Bad Numbers and Bad Vibes and a Bad Choice

Vanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money/
Watch him or he'll rob you blind...
-- John Fogerty, "Vanz Kant Danz"
(and I'm not the only one who thought of this song when JD Vance got picked for trump's Veep)

It's taken me awhile to write about donald trump's Vice Presidential selection of Senator JD Vance for his 2024 ticket, but in the few weeks that Vance has been on that ticket it's become hilariously - and horrifyingly - clear that picking Vance was a bad idea.

Given trump's previous history with his Veep - trying to bully Pence into throwing the election results in 2020 to the point of sending an insurrectionist mob at him - it was a bit sad to see other Republican figures audition themselves on Fox Not-News for the 2024 ticket, but there was nothing you could do dissuade them. DeSantis, Tim Scott, Doug (seriously, North Dakota?) Burgum, all of them made their daily talking head shows to argue their own submission to trump's will; but none of them pandered - attacking Ukraine, praising Russia, showcasing misogyny - like Vance did.

Thing is, when trump picked Vance - or had others pick him, depending on the story - he didn't do a good enough job of finding out if Vance would boost the ticket or not.

For all I've said about the need for Vice Presidents, as long as that office is part of the electoral process it matters that you choose wisely. A Presidential candidate choosing his/her campaign partner is signaling to voters what he/she values as skills for those who will work in their potential administration. If you're a domestic policy guru, tagging someone with foreign policy cred helps win over the voting base (definitely the punditry) that you'll balance out your agenda. If you're a Moderate from the Midwest, it helps to get a more die-hard candidate from another region (South, Pacific, Northeast) to appease the other party factions (and vice versa). And no matter what, you have to make sure the VP choice has their own charisma or credibility (just not too much to outshine the boss) to win over the mainstream media.

In short: Your Veep pick sets the tone.

What trump and his handlers found out real quick post-convention was that Vance - for all that he's known at the state and federal level of politics- is tone-deaf. And more unpopular than anyone - other than several polling services who were firing off emergency flares - realized.

Let's hear it from Nicholas Liu at Salon:

Senator JD Vance, R-Ohio, is making history as Donald Trump's 2024 running mate, but not in the way that the Trump campaign had hoped. According to a CNN survey taken after the Republican National Convention, Vance has an approval rating of -6 points, making him the first vice presidential nominee to enter the general election with a negative rating since 1980.

The average rating for a running mate after a party convention has been +19 points.

"Frankly, I don't really understand the pick, and apparently neither do the American voters," CNN data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday's OutFront with Erin Burnett. Vance, he said, is "dragging Trump down..."

With Trump struggling to appeal to moderate women, the former president may rue choosing a man who ran for Senate on a hardline anti-abortion stance, criticized childcare subsidies as "class war against normal people" and suggested that married women would be selfish for divorcing their abusive husbands, saying in 2021 that "one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace" was "making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear...”

Even Vance's purported appeal among white working-class voters appears overstated. He won Ohio in his 2022 Senate election by 6 points; by comparison, Trump won by 8 points in 2020 and Gov. Mike DeWine carried the state in 2022 by 25 points. Among white voters without a college degree, Vance, with a 31-point lead over Democrat Tim Ryan, also lagged behind Trump and DeWine, who won by 36 and 45 points respectively...

I've talked before about how at the state level, a candidate can overcome personal faults to win election all because the partisan nature of local elections make it too easy to win no matter what. Ohio could have run a dead dog for the Senate back in 2022, and that poor mutt could have beaten Tim Ryan by double digits. Vance arguably eked by at 6 percent.

And trump picked a guy with negative popularity at the national level, something that hadn't happened since 1980 (was that Bush the Elder?). For a campaign that's supposed to be tracking every favorable poll to feed trump's vanity, how did they mess that up?

Think back to some of the, ahem, more questionable Veep picks we've seen. 

