Jim Stillman
Nevar
When the going gets tough…lie, smear and insult.
September 6th 2008 18:33
Karl Rove did not invent the deceptive, untruthful and viscous political attack approach and advertisements, nastiness being present in American politics since the early days of the republic. Of course, then, the language was far more classical and lofty. This presents what a negative TV advertisement would have been in the John Adams – Thomas Jefferson 1800 election.
OK, that didn’t happen, but it could have! Personally, this one makes me want to rush to the polls two months early and get in line!
Earlier presidential campaigns have demonstrated nastiness: The 1884 election between James Blaine (“Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, The Continental Liar from the State of Maine”) and Grover Cleveland (“Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa, Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha”)
Of course, the language of earlier negative ads pale in comparison with the wit of Orble’s prominent vocabulary and intellectually challenged writer’s “Madeline Al(not too)bright”, “Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Obiden.” or “Cindy ban-Sheehan”, but one works with what he or she has.
But I digress. The point is that modern Republicans have made negative campaigns an art form, all the while claiming that those desperate, sneaky liberals are the practitioners of the dark arts. While negative ads have been produced by both parties, the GOP’s have been made with no regard to truth.
For example, in recent memory, there was the “Willie Horton” advertisement. Horton had been given a weekend prison furlough, as authorized under Massachusetts law in a program that had been successful. While on that weekend, he committed several serious crimes, was arrested and sentenced to prison; he remains at the Jessup (MD) Correctional Institution. The furlough program was not instituted under then Governor Michael Dukakis; it had been actually signed into law by Republican Governor Francis W. Sargent in 1972 under Governor Sargent but Horton’s crimes were blamed on the Democrat candidate. Roger Ailes GOP operative and now head of Fox News, created an advertisement showing a snarling Willie Horton, commenting, “"the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."
In 2004, GOP supporters engaged in a campaign, encouraged by the Bush campaign and not effectively challenged by the John Kerry people that diminished the latter’s status as a true hero of the Vietnam War. Wounded several times in battle and a recipient of three Purple Heart medals for his wounds, and a Bronze Star and Silver Star for bravery under fire, Senator Kerry’s achievements were mocked. At the GOP convention in 2004, the delegates were given purple Band-Aids as an indication of the mocking! Senator Kerry assumed that the American public would not be fooled into believing a recipient of the Bronze and Silver Stars was anything but a genuine hero, but, in fact the repetitious bashing by GOP operatives took its toll.
Now, in the present, the convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, turned into an anti-Obama hate-fest with a nearly all-white gathering laughing at and mocking the nation’s first African-American presidential nominee of a major party.
However, beyond the contempt visible on the faces of the GOP delegates, many of the nasty attacks on Obama – as well as the over-the-top praise for the Republican ticket – were false, as if testing the depths of American gullibility and bigotry.
In speech after speech, Republicans touted the alleged “maverick” of John McCain and Sarah Palin. The Associated Press was so taken by the spin, and the multiple distortions, that it produced a special fact-checking article describing how Republicans had “stretched the truth.”
Example? For instance, Governor Palin said about Senator Obama, “It's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate."
However, as the AP noted, Senator Obama “worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year.”
The AP reported, “In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.”
The AP’s fact-checking article noted, too, that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s hit at Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden – that Sarah Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States" – was a “whopper.”
The AP wrote that “Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.”
The Republican National Convention also acted as if the Republicans had not controlled the White House for the past eight years and the Congress for most of that time. I called this the ultimate chutzpah in a prior post.
"We need change, all right,” said former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington - throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin." Excuse me? Hiding Messrs Bush and Chaney won’t change the facts.
What is frightening about this type of campaign and the GOP tactics is that perhaps the United States has crossed over into a post-rational society that cares little about facts and reality or serious policy ideas and respectful debate, but rather is a nation moved by anger and ridicule, fear and nationalism.
OK, that didn’t happen, but it could have! Personally, this one makes me want to rush to the polls two months early and get in line!
