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Sleaze
SLEAZE....Josh Marshall says John McCain's campaign is the sleaziest we've seen for a very long time:
You may say, wait, Willie Horton? The Swift-boat smears? What about those?
But here's the key point, one that is getting too little attention. President Bush's father didn't run the Willie Horton ad. And this President Bush, however much they may have been funded by his supporters and run with Karl Rove's tacit approval, didn't run the Swift Boat ads. These were run by independent groups. Just how 'independent' we think they really are is a decent question. But even the sleaziest campaigns usually draw the line at the kind of sleaze they are wiling to run themselves under their own name.
This is basically what's struck me about McCain's campaign too: his sleaze has been done in his own name, not kept at arm's length, as it was in 1972, 1988, and 2004.
But although that was my initial reaction to events of the summer and fall, I'm pretty sure it isn't right. Yes, the Willie Horton ad in 1988 was officially an independent expenditure, but the "Revolving Door" ad was very much a Bush-Quayle production. Lee Atwater promised to make Horton a household name, and he did just that. Bush Sr. spoke about him frequently in speeches. And Dukakis's patriotism was a major theme too, as the Bush campaign hit him over and over and over about his stand on the Pledge of Allegiance.
In fact, I'd say 2008 is a surprisingly faithful replay of 1988. On the Republican side it's been sleazy, it's been issue free, and its biggest feature has been a young, attractive, unqualified, base-pleasing conservative vice presidential choice. The big difference is that Obama is a better candidate than Dukakis and 2008 is a far more Democratic year than 1988. On the sleaze-o-meter, however, I think it's pretty much a draw. Anyone with sharp memories of 1988 is invited to agree or disagree in comments.
is there an argument to be mde that b/c mccain is doing it under his own name, it's LESS sleazy? I still think it's sleazy, but there's something to be said for not hiding it.
josh: I think the argument is just that it's different. Usually there's sort of a tacit understanding that sleaze is wrong, and therefore ought to be kept at arm's length. That's not much of a taboo, but at least it's something. This year, we don't even have that.
With 15 days left, we've yet to hear about the good Rev. Wright.
I find it difficult to believe some Republican supporters won't use it.
My memory of the 1988 campaign is that it was just incredibly stupid and vacuous. It was all about Bush wrapping himself in the flag and Dukakis riding in the tank. Lee Atwater famously apologized on his death bed for what he did in 1988, but Rove and Schmidt have made Atwater look like an amateur. For sleaze personally delivered by the campaign, I think McCain wins hands down.
Josh -- I think the point is that there's a difference when the sleaze comes directly from the candidate, as opposed to his/her more unscrupulous or unhinged supporters. The nature of the sleaze itself is unchanged; the difference lies in the nature of the candidate. Bush I did big sleaze directly, and it tarnished him, directly. Same with McCain.
i would add that this year's racial attacks against Obama are qualitatively different than the Willie Horton ads against Dukakis because Obama himself is black. The McCain campaign is not attacking Obama by associating him with a "scary black man." Rather, they're explicitly painting the candidate himself as a "scary black man."
Look, Mike Dukakis was a friend of mine going back from before his time as governor. He would have done a marvelous job as president but he ran one of the worst campaigns in recent memory. His answer to the debate question on the death penalty made me leave the room so I wouldn't punch out the TV.
However, while Horton and the tank both made news, and Atwater certainly was willing to engage in whatever he thought would win, my recollection is that there is no comparison between the two elections in terms of Republican sleeze. Dukakis was done in by his own inept campaign as much as by what really was an eleventh hour sleeze fest. In contrast, the McCain campaign has taken the low road and worked on attempted character assassination from day one.
When my Republican friends argue that both sides are guilty of misrepresentations, my response is simple. Show me one Obama ad that's as disingenuous or vacuous as the "Paris Hilton" ad or the "sex education" ad and then we can have a meaningful discussion.
The McCain campaign hasn't suddenly gone negative because it was losing. The McCain campaign has been negative right from the start and has been throwing mud up to see what would stick.
This is before you start any discussion about robocalls. Bottom line for me? It's McCain in a landslide of mud.
There are plenty of similarities, but McCain's campaign is worse. Citing Willie Horton was (however cynical and hamfisted) still a policy critique, citing Ayers isn't.
As for 527s, nothing will ever match the Swift Boaters for the purest sleaze (I hope).
