Bush v. Dean: The Sparring Begins.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

http://www.rnc.org/Newsroom/Releases/nov03/IowaAds.htm

 

Since he's running these ads in Iowa -- a state which will either be taken by Gephardt (voted for the war) or Dean (vehemently against it, obviously) -- it's clear who these ads are aimed at. Dean's already ready to respond, though.

 

http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/002349.html

 

I guess it's already starting, a little less than a year before the general election begins.

Edited November 22, 2003 by Tyler McClelland

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Delete this one, board error screwed me up.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

I like how they use the phrase "the terrorists" for Iraq, not the people who attacked us.

[Vyce 0]

Is O'Reilly - oops, "Media Whore", forgot myself for a second - going to be right when he claims that this will be the "dirtiest" presidential election in recent memory?

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

It's pretty certain...

 

Both sides will have enough money to attack the shit out of each other, and they will.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Dirty Smirty.

 

Until they duel with pistols at dawn, I refuse to say '04 will be the dirtiest ever...

Edited November 22, 2003 by kkktookmybabyaway

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Has there been an election with true "duelling"?

 

If so, SOURCE PLEASE.

 

[BX 0]

Iraqi Vice President suggested duel with Bush, Cheney (bottom of page) Edited November 22, 2003 by B-X

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Entire article could be found here. Boldface stuff is from me...

 

One of the most fondly held delusions of modern presidential politics is that campaigns get dirtier with every election (They do -- the New York Times says so). 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 (if only we had campaign-finance reform).

 

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."(Wonder if Wesley will compare himself to Jefferson?) Jefferson supporters gave as good as they got, claiming that the haughty Adams planned to tear up the Constitution (And John Ashcroft wasn't even BORN yet)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 (You mean FAUX NEWS existed back then? LOL1800!)—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.

 

The Dirtiest Campaign Ever

 

By the time the United States was fifty years of age, political parties had solidified their power, and as they did they became increasingly skilled at smearing the opposition. John Quincy Adams continued the dubious traditions of his father, as his party tried to hold off the first Common Man President, Andrew Jackson.

 

This campaign, too, had its bitter roots in an election between the same two candidates four years earlier. Jackson had won the most popular votes in 1824, but since three other candidates besides Adams siphoned off votes, Jackson lacked a simple majority in the electoral college. This threw the election to the House of Representatives. The Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, engineered a vote giving the election to John Quincy Adams. Three days later, Adams named Clay his secretary of state. Jackson supporters howled at what they perceived as a "Corrupt Bargain" between Adams and Clay. Their candidate called Clay "The Judas of the West." When one senator condemned the "Corrupt Bargain" in a speech, Clay challenged him to a duel; the bullets of both senator and speaker, gratefully, missed their marks. From the moment Adams took the oath of office, Jackson began his quest for the White House—and for vengeance(and people thought Gore was mad when he lost).

 

The 1828 campaign reached depths of malice that have never been equaled. The Jackson campaign nicknamed Adams "The Pimp," based on a rumor that the president, while serving as ambassador to Russia a decade earlier, had coerced a young woman into an affair with a czar. One pro-Adams publication railed: "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 IS ONE!!" According to the charges and countercharges, Adams had lived with a woman before marrying his wife; Jackson had committed war crimes while leading American troops in the War of 1812. A handbill with coffins on its cover depicted Jackson as a crazed killer, executing soldiers under his command who had deserted. Another claimed that "John the Second," too, had aspirations to royal rule. Jackson's history of dueling was brought up, as was Adams's installation of "gambling furniture" in the White House at taxpayer expense, in reality a billiard table bought with Adams's own money. The accusations flew back and forth: adulterer, slave-master, alcoholic, illiterate, gunfighter, brawler, nonbeliever in Christ.

 

When both sides ran out of unkind things to call each other, they turned to the candidates' wives. Louisa Adams had been an illegitimate child who had indulged in sexual relations with John Quincy Adams before the two were married, the Jackson forces alleged. For Rachel Jackson, the innuendo had tragic consequences. She had, in truth, married Andrew Jackson unaware that her first husband had not finalized a divorce; she was, technically, a bigamist until the mess was straightened out years later. (They remarried once the divorce was finalized.) Mrs. Jackson, a somewhat unsophisticated woman in poor health, became increasingly despondent when Adams supporters dredged up this story anew. After Jackson routed Adams in the election, her despair redoubled. A few days after her husband won the White House, Rachel Jackson fell dead. A stricken Andrew Jackson, whose devotion to his wife had been exceptional, never stopped blaming John Quincy Adams for his wife's death. Just as his father had, Adams refused to take part in his successor's inaugural, skulking out of Washington in the early hours.

 

The Civil War Era and Its Aftermath

 

By the middle of the 19th century, deeply personal attacks had become a part of virtually every presidential campaign. Typical allegations centered on a candidate's parentage, morality, sobriety, religious faith, and "true" intentions regarding their prospective presidencies. In 1856, John C. Frémont's slogan was "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Frémont." Supporters of James Buchanan, noting Frémont's illegitimate birth, finished the slogan with the phrase, "and Free Love." A third party, the Know Nothings, then finished Frémont off by intimating that he was secretly a Roman Catholic, a faith looked upon with deep suspicion and resentment by the Protestant-dominated populace of 1856 America. The Frémont camp could respond only with tepid ridicule of Buchanan's bachelorhood and age, and when Frémont lost it seemed only to underscore the necessity of unscrupulous tactics when seeking the White House. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln had to overcome astonishingly cruel references to his ungainly appearance. More than one Democratic newspaper cartoon pictured him as a monkey and called him "Honest Ape."

