Believe it or not, presidential elections have been dirtier before
Is This the Nastiest Election Ever?
By PETER MANSEAU, NYT
A month after pundits declared the current presidential contest the “meanest,” “nastiest,” “most poisonous,” and “dirtiest campaign in history,” those summer laments already seem like poignant reminders of a kinder, gentler time. Thanks to recent efforts to score political points on violence in Egypt and Libya, and charges of class warfare rising on both sides, this mean and nasty season has only gotten worse.
Yet as bad as this election may seem, it is hardly original in its biliousness. Its protagonists often appear to be reading from a borrowed script, delivering lackluster renditions of the truly inspired negative campaign tactics that have made American politics a blood sport from the start.
Concerned that the supposedly hands-off topic of a candidate’s faith has become too much a factor in 2012? Compared to the elections of 1796 and 1800, this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game. In the earliest of the nation’s two-party elections, the match-up of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave voters a choice, according to Adams supporters, between “God and a religious president, or Jefferson and no God!” The pious allegedly buried Bibles in their gardens, in fear that President Jefferson would gather holy books for the pyre upon inauguration.
(More here.)
By PETER MANSEAU, NYT
A month after pundits declared the current presidential contest the “meanest,” “nastiest,” “most poisonous,” and “dirtiest campaign in history,” those summer laments already seem like poignant reminders of a kinder, gentler time. Thanks to recent efforts to score political points on violence in Egypt and Libya, and charges of class warfare rising on both sides, this mean and nasty season has only gotten worse.
Yet as bad as this election may seem, it is hardly original in its biliousness. Its protagonists often appear to be reading from a borrowed script, delivering lackluster renditions of the truly inspired negative campaign tactics that have made American politics a blood sport from the start.
Concerned that the supposedly hands-off topic of a candidate’s faith has become too much a factor in 2012? Compared to the elections of 1796 and 1800, this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game. In the earliest of the nation’s two-party elections, the match-up of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave voters a choice, according to Adams supporters, between “God and a religious president, or Jefferson and no God!” The pious allegedly buried Bibles in their gardens, in fear that President Jefferson would gather holy books for the pyre upon inauguration.
(More here.)
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