Of course 1988 was pre-internet, so I wasn't nearly as saturated in political news as I am this time around. I wonder if that doesn't change things a bit.
In any case, what I can say for certain is that I have a particular animus towards sleazy campaigning. And in 1988 I HATED Bush 41. Much more than I had ever disliked Reagan. For a long time I've wondered why that was the case -- he's turned out to be pretty good compared to his son. But I'm pretty sure that my visceral hatred of the man was formed during the '88 campaign. In any case Bush 41 used to be at the pinnacle of my visceral dislike meter -- but now he's got company. No small achievement for McCain. I stood in line for an hour to vote for McCain in the primaries in 2000. Now I'd stand in line for untold hours to vote against him.
What seems different this time is the sheer nastiness of the smears--when has a presidential candidate been dubbed a terrorist or a socialist?--and that the smears bear zero resemblance to reality. Yes, the Horton ads in 88 were sleazy and racist but crime was a huge concern that year--what exactly does Bill Ayers have to do with anything? In '04, the Swift Boat smears were tied to Kerry's alleged "softness" on foreign policy. Again, a smear but relevant. The Obama smears have no relevance to anything policy wise and are just really, really out there in terms of substance (Warren Buffett's preferred candidate is a socialist?)
Another parallel: in both elections, you had a moderate-leaning Republican trying to reinvent himself as the original right-winger. But H. W. Bush, at least, had the blessing of St. Ronnie, while McCain has the albatross of W. Bush.
Great observation. Although part of the difference is that the so-called 529's have been de-fanged somewhat. But it is entirely fair to say that McCain has shamelessly promoted this Bill Ayers nonsense himself, when people who live in Chicago (where Ayers was voted Citizen of the Year a few years back) just laugh at how ridiculous these assertions are.
I don't see much difference in nastiness from 1988 to 2008.
Every 4 years we react in horror to the nastiness that has suddenly infected American politics. Forgetting of course that it has been like this since the birth of the nation.
Political campaigns, yeah even ordinary day to day politics (i.e. legislating) are nasty. Always have been, always will be.
Did the '88 Bush campaign work crowds into a frenzy where they were shouting "kill him," "traitor," or "terrorist"?
This is what I remember. The Democratic base was not all that enthusiastic about Dukakis in 1988. I do remember being against Bush and against the Iraq war. Ah, memories.
I remember a rally at which Ron Dellums was really whipping up the crowd well (he's a fantastic orator)-- He had actually managed to get us excited about the election. Then at one point during his speech he said something like "we're not afraid to be called liberal." And there was a shout from the audience, "Yeah, but Dukakis is."
Dellums had to back up and talk about how maybe Dukakis wasn't our first choice, but that he was our only choice. You could see the discomfort of the Dukakis people behind him on the stage. Their smiles disappeared completely as Dellums went on to get everybody worked up about what a great candidate Jesse Jackson would've been. This went on for 15 minutes.
And I realized, we're going to lose.
Ok, this was in San Francisco and maybe San Francisco democrats are not really "the Base". But I seriously doubt that many of those people were taking the time to campaign for Dukakis in the Central Valley or across the stateline in Nevada the way their counterparts are doing today.
I suspect the only reason they havn't pulled out Rev. Wright yet is that their internal polling shows it as a loser. They will probably bring it out as a last week Hail Mary, though. We're lucky it all came out in the primaries and Obama already refuted him. I don't see them getting much traction from it as it will obviously be a ploy of deperation.
What was so bad about Horton? Dukakis could have changed the furlough policy had he wished. He vetoed a bill to do just that. That's fair game for a campaign.
ethan is right. Saying that Dukakis doesn't love his country is stupid. Saying that Obama is bff with terrorists intent on destroying our nation is dangerous.
Actually, this is REALLY funny! I think Colin Powell was going to sit this Presidential Campaign out but Big John's campaign got under his skin! So he crossed Party Lines and even told Tom Brakow exactly why! Now Rush and the little Limbaughs are doing Damage control but McCains Sleazy campaign has come home to roost. The Media breaking the story of his wife's dope problem and now Michelle Obama's Kenya tapes are going to make this the rottenest, low down campaign in history-It makes me Proud to be an American-We'll show those Asian Countries that America can fight as dirty as anybody!
