America's Tradition of Political Smears

This is an interesting follow-up to an earlier post about dirty politics during the Early Republic. Charles Madigan, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote an article of the 'grand' American tradition of the political smear. He wrote:

"For a nation that wants to cast itself in such noble terms, its presidential politicking has always been nasty, particularly nasty in some cases."

"So far, the slights and offenses tossed at Obama seem mild by comparison."

"After all, no one has claimed yet that our wives will be transformed into whores and our children put into servitude or murdered and our belief in God so shaken that our very nation would be in jeopardy."

"That's what Thomas Jefferson's enemies claimed would happen were he to become president, observed Paul Boller Jr. in his great book "Presidential Campaigns.""

""The Bible cast into a bonfire," warned Timothy Dwight, the Congregationalist clergyman president of Yale. "Our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution; soberly dishonored; speciously polluted; the outcast of delicacy and virtue.""...

"One might bemoan the nasty nature of modern commentary, the hyperbole of the blogosphere, the meanness of cable TV rhetoric and who knows what else in a land where not wearing a flag lapel pin can get as much attention as the lack of health-care benefits."

"You want nasty politics?"

"Drop in on the Founding Fathers. Between what those guys had to say about one another, and what their partisans had to say, one could construct an encyclopedia of slanders."

Full article.