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God-Hating Liberal
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
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Re: Nasty Campaign Already? or...Looking French is now a bad thing?
Quote:
Originally posted by JumpinJesus
What is this, a 3rd grade popularity contest to the Republicans?
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A popularity contest is exactly what it is. Slurring the other candidate has a long and glorious history in our political system. Check out this article.
It's a long article, so I will only quote the opening section:
Quote:
These Are the Good Old Days:
"Dirty Campaigning" Was Once Much Worse
By Dan Sanders
"Presidential campaigns are a lot nicer today than they used to be. What respectable person today would think of calling one of the candidates for the highest office in the land a carbuncled-faced old drunkard? Or a howling atheist? Or a pickpocket, thief, traitor, lecher, syphilitic, gorilla, crook, anarchist, murderer? Yet such charges were regular features of American presidential contests in the 19th century."
_– Presidential Campaigns by Paul F. Boller, Jr.
One of the most fondly held delusions of modern presidential politics is that campaigns get dirtier with every election. Pundits and the public snarl at the deluge of "attack ads" flying between one side and another; a ravenous press gleefully lays bare the private lives of public men; the ill-will demeans the office and wears out the citizenry months before the November denouement. In every campaign, someone brings up the noble politics of the last century. Oh for the days of Lincoln and Douglas, they will moan, for the days of great men debating the great issues with dignity and eloquence.
To remember ancient campaigns only in these terms is, to say the very least, myopic. Dirty campaigning has been a fact of life in presidential politics if not from Day One—when George Washington ran all but unopposed—then certainly by Day Two or Three. The instant Washington retired to Mount Vernon, the fight to succeed him, between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, was on. Manners were quickly forgotten, as was much of the truth. Adams's forces derided Jefferson as an atheist, a pawn of the French eager to join their guillotine-mad Revolution, a coward for his lack of military service during America's Revolution, and a candidate for "cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin." Jefferson supporters gave as good as they got, claiming that the haughty Adams planned to tear up the Constitution and install himself as the King of America with his sons ensconced as crown princes. When the two met in a rematch four years later it got even worse. It was alleged that President Adams had ordered an American warship to journey to England and return with not one but two mistresses for him to enjoy. On top of his supposed sins from the last election, Jefferson was now—according to newspapers backed by Adams's party—a godless, lawless racketeer in favor of legal prostitution, incest, rape, marital infidelity, and the slaughter of children on spears. When Jefferson won, the hard feelings were so deep that Adams refused to be part of the swearing-in ceremony, slipping out of town before dawn on Inauguration Day.
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Nizzle
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