From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Earlier this year I stumbled (it's much easier than walking) onto a wickedly entertaining book called Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns. It's a snarky, trivia-filled look at each of the 55 presidential contests between 1789 (when George Washington ran against himself) and 2004 (When John Kerry ran against the swiftboaters), and a helluva lot of fun for political junkies. Author Joe Cummins is a regular Daily Kos reader and graciously agreed to take a turn in the C&J beanbag chair:
C&J: In your book you grade several of the presidential campaigns on a "Sleaze-O-Meter" scale of one to ten. How would you rate the 2008 campaign so far?
Joseph Cummins: For those of us who like our dirty tricks, it probably only rates a three so far, with ten being reserved for such smearfests as the Adams-Jefferson 1800 battle, the 1876 fight between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden or the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest. Things started out well in the primaries---I mean, when you have the supposed story of Barack Obama’s terrorist pre-school or the story that Mike Huckabee’s son tortured and killed a dog while he was a boy scout---well, you naturally have the expectation that the dirt will be flying fast and furious.
But it wasn’t, at least historically speaking. Hillary and Obama spent a good deal of time sniping at each other for "going negative," as McCain and Obama are doing now. That’s an interesting trend among politicians these days---the pre-emptive "how dare you play dirty politics" strike. But, really, how does any of this compare to calling your opponent "a fathead with the brains of a guinea pig," as Teddy Roosevelt addressed William Howard Taft in 1912. Or telling voters they might go to hell if they voted for a candidate, as Harry Truman cautioned about Richard Nixon in 1960. Of course, he was right.
Is there a particular era when presidential campaigns were at their sleaziest, or has it been pretty consistent over the years?
Actually, it hasn’t been consistent over the years---we’ve had worse decades and better decades. I think it’s really interesting that, just as politics change to suit the times, so does the nature of the dirty tricks. The 1880s---the Gilded Age, when money was king---was the era of bagmen rather openly carrying suitcases full of hundreds of thousands in cash (two-dollar bills, known in the parlance as "Soapy Sam" because they greased palms) to pivotal states to buy elections. In the 1960s and early ‘70s, both Democrats and Republicans (Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon) enlisted the aid of the CIA---very cool at the time---and liked bugging opponents’ campaign planes and offices. The era of the really nasty campaign ad kicked into high gear in 1988, when the Republicans destroyed Michael Dukakis with an onslaught of spots about Willie Horton---it set the tone for campaign attack commercials to this day.
The turn of the 21st century has seen voters disenfranchised by zealous Secretaries of State who are their party’s state campaign co-chairs (Katherine Harris in Florida in 2000, J. Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio in 2004), a disturbing trend which may be exacerbated in 2008 by Voter ID laws recently upheld by the Supreme Court.
Who ran the most flat-out incompetent campaign ever?
Wow. There have been so many. Republican Thomas Dewey ran probably the worst in history, I think, against President Harry Truman in 1948. Truman at the time---people forget this because his reputation has been so rehabbed of late---was despised by so many Americans that a favorite catchphrase, never failing to elicit laughter, was: "I wonder what Truman would do if he were alive?" Dewey was young---the first Presidential candidate born in the 20th century---efficient, smart and pollsters had him leading by such a large margin that George Gallup announced he was simply going to stop polling.
But instead of pressing his advantage, Dewey went on the defensive. Spent most of his time trying to avoid making a mistake or saying anything controversial. And Truman ended up eating him alive. Lesson to frontrunners: never say "I win" until the little guy from Missouri concedes.
Is there anything about the 2008 campaign that you consider to be groundbreaking---that we haven't seen or experienced before?
I think the only thing that I, personally, haven’t seen before is Obama’s anti-smear website, Fight the Smears, which contrasts the supposed slanders being spread about the candidate with the truth. It remains to be seen how it works, since it speaks mainly to the choir, but it is a clever way of saying to people that Obama, by default (where is the McCain anti-smear site?), is the one being trashed.
Has there been a campaign song that had an actual impact on an election?
Can't really find a campaign song that has had a major impact on an election, but I remain fond of this little ditty, sung by myself and my little six year old friends in the first election I remember, the 1956 rematch between Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower:
Whistle while you work
Stevenson's a jerk.
Mussolini bit his weenie
Now it doesn't work!
Made absolutely no sense but we delighted in it.....
Part 2 of the interview Monday. In the meantime, pop a cork or a pull-tab, check out Joe's blog and then say hello to your brand new weekend. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
