Pirro: No Negative Attacks on Hillary

When Jeanine Pirro announced her interest in running against Hillary Clinton, she reminded reporters who dismissed her chances: "I'm a fighter."

But already Pirro appears to be unilaterally disarming - by issuing a promise not to fight back against a vicious series of personal attacks by Mrs. Clinton's media surrogates.

"Republicans who want us to throw mud at [Hillary] will be disappointed," Pirro campaign manager Kieran Mahoney tells New York magazine, before stating flatly: "We won’t engage in negative attacks."

Asked to certify the no-negative-campaign pledge with a formal promise, the Pirro insider responded: "Jeanine already has."

Instead, Mahoney said, the thrust of his boss's campaign will be to complain that Mrs. Clinton is a "part-time" Senator with her eye on the White House.

What about critics who say that line's likely to wear thin sooner rather than later?

"Those people have never won a New York statewide election," Mahoney scoffed. "I’ve won many."

Pirro's "stay positive" pledge would seem to take a whole host of winning issues off the table.

* Hillary's role as first lady in appointing Jamie Gorelick to replace Webb Hubbell as her eyes and ears at the Justice Department - a particularly disastrous move given Gorelick's "Wall of Separation" directive, which critics say blocked the FBI from questioning lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta a year before the attacks.

* Mrs. Clinton's decision to criticize President Bush's handling of the Iraq war to the Arab press in a May 2004 interview that her office at first tried to deny. According to an account in a leading Iranian newspaper, Hillary blasted Bush Administration policies as "arrogant and insolent."

* A claim by media mogul and one-time former Clinton supporter Steven Brill that Hillary had her office provide false documentation showing that she had dozens of meetings with 9/11 victim families. "None of it turned out to be true," Brill said after checking with the families themselves.

* Hillary's continued reliance on Sandy Berger as a senior national security advisor, even after Berger pled guilty to stealing top secret 9/11 documents from the National Archives - and shredding some of them. In March, the New York Times reported that Berger helped Mrs. Clinton draft a speech she gave to a German security conference.

When Republicans do it, telling the truth about opponents is what the media regards as "negative campaigning."

The classic case of Republicans is Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Back then delegates to the national convention actually selected the candidate. It was very common for candidates to make deals with delegates for their votes. They would promise jobs or government contracts in return for delegate votes.

Lincoln, just before the convention members arrived, called in his entire staff and all the press he could get to attend.

Lincoln stood up and ordered every member of his staff to under no circumstances buy an delegate votes in his name.

The press left to print stories about how Lincoln was a reformer.. he was not going to buy any votes. Ah yes.. that wonderful Honest Abe...

As soon as the press left Lincoln's campaign manager came to him..asking "How do you expect me to get you the Republican nomination if I can't buy any delegate votes?" Lincoln said, "I didn't say for you not to buy votes.. I said not to buy them in my name."

The following is from the Washington times June 10,1996 issue.. It had a special Civil War section and had a story about the 1860 Republican convention held in Chicago, Ill.

Lincoln had been busy preparing for the convention as well. Using all his political skill, he had persuaded the Illinois delegation to vote for him in a bloc. To lead the floor fight, he selected David Davis, a trusted friend, and Norman Judd, who was due most of the credit for bringing the Republican convention to Chicago. Finally, he provided them with some tactical guidance and limitations of engagement, which included an admonishment to “make no deals that bind me,” and waited in Springfield for the results.

Lincoln used the terms.. "Make no deals in my name." which get translated in lots of national press reports to "make no deals that bind me." But the quote used in the Chicago Tribune was "Make no deals in my name."

Lincoln had David Davis make a ton of deals. And anyone who believes a campaign that printed phony tickets to get their people extra seats would not make deals believes that Monica never laid a mouth on Clinton. Lincoln's people made a lot of deals ...especially for Pennsylvania delegates. Lincoln had to have them and he bought them with promises of government jobs. Lincoln later complained about all the folks showing up at the White house demanding jobs. He didn't mention he had promised them jobs to get elected.

One other source for the story is the Chicago Tribune issues published the week of May 15 to May 22, 1860.

A third source is Harry Truman mentioned the story in his autobiography. Truman mentioned the story including Davis's question to Lincoln after the press conference. Truman used the Lincoln story to make points about how Roosevelt handled Truman's nomination to be V.P in 1944.

Also from the same article in the Washington Times quoted above...

Lincoln’s men left no detail unattended in their pursuit of this strategy. They made certain that Seward’s New Yorkers were seated far from other critical delegations with whom they might collaborate. They printed hundreds of counterfeit tickets and distributed them to Lincoln supporters with instructions to show up early--in order to displace Seward’s supporters.

They also assigned two men with noted stentorian voices to lead the cheering. One of these men reportedly had a larynx powerful enough to allow his shout to be heard across Lake Michigan.

For anyone who thinks the Lincoln campaign did these things without Lincoln's permission, I have some lovely ocean front property Arizona.

The “make no deals that bind me” instruction is well-known and it is considerably different than what you offered originally, that Lincoln said: "I didn't say for you not to buy votes.. I said not to buy them in my name."

The first version you gave has an air of venality, while the second indicates that Lincoln meant to permit precatory promises -- the sort of thing like telling Stanton or Seward how valued their efforts were, that Lincoln held them in high regard, and that he would surely give them prime consideration for cabinet positions or other appointments of the first rank, and so on.

Lincoln comes off better in this truer version of the episode than Eisenhower, for example, who, in return for the votes of the California delegation in 1952, is said to have foolishly agreed to appoint Earl Warren to the next Supreme Court seat that came open. Worse, Eishenower kept his promise to Warren, making him Chief Justice even though the top slot had not been expected to become open. Breaking improvident political promises is as important as trying not to make them in the first place.

Please don't take my comments as counting coup or the exchange as the equivalent of a history exam. Thanks for the follow up and bringing the matter into better focus for me, at least.

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