Politics and life in the world of American politics have always been for the strong of heart and stomach, not for the weak and faint of spirit.
Back to the early days of the Republic, negative campaigning, in one form or another, has been around. John Adams, the second president and a Federalist, was reviled by Democratic-Republican party members.
Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president, was hated by many people across the political spectrum of the day, in the much the way Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were in our own times. The Federalists, naturally, despised him; it was one of his own supporters, who lost out on a high-profile patronage job, who first leveled the charge Jefferson had children by one of his slaves.
And it’s continued down through the nation’s history. President Andrew Jackson and his wife were the victims of a vicious political attack by opponents who spread the rumors that Mrs. Jackson never legally divorced her first husband before marrying the future president. He blamed his enemies for her sudden death and never forgave them.
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Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the second-greatest president after George Washington, was trashed for his ungainly appearance, drawn in political cartoons as an ape and much, much worse.
So, in a sense, the negativity of political campaigning we see today is nothing new, but with the ubiquitiousness of the 24-hour news cycle, the Internet and our general information overload, we feel as though we’re swimming in mud more than ever before.
But just because it’s always been part of our political culture doesn’t mean the average citizen has to take it. Years ago, when asked why candidates for office often go negative in their campaigns, a political consultant replied simply, “Because it works.”
It doesn’t have to be that way. Citizens shouldn’t just cede their civic duty to political operatives who see politics as blood sport and elections as the gold ring to be won at all costs.
There is something known as the voting booth. And in the privacy of the voting booth, each and every American has the supreme power simply to say, “No more.”
That is a lesson that, if delivered firmly and solemnly, will never be forgotten.
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