 

Appeals to bigotry had been a staple of presidential contests since the first dirty campaign. A leading supporter of John Adams alleged that Thomas Jefferson had both Native American and African American heritages in his bloodline. His purported relationships with female slaves were campaign fodder as well. The 1840 campaign saw Martin Van Buren's vice president, Richard Johnson, drummed off the ticket when it became known that he had lived and had children with an African American woman. In the highly charged atmosphere of the Civil War and its Reconstruction aftermath, these attacks degenerated into the basest depths of racism. Democratic illustrators depicted Lincoln commanding a boat with two African American men—drawn with extreme racial stereotypes—groping a white woman. To be reelected in 1864, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had to withstand even more withering abuse. Some of the worst of this was in, of all things, musical form. The campaign song was the attack ad of its day, but far more vicious than anything we know; it is difficult to imagine a major party today publishing and distributing the following:

 

Now listen to me, white folks, de truth I'm going to tell you:

Dat de white man isn't nowhere now, it's plain to men of sense;

For, it's nigger in de Senate-house, and nigger in de White House,

And nigger in de Custom house, and nigger on de fence.

 

By Reconstruction's end, the innuendo in presidential campaigns had grown so far-fetched it seems incredible that anyone took it seriously, but in the absence of any electronic media but the telegraph, the far-flung electorate was still reliant upon highly politicized and partisan newspapers, often run by the parties themselves, for most of its information. In 1876 one candidate, Samuel Tilden, could be cast as a drunken con man suffering from syphilis; the other, Rutherford B. Hayes, as a sociopath who had once shot his mother and who had pocketed the wages of slain soldiers he commanded in the Civil War.

 

The Last Really Dirty Campaign

 

In 1884, Grover Cleveland sought to become the first Democratic president since before the Civil War. A former Speaker of the House and secretary of state, Republican James Blaine, stood in the way. Blaine had been the favorite in 1876, but he was doomed by his role in the corruption-plagued Grant administration, accused of selling political influence to the railroad industry. Cleveland, too, had problems. Soon after the nominating convention a newspaper in his hometown of Buffalo revealed that he had fathered a child out of wedlock a decade before.

 

The campaign thus became a contest between two men with questionable pasts, and those pasts were completely fertile ground for the mud-slingers on each side. Even the normally staid New York Times stepped into the muck, calling Blaine a "prostitutor of public trusts." Less restrained New York papers called Cleveland a "moral leper" and a "father of a bastard." The campaign saw an avalanche of unflattering cartoons, speeches and songs. The Cleveland camp sang, "Blaine, Blaine, the Continental liar from the State of Maine" for his questionable railroad deals. Blaine forces fired back by labeling Cleveland "the hangman of Buffalo," because he had personally hanged two criminals while serving as sheriff of the city. The Cleveland side asserted that Blaine had married his wife only when forced to do so by the pregnant girl's family at gunpoint. Republicans tried to exploit Cleveland's hiring of a substitute during the Civil War, which enabled him to dodge military service; one of their newspapers claimed Cleveland would bring several female companions of light virtue to Washington, paying for them to live near the White House.

 

It was the Cleveland forces, however, that struck the fatal blow. Six days before the election, James Blaine spoke to a group of Protestant ministers in New York City. One of the ministers, in introducing Blaine, called Cleveland's Democrats the party of "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." Blaine, exhausted from months of furious campaigning, did not catch the "Romanism" dig, an appalling anti-Catholic slur in a city with hordes of Irish-American voters. A Democratic spy at the meeting, however, did, and in hours presses were flooding the city with lurid newspaper and leaflet accounts of it. Overnight, the Democrats made it a national story, but New York, considered the key state in what everyone expected to be a close election, comprised the true catastrophe to Blaine's cause. There was no time for damage control, and when Blaine made another blunder that same night—dining with a cluster of fabulously wealthy industrialists at an elegant restaurant while Americans, beleaguered by economic depression in 1884, worried about simple survival—he sealed his own fate. Blaine lost the state of New York by less than 1,200 votes, and the state's rich electoral vote gave Cleveland the razor-thin victory. It is reasonable to assume that at least 600 New York voters were swayed by the anti-Catholic and dinner flaps; those 600 voters, out of 10,000,000 cast nationwide, reduced Blaine to a historical footnote.

 

Throughout the campaign, Blaine's followers had gleefully tormented their foes with a chant referring to Cleveland's paternity scandal: "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" "Gone to the White House, ha-ha-ha," the victorious Democrats now shot back, relishing the last laugh.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Hahahahha.

 

Okay, you win.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

(if only we had campaign-finance reform).

If you can create a campaign finance reform that doesn't just protect the incumbant (and I don't just mean Bush, but I mean any person from any party, current or in the future) to sit and rack up money, I'll be there.

[Guest MikeSC]

(if only we had campaign-finance reform).

If you can create a campaign finance reform that doesn't just protect the incumbant (and I don't just mean Bush, but I mean any person from any party, current or in the future) to sit and rack up money, I'll be there.

It can't be done.

-=Mike

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

It can't be done.

-=Mike

Sure it can.

 

Don't let anyone talk/advertise/etc. -- and this includes the media -- about upcoming elections.

 

What's so hard about that?...