Harris Sherline: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? Part II

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By Harris R. Sherline

In politics, history shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same

Contrary to the commonly held view that political discourse today is more unpleasant and ugly than ever, the roots of nasty politics date back to the earliest campaigns in U.S. history.

Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises by Joseph Cummins chronicles the history of nasty politics since President George Washington’s election in 1789. A 2007 New York Times interview of Cummins noted the following observations about dirty political campaigns, among others:

“I think the mudslinging definitely is still a big part of our election process, but it’s less broad and vulgar. For instance, there is less aimed at other people’s physical attributes. The 19th century was big on that. ... Martin Van Buren was accused of wearing women’s corsets (by Davy Crockett, no less) and James Buchanan (who had a congenital condition that caused his head to tilt to the left) was accused of having unsuccessfully tried to hang himself. Oh, and Abraham Lincoln reportedly had stinky feet.”

In response to the question, “What was the ugliest campaign in history?” Cummins said: “So many dirty elections, so little time. ... There have been stolen elections (the Rutherford Hayes-Samuel Tilden contest in 1876 was certainly stolen by Republicans in the South. ... I would say that 1964 was the ugliest presidential contest I have researched. President Lyndon Johnson, seeking his first elective term after taking over for the assassinated JFK, set out not just to defeat (Barry) Goldwater, but to destroy him and create a huge mandate for himself. ... They put out a Goldwater joke book, in which your little one could happily color pictures of Goldwater dressed in the robes of the Ku Klux Klan.

“This committee also wrote letters to columnist Ann Landers purporting to be from ordinary citizens terrified of the prospect of a Goldwater presidency. ... But perhaps the ugliest things about the 1964 election was Johnson’s treatment of the press. He remarked to an aide that ‘reporters are puppets,’ and had his people feed them misleading information about the Goldwater campaign.”

After the 19th Amendment was passed, “there was an immediate attempt to pander to women voters in 1920, the first year that women began casting their votes for president in large numbers. ... Both parties at different times in U.S. history have been guilty of mind-boggling attempts to influence elections. In the 1880s, one of the worst decades in terms of dirty tricks, Republicans sent bagmen to Indiana — then a pivotal state — with hundreds of thousands of dollars in $2 bills (dubbed ‘Soapy Sams’ for their ability to grease palms) in order to purchase votes.”

Totallytop10.com, noting that negative political campaign ads and smears go back many decades, lists the following 10 most negative political campaign ads in U.S. and Canadian history. Whether these are the most negative ads may be arguable, but they are instructive as examples.

» During the presidential primaries in 2007, the 3 a.m. White House phone call ad, in which a Hillary Clinton TV ad portrayed her as being more qualified on military and defense matters than Barack Obama.

» The Willie Horton political ad in 1988, which implied that Michael Dukakis was soft on crime. Horton assaulted a couple and severely raped a woman during one of several weekend passes he received while in prison in Massachusetts.

» During the presidential primaries in 2007, John McCain compared Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, claiming Obama appeared to be more interested in international fame than serving the country as president.

» In 1980, when he was running for governor of Ohio, Jerry Springer admitted he had paid prostitutes for sex some years earlier.

» The campaign ad “The wrong kind — Congressman Ron Kind.”

» In Canada, the Progressive Conservative Party ran an ad that attacked Prime Minister Jean Chretien by focusing on physical defects he was said to have.

» In the Canadian federal election, candidate Stephane Dion was shown being pooped on by an animated puffin.

» In the 1964 U.S. presidential election, the “daisy girl” commercial warned that if Goldwater were elected, he would use the H-bomb and start a war that would destroy America.

» The political ad in the 1800 presidential campaign, Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams, arguing that “if Jefferson would be president today, we could expect pure evil.”

Dating back to the 1840s, dirty tricks also have played an important role in U.S. politics. After the Civil War, they became nastier, when, in 1880, a New York scandal sheet published a letter that was purported to have been written by James Garfield to the head of the employers union of Lynn, Mass., endorsing the right of corporations to hire the cheapest labor available, including Chinese workers. The letter was a forgery, but it almost derailed Garfield’s campaign until he was able to prove he had not written it.

It’s not unusual to think that nasty political discourse is worse today than ever before, but the record clearly demonstrates that dirty politics has been with us since the beginning of the nation.

As with all things, in political campaigning, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

— Harris R. Sherline is a retired CPA and former chairman and CEO of Santa Ynez Valley Hospital who has lived in Santa Barbara County for more than 30 years. He stays active writing opinion columns and his blog, Opinionfest.com.

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