Time to Eat Crow

This election season, as it’s been one of the most important and monumental elections in decades, I have continued my argument that Republicans have lately waged the nastiest and dirtiest campaigns in American history. Directly from Karl Rove’s playbook, the GOP have been on the delivering end of some of the most shameful ads and talking points and those negative voices truly had results. In 2004, John Kerry was certainly “swift-boated”, though no credit was ever given to the official Republican party and now Obama is being “Ayers’ed”. I have also always attained that the Democrats comparatively engage nearly as much in negative advertising, just not with as much veracity. 'The Republicans are a mean and nasty bunch', I‘ve always said. Like the Oakland Raiders of the 70’s. They should be punished.

But just as I demand the facts, please, from the right…I cannot allow myself to be so ignorant as to assume that the party I stand behind isn’t capable of the same rhetoric. And to not keep a watchful or analytical eye on that possibility would be nescient and irresponsible, at best. I prize my integrity, like anyone, and do not wish it to be half-hearted or contrived.

So with all this being said, I did a little overdue homework and had to take a long disappointing look at the river bank I currently stand on and admit that the Republicans have not become the monsters that I have previously painted. Unlike Fonzie, I can honestly say…I was wrong. The truth of the matter is that the only monster responsible for such reprehensible behavior in election campaigns resides solely within each and every one of us. We are the monsters. We are the ones who either dish it or allow it. And it has permeated the political landscape since, very likely, the beginning of time. In fact, there isn’t a more perfect example to prove the existence of evolution than dirty politics. It was always mans initiative to conquer and he did so, primarily, with a club, then a spear, a gun and then big guns. But a different war could also be waged when man picked up the pen. And it was discovered that often, not every time, but often…he could accumulate just as much power with language and persuasion than he could with an army. Often much more effectively, with less destruction and death. This psychological transformation from animal mentality to that of higher understanding is one of the building blocks of Darwinian theory.

And so it goes with a non-totalitarian government that in order to appear higher in prestige than your opponent it might make sense to lower his…and the 'rumor mill' is the best weapon of choice to accomplish that objective. Although our forefathers established a rule of law that states that a man is innocent until proven guilty, human nature tells us otherwise. We are all, everyone of us, guilty until proven innocent. The foremost assumption only stands true for someone you know and love. And though it’s an honorable sentiment, it’s not very realistic.

In 2004 the Republicans took the “hero” out of John Kerry’s war service leaving him publicly scarred and painfully silent when he should have fought harder to take the states that suddenly swung right. Legitimate concerns over purged votes could have turned the election but Kerry effectively turned over and accepted defeat. George W. Bush continued his reign. How could we allow this?

Well…how did we allow the Democrats “daisy” commercial in 1964 sway the country from Barry Goldwater? You know the one, where a little girl is seen holding a daisy while a voiceover counts down from 10. When the voice utters the number “zero” the image of an exploding atomic bomb appears and then you hear…”These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God's children can live or to go into the dark … Vote for President Johnson on November 3.” Although the despicable add only ran once…enough people saw it to either illicit outrage…or fear. It can’t be supposed that this one event changed the election, but it does show how the negativity wasn’t created by Karl Rove. He may have honed it better than most, but he didn’t invent it.

In fact in 1800 when, during the Thomas Jefferson-John Adams presidential race, the Connecticut Courant wrote that if Jefferson won, "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes." New Englanders, Advertising Age noted in an editorial last April praising negative campaign ads, "reportedly hid their Bibles for fear that the infidel president would declare them illegal." Or vintages such as 1828, when supporters of presidential candidate and incumbent John Quincy Adams called opponent Andrew Jackson a cannibal and a murderer. The previously married Mrs. Jackson got off easy; Adams's supporters merely accused her of being a whore. [1]

The fine tradition of negativity and attacks goes back to the nation's founding document. By the count of political scientist John G. Geer of Vanderbilt University, 70 percent of the statements in the Declaration of Independence are not uplifting promises of more-just and democratic governance, but attacks on England and George III ("He has obstructed the Administration of Justice," "He has dissolved Representative Houses" and, of course, "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people"). These criticisms "provided the basis for thinking about abuses of power and the centrality of certain basic human rights," Geer writes in his 2006 book "In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns." "Without such negativity, the argument for establishing a new nation that 'derived its just powers from the consent of the govern[ed]' would not have been possible."
While that may be hyperbolic, focusing the colonists' minds on the nefarious doings of King George III undoubtedly advanced revolutionary fervor from Massachusetts to Georgia. [2]

So ultimately, negative campaigning is the norm, rather than the exception and should be expected to be a part of politics for years to come. No, it is not right. It is not fair and it is not honest. It is there because it works…plain and simple. Most people can be swayed. You and I prove it at the checkout stand when we buy that pack of gum or that silly magazine we never would have bought in the first place if we didn’t have that “impulsive” gene in our DNA. There was something about that wrapper of the gum or the picture and layout of the magazine cover that prompted your mind to say, “ I like that…and I want it” So you bought it and didn’t even know why. You were swayed by your sub-conscious. When people hear “dirt” on a candidate…they can’t help but file it somewhere in their mind.

As this campaign nears an end, McCain/Palin are likely to attack Obama’s character more harshly than before because being currently 11 percentage points down that’s the only recourse they have. They are not evil people…it’s just the only strategy that has a chance. Because for some voters on November 4th, the last thing that they hear at night is simply the first thing they’ll remember in the morning.








[1] [2] http://www.newsweek.com/id/163476?tid=relatedcl