Campaign Mud Throwing
Althought the presidential campaigns have been underway for some time now (it almost seems like they never stop), we are about to enter the homestretch when advertising will intensify. The respective national conventions are coming up in the next two weeks. It is always disheartening and disappointing to see all the negative advertising, but a look back at American history will reveal that it is nothing new. As a matter of fact, my studies of American history over the past few years has reassured me that the country is not going to fall apart any time soon. All the bickering and partisan politics which characterize today’s election process is not new. In fact, one might conclude that today’s antics are mild. (I am no way encouraging mudslinging and, in fact, wish we could somehow do away with it. Unfortunately it has been part of the process since America’s inception - and before.)
I came across an article on CNN today, Founding Fathers’ Dirty Campaign, which chronicles some of the mudslinging from the nations earliest presidential campaigns (The candidates themselves actually did little campaigning in those days. Others did the dirty work for them.) In 1800, President John Adams found himself running against long-time friend Thomas Jefferson. According to the article, Jefferson’s campaign said Adams had a…
… hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.
Adams’ men called Jefferson …
a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.
Kerwin Squint, the author comments:
As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was “one of the most detestable of mankind.
The article contains more of the like, also noting the blistering rhetoric of the 1828 campaign between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. So, while we’re not happy about the name calling and dirty campaigning of modern American politics, there is at least some consolation in knowing that America has survived over 200 years of similar stuff.