Dirty Sexy Politics

Well, dirty anyway.

Historian and author Joseph Cummins is no stranger to the dirty underside of the American democratic process. His latest book, Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises, chronicles the campaign smears, attacks, and misdirections that have typified U.S. elections since George Washington’s win in 1789.

[...] After researching every presidential contest from 1789 to 2004, my answer is that elections are not getting dirtier. They’re just as dirty as they have always been. Whether that’s a heartening trend depends on your point of view. I myself am a great fan of the unruly democratic process, which I think will always be unruly.

In terms of trends, a rough rule of thumb is that incumbent parties tend to play the most dirty tricks, perhaps because they have the ways and means to do so. It’s also true that parties with the strongest ideologies — be they Democratic or Republican — fight dirtier, possibly because they are not only pushing a candidate, but an entire way of life.

Cummins' research also digs up some early oeuvres from the fine art of media bashing.

The first attack I found against a newspaper came in 1800, when a Federalist poet decided that his party’s defeat at the hands of the Republicans could be blamed entirely on the media. He penned this bit of doggerel.

And lo! In meretricious dress
Forth comes a strumpet called “THE PRESS.”
Whose haggard, unrequested charms
Rush into every blaggard’s arms.

Cummins decided to write the book after witnessing the spectacle of "commentators in recent presidential contests claiming that American politics is getting nastier and nastier — lots of hand-wringing over whether democracy would survive the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

Despite his conclusion that the 2004 election did not reach unprecedented levels of filth, there's still one man who seems unable to scrub the stains away to his own satisfaction. (HT: Hot Air)

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, perhaps preparing to get back into the presidential ring one day, claims he’s now armed with materials that will make war record critics from his 2004 presidential campaign go running tail between legs.
...
“We have put together a documented portfolio that frankly puts their lies in such a total light of absurdity and indecency, that should they ever rear their ugly heads again, we have every single ‘t’ crossed and ‘i’ dotted, and I welcome that in a sense,” Kerry said after addressing Boston’s South Shore Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a shame we weren’t able to produce all that at the time.”