Posted on 09/18/2004 2:54:34 AM PDT by Brian Allen
Low blows and dirty tricks in grand tradition By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 18/09/2004)
If the feverish chatter among Washington's Democrats is anything to go by, the 2004 election campaign amounts to the death knell of American democracy.
Since the August launch of devastating advertisements attacking Senator John Kerry's record in the Vietnam War, desperate Democrats have taken to fulminating that President George W Bush's campaign team has brought politics to a new low.
The latest edition of Newsweek laments that the campaign is now in "slime time". It declares: "Fuelled by shadowy cash, the attacks get uglier and uglier."
The low blows began at the start of the year when the Drudge Report, the Right-wing gossip website and tipster, reported the claim that Mr Kerry had had an affair with an intern who had then been asked by his campaign to flee to Kenya to escape the media spotlight.
This was reported around the world, with varying degrees of scepticism. A few days later the "intern" broke cover and denied categorically that there was any truth in the story.
More accurately, the Drudge Report gleefully reported recently that Mr Kerry was photographed trying to prove his sporting credentials by wielding a gun that it later transpired he had voted to ban.
The lowest blow against Mr Kerry has been the largely unsubstantiated attack on his medal-winning record in the Vietnam War from a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Their well-funded campaign, including television advertisements in marginal states, has thrown mud at the central plank of Mr Kerry's campaign - his war record.
While vicious and largely uncorroborated, the attacks on Mr Kerry's Vietnam record appear to have been brutally effective in highlighting and feeding on a lingering public uncertainty over the Democratic candidate. Since the advertisements were launched in August, Mr Bush's approval ratings have started to rise and Mr Kerry's to sink. With barely six weeks to go, Mr Bush appears to have a useful lead over his challenger. A Gallup poll yesterday suggested his advantage was 13 points, although most polls regard the race as considerably closer.
Mr Kerry's supporters have attempted a fightback, highlighting questions over Mr Bush's record in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. But as the commander-in-chief, Mr Bush has a credibility that is hard to assail.
So it is with a sense of desperation that Democrats are crying foul. But more sober heads say low blows are nothing new. The difference is that the Bush campaign has ruthlessly focused on the weaknesses of the challenger.
The weakness of the Kerry campaign was highlighted in July when it allowed the candidate to be photographed in blue overalls at Nasa. The ungainly shot of him looking distinctly unheroic was plastered over newspapers.
David Broder, the veteran Washington Post columnist, does not agree with the Democrats' complaints. "It hasn't been a noticeably dirty campaign," he said.
"The first campaign I covered was 1960 [between JFK and Richard Nixon], when there was all sorts of underground anti-Catholic [anti-Kennedy] stuff cast out throughout the country with no one taking responsibility for it. We haven't seen anything like that."
He also rejects the impression that the Republicans have a monopoly on delivering "below the belt" attacks and that the Democrats play a cleaner game. "That's a lot of baloney. There have been smear artists on both sides as far back as I can remember."
As the insults fly in the weeks ahead, and the outrage mounts abroad, it may be worth bearing in mind the final stages of the 1888 election. The Democratic president Grover Cleveland was just ahead. Then a letter from the British ambassador in Washington to one Charles Murchison, supposedly an Englishman living in California, was leaked in which Her Majesty's envoy expressed his desire for Cleveland to win.
So appalled were Irish Americans in the swing state of New York at this intervention by their old enemy that they deserted Cleveland in droves and he lost New York and the White House.
Only later did it emerge that "Charles Murchison" was not an Englishman but a Republican, and that he had elicited the ambassador's indiscretion by deceit. Cleveland lost because of a dirty trick.
"The history of campaigns being rambunctious goes back to the start of the republic," said Bill Schneider, one of Washington's most experienced commentators. "There is a long history of this going back to Jefferson."
There is a key distinction between low blows and dirty tricks, he added, suggesting that to date the 2004 campaign has abounded in the former, but not the latter. "In US politics anything goes. But one thing that can backfire is dirty tricks - if they are found out," he said.
The Democrats appear to have no answer to the Drudge Report, which has been responsible for feeding a range of uncomplimentary stories, true and false, about Mr Kerry into the news cycle.
Walter Shapiro, the chief commentator for USA Today, who has covered campaigns since the mid-1970s, said the main difference between the two parties in 2004 was that the Republicans are more effective in their attacks.
"There is a glimmer of truth to the martyr approach of the Democrats because the Right-wing 'transfusion' media works so fast in spreading the message. But I am not overwhelmed by the morality difference between the parties. If there is a difference it is of aptitude rather than values."
The accusations in the first of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat ads have not been corroborated. But they have exposed and fed on a lingering public uncertainty about Mr Kerry.
"The ads were pretty underhand. The charges are uncorroborated," said Mr Schneider. "People broadly didn't believe the charges but they didn't know what to make of them." The Democrats are very capable of negative campaigning, he adds, but their ads are not hitting home.
If the current trend is anything to go by, it may need something even more explosive - and dirty - than a fake ambassador's letter if this incumbent is to go the way of Grover Cleveland.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
You could hardly find a more liberal biased article. Not a single mention of the slime the democrats are throwing around - AWOL, Bush is Hitler, Bush knew about 911, cocaine, etc.
They don't have a plan and they don't think strategically. Consequently they tried to use some forged documents and the big story now is not Kerry's proposed policies for the future, but can Dan Rather save his skin after getting caught red-handed perpetrating a fraud?
So long as Rather is still there this story will not die and Kerry will have to take a back seat.
No one should take it personally. It is just politics. Its how the game his played. When slinging mud make sure it is directed towards the opposition.
I have been trying to explain to my 10 & 13 year old that there Teachers are incorrect when they say the the US is a "Democracy". It's very hard to explain the "Tyranny of the Majority" and the Electoral System to them without squelching the fact that we are a free society. Democracy has been the watch-word of freedom lovers everywhere. the problem is, you have to take more than Democracy into account when you plan to govern the people (See Constitution).
Do the British and the rest of the world know that we are NOT trying to export "Democracy"? Why would we want "Democracy" to spread in an unstable, anti-christian, anti-everything-but-Islam society?
Pre-emptive strike to the possible furor over my statement -
No, I AM NOT ANTI-FREEDOM
BTW - Terrorists succesful hits since 9/11
Killed - 10,049
Wounded - 24,541
Source - http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
<< "... to the death knell of American democracy."
It's not a DEMOCRACY, it's a REPUBLIC (and it's not FREE). You didn't understand this in 1776 and you still don't understand it today! >>
There are a couple of British-born folks who understand America and that ours is a Republic and not a democracy.
John Derbyshire is one of them.
We call him a hyphenated American.
An AMERICAN-American.
#23: Well stated! Spot on.
correctamundo! It sucks using that word!
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