One of the most fondly held delusions of modern presidential politics is that campaigns get dirtier with every election. Pundits and the public snarl at the deluge of "attack ads" flying between one side and another; a ravenous press gleefully lays bare the private lives of public men; the ill-will demeans the office and wears out the citizenry months before the November denouement. In every campaign, someone brings up the noble politics of the last century. Oh for the days of Lincoln and Douglas, they will moan, for the days of great men debating the great issues with dignity and eloquence.

To remember ancient campaigns only in these terms is, to say the very least, myopic. Dirty campaigning has been a fact of life in presidential politics if not from Day One—when George Washington ran all but unopposed—then certainly by Day Two or Three. The instant Washington retired to Mount Vernon, the fight to succeed him, between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, was on. Manners were quickly forgotten, as was much of the truth. Adams's forces derided Jefferson as an atheist, a pawn of the French eager to join their guillotine-mad Revolution, a coward for his lack of military service during America's Revolution, and a candidate for "cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin." Jefferson supporters gave as good as they got, claiming that the haughty Adams planned to tear up the Constitution and install himself as the King of America with his sons ensconced as crown princes. When the two met in a rematch four years later it got even worse. It was alleged that President Adams had ordered an American warship to journey to England and return with not one but two mistresses for him to enjoy. On top of his supposed sins from the last election, Jefferson was now—according to newspapers backed by Adams's party—a godless, lawless racketeer in favor of legal prostitution, incest, rape, marital infidelity, and the slaughter of children on spears. When Jefferson won, the hard feelings were so deep that Adams refused to be part of the swearing-in ceremony, slipping out of town before dawn on Inauguration Day.

The Dirtiest Campaign Ever

By the time the United States was fifty years of age, political parties had solidified their power, and as they did they became increasingly skilled at smearing the opposition. John Quincy Adams continued the dubious traditions of his father, as his party tried to hold off the first Common Man President, Andrew Jackson.

This campaign, too, had its bitter roots in an election between the same two candidates four years earlier. Jackson had won the most popular votes in 1824, but since three other candidates besides Adams siphoned off votes, Jackson lacked a simple majority in the electoral college. This threw the election to the House of Representatives. The Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, engineered a vote giving the election to John Quincy Adams. Three days later, Adams named Clay his secretary of state. Jackson supporters howled at what they perceived as a "Corrupt Bargain" between Adams and Clay. Their candidate called Clay "The Judas of the West." When one senator condemned the "Corrupt Bargain" in a speech, Clay challenged him to a duel; the bullets of both senator and speaker, gratefully, missed their marks. From the moment Adams took the oath of office, Jackson began his quest for the White House—and for vengeance.

The 1828 campaign reached depths of malice that have never been equaled. The Jackson campaign nicknamed Adams "The Pimp," based on a rumor that the president, while serving as ambassador to Russia a decade earlier, had coerced a young woman into an affair with a czar. One pro-Adams publication railed: "General Jackson's mother was a COMMON PROSTITUTE brought to this country by British soldiers! She afterward married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson IS ONE!!" According to the charges and countercharges, Adams had lived with a woman before marrying his wife; Jackson had committed war crimes while leading American troops in the War of 1812. A handbill with coffins on its cover depicted Jackson as a crazed killer, executing soldiers under his command who had deserted. Another claimed that "John the Second," too, had aspirations to royal rule. Jackson's history of dueling was brought up, as was Adams's installation of "gambling furniture" in the White House at taxpayer expense, in reality a billiard table bought with Adams's own money. The accusations flew back and forth: adulterer, slave-master, alcoholic, illiterate, gunfighter, brawler, nonbeliever in Christ.

When both sides ran out of unkind things to call each other, they turned to the candidates' wives. Louisa Adams had been an illegitimate child who had indulged in sexual relations with John Quincy Adams before the two were married, the Jackson forces alleged. For Rachel Jackson, the innuendo had tragic consequences. She had, in truth, married Andrew Jackson unaware that her first husband had not finalized a divorce; she was, technically, a bigamist until the mess was straightened out years later. (They remarried once the divorce was finalized.) Mrs. Jackson, a somewhat unsophisticated woman in poor health, became increasingly despondent when Adams supporters dredged up this story anew. After Jackson routed Adams in the election, her despair redoubled. A few days after her husband won the White House, Rachel Jackson fell dead. A stricken Andrew Jackson, whose devotion to his wife had been exceptional, never stopped blaming John Quincy Adams for his wife's death. Just as his father had, Adams refused to take part in his successor's inaugural, skulking out of Washington in the early hours.

The Civil War Era and Its Aftermath

By the middle of the 19th century, deeply personal attacks had become a part of virtually every presidential campaign. Typical allegations centered on a candidate's parentage, morality, sobriety, religious faith, and "true" intentions regarding their prospective presidencies. In 1856, John C. Frémont's slogan was "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Frémont." Supporters of James Buchanan, noting Frémont's illegitimate birth, finished the slogan with the phrase, "and Free Love." A third party, the Know Nothings, then finished Frémont off by intimating that he was secretly a Roman Catholic, a faith looked upon with deep suspicion and resentment by the Protestant-dominated populace of 1856 America. The Frémont camp could respond only with tepid ridicule of Buchanan's bachelorhood and age, and when Frémont lost it seemed only to underscore the necessity of unscrupulous tactics when seeking the White House. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln had to overcome astonishingly cruel references to his ungainly appearance. More than one Democratic newspaper cartoon pictured him as a monkey and called him "Honest Ape."