Earlier presidential campaigns have demonstrated nastiness: The 1884 election between James Blaine (“Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, The Continental Liar from the State of Maine”) and Grover Cleveland (“Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa, Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha”)
Of course, the language of earlier negative ads pale in comparison with the wit of Orble’s prominent vocabulary and intellectually challenged writer’s “Madeline Al(not too)bright”, “Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Obiden.” or “Cindy ban-Sheehan”, but one works with what he or she has.
But I digress. The point is that modern Republicans have made negative campaigns an art form, all the while claiming that those desperate, sneaky liberals are the practitioners of the dark arts. While negative ads have been produced by both parties, the GOP’s have been made with no regard to truth.
For example, in recent memory, there was the “Willie Horton” advertisement. Horton had been given a weekend prison furlough, as authorized under Massachusetts law in a program that had been successful. While on that weekend, he committed several serious crimes, was arrested and sentenced to prison; he remains at the Jessup (MD) Correctional Institution. The furlough program was not instituted under then Governor Michael Dukakis; it had been actually signed into law by Republican Governor Francis W. Sargent in 1972 under Governor Sargent but Horton’s crimes were blamed on the Democrat candidate. Roger Ailes GOP operative and now head of Fox News, created an advertisement showing a snarling Willie Horton, commenting, “"the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."
In 2004, GOP supporters engaged in a campaign, encouraged by the Bush campaign and not effectively challenged by the John Kerry people that diminished the latter’s status as a true hero of the Vietnam War. Wounded several times in battle and a recipient of three Purple Heart medals for his wounds, and a Bronze Star and Silver Star for bravery under fire, Senator Kerry’s achievements were mocked. At the GOP convention in 2004, the delegates were given purple Band-Aids as an indication of the mocking! Senator Kerry assumed that the American public would not be fooled into believing a recipient of the Bronze and Silver Stars was anything but a genuine hero, but, in fact the repetitious bashing by GOP operatives took its toll.
Now, in the present, the convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, turned into an anti-Obama hate-fest with a nearly all-white gathering laughing at and mocking the nation’s first African-American presidential nominee of a major party.
However, beyond the contempt visible on the faces of the GOP delegates, many of the nasty attacks on Obama – as well as the over-the-top praise for the Republican ticket – were false, as if testing the depths of American gullibility and bigotry.
In speech after speech, Republicans touted the alleged “maverick” of John McCain and Sarah Palin. The Associated Press was so taken by the spin, and the multiple distortions, that it produced a special fact-checking article describing how Republicans had “stretched the truth.”
Example? For instance, Governor Palin said about Senator Obama, “It's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate."
However, as the AP noted, Senator Obama “worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year.”
The AP reported, “In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.”
The AP’s fact-checking article noted, too, that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s hit at Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden – that Sarah Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States" – was a “whopper.”
The AP wrote that “Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.”
The Republican National Convention also acted as if the Republicans had not controlled the White House for the past eight years and the Congress for most of that time. I called this the ultimate chutzpah in a prior post.
"We need change, all right,” said former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington - throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin." Excuse me? Hiding Messrs Bush and Chaney won’t change the facts.
What is frightening about this type of campaign and the GOP tactics is that perhaps the United States has crossed over into a post-rational society that cares little about facts and reality or serious policy ideas and respectful debate, but rather is a nation moved by anger and ridicule, fear and nationalism.
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Comment by Lester Caudill
Round Politics
Look at Micheal Moore, and all the vicious lies he has spouted, and take a look at moveon.org, not to mention so in congress.
I say both sides could do a lot more to clean up politics, but it is not just one sided thing. But I will say that the dems are masters at lying, and whining.
Comment by Jim Stillman
Political Certainty
I’m referring to outright lies, as in the Swift Boat ads as Governor Palin’s whoppers quoted in the post.
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Um, yep. That ship has sailed.
Comment by Randy Inman
Waxing Political
Football Dogz
NCstuff
It does not matter that African Americans have played a key role with Preident Bush's administration. Because they are Republican African Americans they don't count.
Until Obama came along the Democrats didn't give a rat's butt about gving an African American power in the government. And if he loses the election it will be a long time before it is tried again.
Comment by Jeff Musall