The McBournie Minute: This election is tame
Posted on August 25, 2008
Filed Under McBournie Minute, Scurry '08 | |
A lot of people say that politics are ugly today. They aren’t. They are actually way, way more civilized than they ever had been in any other point of American history and you can credit that to gun restrictions and television cameras. Without those, it would probably still be a free for all.
Sure, things may be heating up between the Obama and McCain campaigns. We certainly have seen some nasty ads from Sen. John McCain and some responding spoken criticisms from Sen. Barack Obama. But really it’s timid, compared to what it has been in the past. Yes, politics in America may be more civilized than they ever had been. Hit the jump for more.
Let’s take the 1960 Democratic National Convention as an example. This was back in the days when people knew there were cameras out there, but didn’t really think about them and soon forgot about them. That left the American public with front row seats to a circus show.
We all know how it ended, but did you know that the Democrats did not have a presumptive nominee at that point? It was between John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, mostly. The votes were close, so close that Eleanor Roosevelt proposed a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket. As supporters of both sides roared at each other, and possibly some back door dealings, Kennedy was chosen, and he chose Lyndon B. Johnson, an enemy, as his runningmate.
During a debate before the election of 1860, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas accused Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln of “skullduggery.” Yeah, that’s right. Harsh words from the Douglas camp. Lincoln also faced a lot of criticism for his stances on the South, slavery and the Union. But they also went after his looks. Lincoln faced mockery in the papers and in person of his looks, some even compared him to looking like an ape. This may have been inspiration for (SPOILER ALERT!) the final scene of the Planet of the Apes remake.
Let’s go even farther back, to the election of 1828. John Quincy Adams was up for re-election, and challenging him was the same man he narrowly defeated four years earlier, Andrew Jackson. The campaigns launched some of the dirtiest tactics ever seen. Jackson attacked Adams’ rich upbringing, while Adams attacked Jackson for being an uneducated orphan.
Jackson called Adams a pimp, who, while he had served as U.S. ambassador to Russia, had given an American virgin as a present to the czar. Adams shot back with charges that Jackson’s mother, who had died when he was a teen, was a common whore who was at least half black. Also fodder for attack (and true): Jackson’s wife Rachel was not yet divorced from her previous marriage when he married her. They did not know it at the time, but had to get re-married once the paperwork had gone through.
Jackson won the election in a landslide. Many felt Adams had stolen the election in 1824 and Jackson supporters came out to elect their candidate in 1828. When Rachel Jackson died suddenly in December 1828, her husband blamed the Adams camp, saying, “I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy.”
We don’t have it so bad today, do we?
Written by Bryan McBournieComments
2 Responses to “The McBournie Minute: This election is tame”
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Arrrrgh- I think we could use a little more skullduggery! I’m surprised you didn’t mention the 1968 Democratic convention!
Good food for thought when we think the candidates are not playing “nice”.
It truly does seem that everything is dirty in the politics of today. So its nice to get a history lesson and see what it was like back in the good old days. Guess we appear civilized now!