The presidential election campaign of 1800 between incumbent John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson is often regarded as the nastiest in American history.
In his biography of Adams, David McCullough says Adams was labeled a warmongering monarchist, a British sympathizer and insane. Some of the sharpest criticism came from James Callendar, a political operative for Jefferson, who denounced Adams as a “repulsive pedant” and a “gross hypocrite.”
Meanwhile, Adams’ supporters, according to McCullough, circulated pamphlets and newspaper articles claiming Jefferson was a shameless southern libertine and a “howling” atheist who dodged military service during the Revolutionary War.
That election, which Jefferson won, has been called the first modern campaign. As Shakespeare said in The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue.”
Imagine what the campaign of 1800 would been like if they had had TV and the Internet.
Campaigns are often intensely personal and antagonistic. The most recent low blow in the current Presidential race comes from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has leveled a charge that Mitt Romney did not pay any income taxes for ten years.
As proof, Reid has offered only a vague reference to someone he says worked for Bain Capital, the investment fund that Romney co-founded in 1984. Reid repeated the charge on the floor of the Senate, challenging Romney to prove otherwise.
Reid’s message: Romney is a super-wealthy tax cheat.
The press is running with the allegation, even though the responsibility should be on Reid to pony up the evidence, rather than on Romney to disprove an unsubstantiated charge.
Now, both sides are firing at point-blank range.
GOP Chairman Reince Priebus called Reid “a dirty lair who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself.” That was followed by Reid aide David Krone, who said Republicans attacking his boss were “cowards” and “henchmen.”
Liars? Tax cheats? Cowards? You have to wonder how much of this stuff sticks. We know some of it does because of the baseless attacks on President Obama that still have traction after several years.
A poll last month by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 17 percent of Americans still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, even though he is not. And despite the fact that the President released a copy of his birth certificate last year, some of his opponents continue to perpetuate the belief that he is not a natural-born citizen.
Our Republic was founded on, and still relies upon, high ideals: freedom, liberty, equality, the rule of law. The Founding Fathers, despite their differences, managed to unite on these lofty principles that guide us still today.
But as evidenced by the raucous campaign of 1800, and many campaigns since, even the high-minded are susceptible to the vagaries of arduous political fights. It’s unrealistic to expect the politicians of today, especially in the era of instant and constant media coverage, to remain above the fray.