Sarah Palin? She had a positive boost - and genuinely gave McCain and the GOP a healthy poll bounce - coming out of the convention before her appearances and interviews quickly exposed her as a near-illiterate self-absorbed fool before the November election. Joe Lieberman? In terms of polling and voter turnout, Lieberman mattered little to how Gore performed: However, Lieberman's more conservative stances turned off the more progressive Dem voters which hurt the eventual turnout (the same might be said for Hillary's VP pick Kaine). Dan Quayle? The jokes about him started flying the moment he was tabbed, but even then he brought enough positives to the table that his polling wasn't as bad as Vance.

In each of their cases, there were valid reasons at the time for their picks that did help balance the ticket - geographically, demographically, ideologically - even as those picks ended up hurting or negating the overall effort. The same can't be said for Vance: He mimics trump's ideology to a horrifying tee, and he doesn't appeal to the youth demographics of Millennials or Generation X. He only fulfills a geographic necessity by being from a Midwest (Rust Belt) state, and that will get negated by whomever Kamala picks as her running mate (especially if it's a Rust Belt figure like Walz, Beshear, or Shapiro).

Vance is standing on the national stage with little in the way of genuine charisma or likeability. One of the new breed of Culture War Republicans who attack often and impress rarely, he's demonstrated a shocking ability to alienate people in a heartbeat even among his own Far Right audiences. His anti-immigrant and "DEI" stances - and eagerness to attack a biracial opponent like Kamala Harris - are hard to reconcile with the fact Vance married an Indian (Asian) American woman (where Kamala is Jamaican-Indian (Asian) with a similar background). And Vance's views on women? "Misogynistic" is the nicest word you can say about that.

As Paige Oamek at the New Republic notes in her article title, "Everyone Hates JD":

Just when J.D. Vance thought his polling numbers couldn’t get worse, they have.

Vance’s net negative favorability rating was a major topic of discussion during a Tuesday night CNN roundtable. According to this week’s ABC News/IPSOS polling, Donald Trump’s running mate is polling at a staggeringly low minus 15 points.

It's like watching the rushing numbers by UMass' football team get worse every drive they play against Georgia's defense.

During the CNN segment, former South Carolina state Representative Bakari Sellers called Vance “the Sarah Palin of Dan Quayles.” But as Enten pointed out last week, both former vice presidential picks began with positive favorability ratings: Quayle with 15 points and Palin with 26 points.

“He is historically unpopular, even more so than V.P. nominees who of course went on to infamy,” Enten said of the Ohio Republican.

Vance also won’t be saved by his home state or by the Rust Belt, where last week he polled even worse at minus 16 points, according to a CNN/SSRS poll, with 44 percent of people saying they have an unfavorable view of the senator...

When I noted earlier how intraparty dynamics would give Vance a chance to survive in Ohio, now that he's a candidate on the national level that state-level partisanship won't be able to help him (this is what Scott Walker and Jeb Bush and Rick Perry and other milquetoast candidates found out long ago).

Vance is so unlikeable he's vulnerable to that most dreaded of political attacks, the Whisper Campaign. 

Someone off in the far corners of social media posted a joke rumor - completely unfounded and without direct evidence - that JD Vance wrote a scene in his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy - by the way the "memoir" turned out to be exaggeration at best and deplorable at worst - having sex with a couch. The joke spread quickly on Twitter to where the AP Newswire had to publish a report calling the story "false"... but then retracted that report because of the slight possibility that Vance could have engaged in that act anyway the editors claimed it wasn't vetted properly.

As Zachary Folk covered at the Daily Beast (paywalled):

The anonymous poster who started the viral—but false—rumor that Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance had sex with a couch said he came up with the smear while shopping at a grocery store. The viral post’s author, who only identified himself as “Rick,” gave his first interview to Business Insider on Tuesday, telling the publication the joke came from “a place of irreverence if not outright disrespect.” The viral tweet has since attracted the attention of late night hosts, Fox News talking heads, and even Vice President Harris’ campaign. Rick said he has since protected his account and changed his Twitter handle to avoid unwanted attention. He also said he did not intend to spread misinformation, but instead simply wanted mock the Republican candidate...

