In calling attention to the Halperin memo,
Drudge has helped raise public awareness of the excesses of GOP campaign tactics. As noted by
Zogby , our post-Watergate political epoch begins with Reagan, and the smear campaigns of the1980 general election.
I believe it was a chastened Gerald Ford who said (in approximately these words) 'We Republicans must remember that we are the party of Watergate'; but his successors, far from rejecting that legacy of corruption, have embraced, and transformed it. I have noted
elsewhere the degree to which the Reagan presidency was founded upon the manipulation of perception. Let me be more direct, and say that the guiding principle of Republican administrations since 1980 has been to tell the Big Lie. I absolve Nixon of this; he was the lowest form of street-fighter; but he did not govern by the Lie, as have his Republican successors.
The Clinton scandals showed that the Lie plays effectively even when Republicans do not hold the White House. I doesn't take political genius to see that Monicagate cost Gore the presidency.
It is tempting to say G. W. Bush gives the Lie its purest embodiment; but I think Reagan runs neck in neck with him. As Dr. Johnson noted, it is impossible to settle a point of precedence between a flea and a louse.
Joking aside, as noted in the Zogby link above, the country is probably more divided now than at any time since the Civil War; and it is no exaggeration to say that the future of the Republic is largely at stake in this election.