I'm voting for '72 as the nastiest, because the nastiness there redefined the Republican Party. As I recall, more Republican senators signed the Civil Rights Act than Democrats, the dems in those days being the party of the south, and segregation. Once LBJ had turned the dems 180 degrees, the Republicans saw their chance, and '72 was the year they transformed their party into a more or less officially racist institution. Which it has been ever since. The permanent poisoning of the political well in that election is still with us. McCain is still using racist tropes, as every Republican national candidate has since then. Blame it on Nixon, I say. All the vileness that has attended GOP campaigns for the last forty years.
Maggie--I'm with you on Bush 41 and for the same reason. I think what got me most was not just the sleazy attack ads, but the fact that on top of that he kept saying "My opponent will say anything to get elected!" It was my first real, conscious exposure to the RPP (Roveian Projection Principle): always accuse your opponent of whatever it is you're most guilty of.
Well, that and the pork rinds thing. Another GOP first: utterly, transparently, fraudulently pretending to be a Reg'lar Guy when you're the multi-billionaire son of multi-billionaires, who went to the most elite private schools from elementary on up. I mean--George H. W. Bush? Pork rinds? Right.
Maggie above perfectly captured my feelings about 1988. Bush proved to have a real nasty streak, as well as the cowardice to run a sleazy campaign while making it look as if his own hands were clean. I never personally loathed Reagan as I did Bush circa November 1988. I think the Republican campaign that year was every bit as awful as this year.
As for the 1988 outcome, that was clearly as much the fault of Dukakis's failings as Bush's slime. Dukakis took a month off from the campaign after his convention, and Bush attacked him nonstop while nobody defended him. The damage to Dukakis's campaign was done by Labor Day. By the last week of the campaign when Dukakis suddenly declared to the world that he was a liberal after all, he had long since lost all control of what we now call the campaign narrative. However, he still got a halfway respectable 47% of the popular vote.
Obama has made no such stupid mistakes and McCain is fighting a much more GOP-hostile public this year.
And, somehow I still don't despise McCain the way I did both Bushes, though I now think he would be a terrifyingly bad president. I think the reason might be the fact that the campaign rules now make the kind of anonymous ad campaigns of the past illegal: McCain has to throw the sleaze himself, in public. He can't hide behind "independent" groups as the Bushes did. In the end McCain seems more pitiful than diabolical.
Seems like the McCain camp was wistful for some echoes of 1968, too - what with McCain's "secret plan" to capture OBL, the transparent attempt to paint peaceful protesters as a violent mob, and the campaign's obvious play to a "silent majority" that is no longer there.
sleaze = truth-telling, when Kevin doesn't like the truth.
I expected McCain to run a campaign on the issues instead of the usual Republican character assassination. It's surprising how quickly he was willing to sell his soul for what he thought was a chance to win.
I'm so glad it is backfiring so badly. We may see Republicans change their tactics if they are crushed in a couple elections.
Glad I'm not the only one who remembers how sleazy Bush I was. The GOP does an amazing job of rehabing their presidents. They've all been sleazy. There is something wrong with the GOP as illustrated by the people who have risen to the top of that party over the past several decades. Just list them out and shake your head.
No no no.
McCain is no sleazier than Bushes 1 and 2. They're all equally sleazy.
He's just worse at doing it.
So rather than helping him, McCain's sleaze is falling back on him and hurting him instead of his opponent.
If memory serves me, the swiftboat operation included a manger who was part of the Texas Republican party and a counsel who actually worked in the Whitehouse
Please don't forget that the progressive base was excited by the candidacy of Jesse Jackson in 1988 with a relatively bitter primary battle that left scars on the candidate.
Dukakis was open to race-based apathy from the left (you beat Jesse!) and race-based attacks from the right (Willie Horton!).
Hear me out on this, OK? Perhaps,..just perhaps, there is a greater picture emerging here that no one has discovered yet. It is my contention that after the landslide victory that McCain delivers for Barack, McCain will immediately divorce Sindy...propose to Sarah the Strange, have Todd arrested for violating Alaska's Wildlife protection laws, gather his slimy political campaign team into an ad-hoc cabinet, establish a militia to protect the COUNTRY of Alaska and become the President and Co-President of said country!
It seems like the only honorable thing he has left.
You are plagiarizing bruce
You are plagiarizing bruce schneier from his book. Atleast have a curtsey to quote and attribute.
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