"To say that American politics, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, 100 years, or 200 years ago was this high-brow debate is just simply wrong," Goldstein says. "The Declaration of Independence is a negative ad, outlining a bunch of gripes we had with the British. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were negative politics. The major reason Abraham Lincoln did not use negative ads was that TV didn't exist. If it did exist, he would have."
Negative campaign ads contribute to a healthy democracy, political scientist argues; http://www.news.wisc.edu/... Jan. 14, 2008 by Dennis Chaptman and Kenneth Goldstein UW-Madison.
When you begin to think that the current campaigns are negative note the following history:
...the Democratic Party portrayed Adams as a crypto-monarchist who would subvert American democracy, establish a state church and perhaps even reunite our fledgling republic with England. It did not matter that Adams had drafted his state's republican constitution or that he hated the British. Democrats pointed to various events from Adams's first term -- including passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts and engaging in a sea war with France -- to claim that Adams's vocal support of a strong, almost imperial, presidency and his party's efforts to centralize power in the national government provided further ammunition.
Hamilton and partisans of his emerging Federalist faction, the ideological ancestor of the modern Republican Party, had honed their tactics four years earlier, when whispers about irreligion and the sex lives of slave owners undercut Jefferson's chances in the last pre-party contest for president. By 1800, the Federalist attack machine was running at full throttle. It portrayed Jefferson as a debauched deist who would import the horrors of revolutionary France.
In reality, although Jefferson questioned traditional church doctrines and held high hopes for the French Revolution, his religious beliefs differed little from those of Adams, and both men sought a neutral course for the United States between the two warring world powers, France and England. Yet the chief Federalist newspaper proclaimed, "The only question to be asked by every American, laying his hand on his heart, is, 'Shall I continue in allegiance to God and a religious president; or impiously declare for Jefferson and no God!!!' "
The Founding Mudslingers: By Edward J. Larson: http://www.washingtonpost.com/... Friday, July 4, 2008
1884 race between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine, a Republican senator from Maine. The race is perhaps best known for the attack line "Ma! Ma! Where's my Pa?" which Republicans chanted at Cleveland, who while mayor of Buffalo had an illicit relationship with a widow who bore him a child. Democrats had a response: "Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Historians say Cleveland probably would have lost had it come out closer to Election Day. As it was, Democrats had time to fight back. They painted Blaine as a corrupt businessman who ended a letter with the instructions, "burn this." But it became public, and Democrats broke into song:
"Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine!
The con-ti-nen-tal liar from the state of Maine."
But the 20th century had its low moments, too, like the 1948 race between Thomas E. Dewey and the incumbent Harry S. Truman. An Oct. 26 headline in The New York Times captures the campaign's tenor: "President Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascists' Tool."
If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Run for President: By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: March 14, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/...
PS: Just a little something to think about.
What do Karl Rove and Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda) have in common?
History is full of famous sayings about the business of portraying things in a particular way. One is "rumor becomes perception, and perception becomes fact", but the most famous and most accurate was coined by the evil genius who was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda (Joseph Goebbels): "Repetition is truth."
Montana Viewpoint: A short history of negative campaigning
Thursday, November 02, 2006 by Sen. Jim Elliott