Since then, while the mainstream media tried to keep away from it everyone else went all-in on the "couchfucker" mockery. Why is this joke proving so harmful to Vance?

Because being this unlikeable already didn't provide Vance with enough popular support to laugh off or shrug away the insult. Just looking at Vance - his physical appearance is just on the wrong side of being creepy, his hateful demeanor that just advertises "messed-up psychology," the general vibe of being weird - makes it more believable to the general population that this is a guy who would do something tawdry with your living room sofa.

Any stand-up comedian - or wannabe who did the Open Mic nights in South Florida back in the 1990s, ahem - can tell you this: When the majority of people are laughing at you instead of with you, you're screwed.

Rumors are now swirling that trump has soured on Vance already (don't forget, trump is a Bad Boss who will kick you to the street curb once he thinks you're no longer useful) while other party leaders are discussing how to remove Vance from the ticket. Problem is, replacing a ticket partner at this stage of the election is dicey at best (and that's just the paperwork you need to refill). The last time a Vice Presidential candidate got replaced mid-campaign was Eagleton back in 1972, and all that did was confirm that McGovern's campaign was in utter chaos and led to one of the biggest Electoral College defeats in history (that fact gets diminished with how Nixon's campaign unleashed massive sabotage and trickery against the Democrats when the facts of Watergate went public). 

trump can't afford to dump Vance even at this early stage of the final leg of the 2024 election cycle. trump can't afford to keep Vance because the way things are going JD is going to make Sarah Palin look like Margaret Thatcher.

This needs to be a warning to the American voting public at large: trump has no idea how to pick competent people to work for him. The Republicans don't have any competent or quality candidates to choose from anymore. For the LOVE OF GOD, don't vote trump/Vance this 2024, or for any other Republican hack ready and willing to destroy everything America stands for.

And in the meantime, ScotchGard your ottomans!

Defining Unfit

For the eight regular readers of this blog, you might recall my alter ego is working as a reporter for the biggest newspaper in Metropolis librarian for a decent and well-loved city library in the heart of Florida.

I also work an online shift with Ask-A-Librarian, a chat service for people that well have to ask a librarian some serious questions. Some of them are reasonably easy but sometimes I get a deep-level research question that engages the mind.

Well, today I got a research question.

Someone wanted to know if - historically - the United States ever had a sitting President call a candidate for the office "unfit."

I had a pretty good idea who the question was in reference to - hi, Trump! - but was curious about what prompted the research request.

I had been busy all morning, so I missed the morning presser where Obama went off on Trump (this via NBCNews.com):

The president's remarks come amid Trump's ongoing feud with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a slain U.S. soldier who criticized Trump at the Democratic National Convention...

"The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn't appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, the Middle East, Asia means that he is woefully unprepared to do this job," Obama said.

I read about this as I began my research, trying to dig up previous election cycles where sitting Presidents spoke out against an opposing party candidate. I didn't have time to bring up a point to the library patron (this is how I was trained to call a library client/user) I was helping that we're actually in an unusual circumstance already: That rarely have we had a sitting President prevented from another re-election bid (due to the 22nd Amendment), and that it's been rare for that retiring President to actively campaign for his successor. This is true: Dubya was too unpopular to try it, Clinton was available but Gore was convinced to run on his own terms, Reagan did some work for Bush the Elder in 1988 but mostly stayed on the sidelines...

Can't count Carter or Ford. Nixon didn't survive a second term, neither did LBJ. Kennedy... well...

We get to Eisenhower, he was in a position to campaign for Nixon in 1960, but he infamously was quoted as saying "Give me a week, I might think of one (idea or discussion he and Nixon shared)." It didn't end well.