Appeals to bigotry had been a staple of presidential contests since the first dirty campaign. A leading supporter of John Adams alleged that Thomas Jefferson had both Native American and African American heritages in his bloodline. His purported relationships with female slaves were campaign fodder as well. The 1840 campaign saw Martin Van Buren's vice president, Richard Johnson, drummed off the ticket when it became known that he had lived and had children with an African American woman. In the highly charged atmosphere of the Civil War and its Reconstruction aftermath, these attacks degenerated into the basest depths of racism. Democratic illustrators depicted Lincoln commanding a boat with two African American men—drawn with extreme racial stereotypes—groping a white woman. To be reelected in 1864, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had to withstand even more withering abuse. Some of the worst of this was in, of all things, musical form. The campaign song was the attack ad of its day, but far more vicious than anything we know; it is difficult to imagine a major party today publishing and distributing the following:

Now listen to me, white folks, de truth I'm going to tell you:
Dat de white man isn't nowhere now, it's plain to men of sense;
For, it's nigger in de Senate-house, and nigger in de White House,
And nigger in de Custom house, and nigger on de fence.

Bit by bit and campaign by campaign, however, such volatile imputations began to taper off. The new century brought with it a far bigger and stronger nation than had existed fifty years earlier. America, now a world power with a budding empire, had become vastly more important. The presidency had become far more important too, demanding a dimension of global leadership that had been unthinkable in earlier days. As catastrophic change swept the globe with events like the Russian Revolution and the First World War, voters were less comfortable with wildly incendiary rhetoric from the camps of presidential candidates. Big money and electronic media exerted an increasing influence on the process of choosing a president; fewer Americans felt part of the political process, and a smaller percentage of the populace voted. Campaigns like Jackson-Adams, Harrison-Van Buren, and Cleveland-Blaine routinely saw torchlight parades of common folk more than five miles long. Everyone had taken part, because politics was a leading form of entertainment. By the First World War, vaudeville, motion pictures and other pursuits gave Americans new choices for their leisure time. Radio, following soon after, meant one could participate in the political process without leaving one's home. The new mass media made many old attack methods obsolete. Newspapers became less the crudely partisan propaganda tools of the parties, as they were forced to compete with radio for public attention. While many publications remained staunch supporters of one party or another, they could no longer accuse a candidate of, say, shooting his mother (as they had Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876) without repercussions from an increasingly sophisticated public and increasingly active courts.

A watershed incident from a recent presidential campaign illustrates the difference between the past and present. In 1988 George Bush damaged his opponent, Michael Dukakis, with a television advertisement imparting the tale of one Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who raped a woman after being released from prison on a furlough program in Massachusetts, where Dukakis served as governor. The advertisement merely suggested that Dukakis made the crime possible, and received an torrent of criticism for doing so. In the old days, an enemy newspaper might well have blamed Dukakis with actually committing the murder and rape.

Increasingly, modern dirty campaigning is the work of surrogates such as media talk show hosts, celebrities, and writers or commentators of note—individuals outside the campaign but sympathetic to the cause and eager to attach themselves to it for publicity or political purposes. Internet outlets are a rapidly emerging medium for such political activity as well.

It is easy to understand why many feel today's campaigns are dirtier than ever. Most people who say that are unaware of just how rough politics was 150 years ago. In addition, the contemporary voter knows far more about their presidential candidates than they ever have. In an age where both major contenders for the White House are compelled to discuss their sex lives on camera—one in a television advertisement, the other in legal testimony—it seems there are few, if any, secrets. When a television commentator or radio personality says something uncharitable about a person running for president, the media is frequently vilified. Yet that media, in a sense, is all of us, everyone watching and listening and buying the products advertised on it. The media is a commercial enterprise responding to market forces, and the media figure says terrible things about the candidate simply because they think it will secure their show a greater audience. As long as they are convinced there is an audience for rude aspersions towards men and women who want to be president, they will continue. Finally, what seems like such bitter rancor in our national elections is, compared to other countries, a supremely orderly process. As Theodore White pointed out in The Making of the President, "No bands play on election day, no troops march, no guns are readied, no conspirators gather in secret headquarters." No matter how nasty it gets, the loser calls the winner the morning after and offers congratulations.

Sources

Spero, Robert. The Duping of the American Voter: Dishonesty and Deception in Presidential Television Advertising (Lippincott & Crowell Publishers, 1980)

Boller, Paul F. Jr. Presidential Campaigns (Oxford University Press, 1984)

Graff, Henry E., ed. The Presidents: A Reference History (Simon & Schuster MacMillan, 1997.)

Miles, William. Songs, Odes, Glees and Ballads: A Bibliography of American Presidential Campaign Songsters (Greenwood Press, 1990)

Shields-West, Eileen. The World Almanac of Presidential Campaigns (World Almanac, 1992)

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