Dirty Politics

Are the elections really getting worse each time? Is the the worst one? I personally do not think that they are getting any worse than they have been before. I think it is just as bad as before as far as dirty politics, the difference now is that it is bad in different ways than anybody has even seen before and so it seems absolutely terrible because it is a new way to play dirty. The other thing is that now we have much more coverage by the media, and have the news instantly right to our phones. No longer are we limited to newspapers which ultimately are daily updates, not to the minute updates. We now have things like YouTube; anybody can publish a stupid statement or comment and share it with the rest of the world as it happens or right after the incident.

Recent Claims:

Attacking the canidates individuals. Oh no this is not new, it is just different in the way that people can more easily get away with more stuff. In this way it is a little more dirty, but not so much as if the WHITE HOUSE planned attacks as in the 1964 Johnson-Goldberg, Kennedy not just on the other parties candidates, but on the candidate themselves. I think that this particular election is a bit cleaner in the way that there are actually people realizing that it is wrong to attack the people themselves, and are now making a big deal of it and making it look even worse than it already does. As much as we can say that we have things like video editing and Photoshop, we cannot say that we now publish children's coloring books with illustrations of a candidate in Ku Klux Clan dress and mask.

What about the family attacks? I do not think that the dirties attack of elections as far as family is the attack on Palin's daughter. As much as this may be somewhat of a personal attack it is attacking her stupid actions not her specifically. We are not saying that she looks ugly or that she is overweight or anything else like that, but more of she was stupid in what she did. The problem is that people try to stretch the story in any way possible to make Sarah Palin herself look bad. The greater problem however does seem that we have worse candidates than before who don't know when to stop complaining.

"The White House organized a sixteen-man committee devoted to demeaning Goldwater. It met twice a day, 9:30 in the morning and 6:00 in the evening. They began developing books that would castigate Goldwater: You Can DIe Laughing, Goldwater Versus Republicans, and a book of cartoons. It prepared statements on major issues on which Goldwater had made himself vulnerable, and distributed them to people who could "get them into the papers in the right places at the best time. They prepared rebuttals of Goldwater-Miller statements and assigned committee members to get them published. The fed hostile questions to reporters traveling with Goldwater; they wrote letters to popular columnists like Ann Landers; they made list of columnist they knew and lobbied them regularly for articles critical of Goldwater; and they pressured mass magazines to attack Goldwater's views on nuclear weapons."
(Dallek)

What about the ads? Of course those have gotten dirtier. Who is going to say no when they can edit a video and put a complete spin on the election, or just the general focus on the election. What about random accusations made by everyday people? I think it is absolutely stupid the fact that McCain is being attacked for not being able to email. Regardless of it being true to whatever extent, it is not really all that important of an issue, nor do I think it is a factor that should determine a persons vote...it is like the type of claim that was made agains John Adams saying he was"Hideous Hermaphroditical Character" (James Callendar). True or false, it was of no real importance to the greater issues of the race.


Cummins, Joseph. Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U. S. Presidential Campaigns. Quirk Books. 2007

Dallek, Robert. Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President. Oxford University Press US. 2004