pamphlet was circulated by Greeley’s supporters calling the Grant Administration the “crowning point of governmental wickedness” and accused Grant of bringing forth a “burning lava of seething corruption, a foul despotism….”
In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was mocked as being "ape-like" for his tall stature and Kentucky twang.
Stephen Douglas called Abraham Lincoln, “You hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer.” (Nutmeg dealers were frequently accused of selling fake nutmeg and got the reputation of being frauds.)
In the 1828 race between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Adams supporters published a series of "Coffin Handbills" in which Jackson was called an adulterer, his mother a prostitute, his wife an adulturess, and stated that Jackson had executed deserters during the War of 1812 and The Creek War.
The campaign of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson was a particularly nasty one:
Jefferson was accused of being a misogynist and of having an affair with a black lady (which would have been quite a scandal at the time and which, it turns out, was true).
Fliers pictured Adams as “a blind, bald, crippled, toothless man who wants to start a war with France while he’s not busy importing mistresses from Europe he’s trying to marry one of his sons to a daughter of King George. Haven’t we had enough monarchy in America?”
From Thomas Jefferson: “John Adams is a hideous hermaphroditical character with neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
“Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood and the nation black with crimes.” (Adams re Jefferson)
“Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames? Female chastity violated? Children writhing on the pike?” (Adams re Jefferson)
“Jefferson is the son of a half-breed Indian squaw raised on hoe-cakes.” “Hamilton is a Creole bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.” (Again from Adams)
As we can see, compared to the past, modern-day mudslinging is more like throwing buckets of water slightly tinged with the color of dreck.
I guess we should be pleased with ourselves that our politicians and their supporters have come so far in elevating the quality of their invectives. I guess.
Until the next time, LLAP!
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