One thing I've been digging up has been an unwritten rule/tradition that a term-limited President (self-imposed before FDR and imposed after by the 22nd) just didn't campaign on behalf of one candidate or opposed to another. What Obama did today, what he's been doing from the DNC convention onward, is unheard of. If there's any excuse for this, it's that Obama is facing a situation no retiring President ever had before: an obstructionist opposition party willing to burn down every last shred of his administration's achievements.

As for calling an opposing candidate "unfit", specifically that term, the best I could find for my library patron was the 1964 campaign against Barry Goldwater, where LBJ was running for his own electoral win and Goldwater had won a divisive Republican nomination on an extreme Far Right platform. While Johnson himself never came out accusing Goldwater as "unfit" - in personal interviews he did question Goldwater's sanity - he used attack ads and third-party advocates to make the accusations for him. Including an underhanded attack that relied on polling psychiatrists for their professional opinions on Goldwater's behaviors and statements where enough of them declared him unfit. It was so unethical a mudslinging tactic that the American Psychiatric Association created a Goldwater Rule preventing their members from such armchair analyses.

It wasn't exactly what the patron wanted, and I really wasn't finding much research that could go back further into history covering any other kind of mudslinging attacks on character that were out there. Which is kind of odd because there's entire history books on Presidential campaigns that cover all kinds of mudslinging insults and slights since Gods help 1800. I did find one, a good book titled appropriately enough Presidential Campaigns by Paul Boller (see if your library owns a copy) and informed the patron of the book for future reference.

I finally had to tell the patron that what we're seeing is an oddity, a historical anomaly. That one big reason why Obama is able to call Trump unfit for the office of the Presidency is because we've never really had a candidate as inexperienced as Trump before.

Trump honestly has no history of public service: no elected office, no nominated office, never served as judge or administrator, no military service, nothing. We've had relatively inexperienced candidates before: We've had several generals - Harrison, Taylor, Winfield Scott, Grant, Eisenhower - but they had an understanding of organization and executive responsibilities. We've had men who served only as Cabinet officials (Hoover) or high-ranking bureaucrats (Arthur). And then again, they still had some experience. I didn't realize until today there was a Judge who ran once - Alton B. Parker - back during Teddy Roosevelt's era. Parker had a legal understanding of the Constitution, making him experienced.

There was - famously - Wendell Willkie, a businessman/lawyer with no elective or administrative experience who ended up the nominee in 1940 as a compromise candidate between Robert Taft and Thomas Dewey. In Willkie's defense, he was prominently active in politics with a strong understanding of public service (and as a lawyer had honest respect for the Constitution and the federal system). But even then, there's no evidence FDR went after Willkie for his inexperience, and Willkie ran a conventional campaign that did not point out clear character flaws that required Roosevelt to make that charge.

Obama attacking Trump as "unfit" is unique in our long proud history of negative political campaigning. We've had candidates accused of adultery and bigamy and sexual misdeeds. We've had candidates accused of graft and corruption. We've had candidates accused of warmongering, candidates accused of cowardice, candidates accused of failure. But we've never really had a candidate accused of being unfit to serve the office.

Because Trump really is that unfit to serve. Not only because he lacks the experience and because he clearly lacks the temperament: it's also because he lacks the purpose and honest intent to serve.

Well, that part I didn't tell the patron. I shouldn't politicize a research request: My job is to be as impartial as possible and focus on the information I could find. I merely pointed out Trump's lack of civil service and left it at that.

But even that alone disqualifies Trump to run for President. And Gods help us, this is why we ALL need to NOT vote for Trump.

When Courts Let Lying Prevail

Nothing good can come of it:

...If ever that could be said of a Supreme Court opinion, it would be Monday’s unanimous decision in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. The case seemed, at first glance, to concern the right to lie about politics. As properly decided by the Court, however, it only had to do with the abstruse doctrine of “standing to sue,” which requires a plaintiff challenging a law to show an “actual injury,” not just a political objection to the law.

