Trash talking ain't nothing this campaign season

BY BILL PRESS | Bill Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of "Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too Soon)."

April 28, 2008

After Hillary Clinton's surprisingly comfortable win in Pennsylvania last week, the Democratic primary moves on to North Carolina and Indiana. And so continues the dirtiest and most vitriolic political campaign in history - or so the mainstream media would have you believe.

Last Tuesday night, ABC's Charlie Gibson lamented that the campaign had become "so nasty and negative and dirty." The next day, The New York Times bemoaned a primary contest that was "even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pandering contests that preceded it." And David Broder of The Washington Post lamented a campaign that has become "markedly more negative." Same with the rest of the media. When they're not complaining about how long the primary's lasting, they're carping about how nasty it is.

What I want to know is: Have they ever covered a political campaign before? By any standard, the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has been one of the most civilized in our lifetime.

Of course, both candidates have emphasized differences between them. That's what campaigns are all about. Obama says Clinton's vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq means she can't be trusted to make other foreign policy decisions. Clinton says Obama doesn't have enough experience to govern from day one, especially when the phone rings at 3 a.m. Tough? Maybe. But nasty? No way. Those are legitimate issues.

Clinton tells superdelegates that Obama's such a weak candidate he can't beat John McCain. Obama counters that Clinton has so much baggage she can't beat John McCain - and, besides, she's too beholden to insurance, pharmaceutical and oil company lobbyists. Tough? Sure. But dirty? Absolutely not. Those, too, are legitimate issues.

Seriously, if you can't challenge the credentials of your opponent, or his or her ability to win and govern, you might as well not even have a campaign. Flip a coin or draw names out of a hat instead.

Of course, as they say, "Politics ain't beanbag." And we learned that from the very beginning. In the 1800 presidential campaign, as David McCullough recounts in his masterful biography of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson paid James Callender to vilify his opponent. In a campaign booklet Callender called Adams a "repulsive pedant," a "gross hypocrite," and "in his private life, one of the most egregious fools upon the continent." Not only that, Callender portrayed Adams as a "hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

Shown proofs of the campaign pamphlet, Jefferson assured Callender: "Such papers cannot fail to produce the best effects." But Adams gave as well as he took, allowing Yale president Rev. Timothy Wright to warn what would happen were "atheist" Thomas Jefferson elected president: "The Bible will be burned, the French 'Marseillaise' will be sung in Christian churches and we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution; soberly dishonored; speciously polluted."

And these were our Founding Fathers!

Politics weren't much gentler in President Lincoln's day. In her excellent book "Dirty Politics," Kathleen Hall Jamieson recounts the terms used to describe candidate Abe Lincoln: "filthy story teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, Ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, robber, swindler, tyrant, fiend, butcher, and land-pirate." Notice that "Honest Abe" wasn't on the list.

Of course, you don't have to go that far back to wallow in dirty campaigns. Think 1988 and Lee Atwater's promising to make Willie Horton "a household name." Think South Carolina 2000, when George W. Bush's henchmen insinuated that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child (actually, he has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh). Think Georgia 2002 and ads equating Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Think 2004 and the Swift Boat smears against John Kerry.

The truth is, we've seen a lot of dirty campaigns, but this isn't one of them. You can call the 2008 Democratic primary many things. Call it historic. Call it hard-fought. Call it colorful, lively and long. Just don't call it dirty.