The plaintiffs want to challenge an Ohio state law that bans “a false statement concerning the voting record of a candidate or public official” within a specified period before a primary or general election “knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” (Their petition counted at least 15 other states that have “false statement” laws.) Because there is no action pending against them now, a lower court held they had no standing.

The issue presented to the Court thus was narrow. That may be why the opinion was delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas has idiosyncratic views on free speech, and rarely gets to write a majority opinion on a First Amendment question. His opinion said only that a political group that might be penalized down the road for making “false” statements in future campaigns had standing to go forward now with a lawsuit...

The problem with this decision is subtle but important: while it looks like it gives PACs and candidates the right to fight back against governmental oversight with too broad and vague a reach, it lays the groundwork for elections to be filled with the worst sort of mudslinging and negative campaigning.  While we already have a huge problem with negative campaigning, there is at least a method in place to stop or limit such bad behavior through the threat of sanctions by state-level authorities.  This ruling can be the first step towards eliminating such authority down the road.

The Court doesn't seem to recognize - when you look at other recent rulings making it easier to lie to the public - the implications of lying in the public forum.  They're thinking about the specific harm against an accused or a victim of the lie, or the specific harm against the person or group making that lie.  They're not looking at the effect that lie has on everybody else.

Our voters, our citizenry, rely on being well-informed - informed to the facts, and with accuracy - in order to make decisions when voting for elected officials and voting for public referendums.  When they're being told falsehoods about a candidate - "Oh, that one eats babies!" - or a political issue - "Gay marriage causes hurricanes and earthquakes!" - it confuses the public dialog, making it more difficult for reasonable, common sense political fixes to get made.

We're still dealing with the massive fallout of one of the biggest falsehood campaigns our elected officials pulled: we're still coping with the lies Bush and Cheney and their administration spread across the nation's media outlets about Iraq being a backer of Bin Laden and with Saddam wielding an arsenal of WMDs.  More than 12 years later, we've got a radically divided Iraq on the verge of sectarian collapse because we got lied into an invasion and ill-planned occupation, and as the nation most responsible for the damage Iraq is in now, we're looked at paying the costs of trying to keep that war-torn nation afloat... even as the liars who got us into the mess are making more noise about what to do (bomb 'em some more, for the most part) about it.  All because those liars never got held accountable, because they kept selling their snake oil and their BS to the electorate still voting themselves or their allies back into office giving them political cover to lie some more.

This is the damage lying can cause in politics: lying distorts, lying ill-informs, lying kills.

We need stronger laws in place to stop candidates and campaigns from making false accusations and outright lies.  At some point, the facts have to matter.  The truth has to matter.

A level of anger that almost makes it too difficult to write

Almost.

In the past week and a half, since McCain made Palin his Veep choice, the general campaign for the Presidency 2008 has taken a huge turn for the worse.

I had railed before against the levels of mudslinging that contaminate the election process every four years, but now... for the love of God...

Obama went and called McCain's policies the same as George W. Bush's. His exact words were:

OBAMA: Let's just list this for a second. John McCain says he's about change, too. Except -- and so I guess his whole angle is, "Watch out, George Bush, except for economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics. We're really gonna shake things up in Washington." That's not change. That's just calling some -- the same thing, something different. But you know, you can -- you know, you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig.

Within seconds, the McCain campaign accused Obama of attacking Sarah Palin and calling her a pig. Accusing Obama of being sexist and rude to women. And the media, especially the GOP-friendly spinidiots, bought into the complaint hook line and sucker.

WTF?!?!?!

Obama's comments were about MCCAIN. About MCCAIN'S POLICIES being the same as the MOST UNPOPULAR PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. Re-read that paragraph. Palin's name doesn't even show, she's not even hinted at!!!

It's as though the McCain camp were waiting for Obama to say anything, use any questionable phrase - like 'lipstick on a pig' - to jump all over him and accuse HIM of being a mudslinger. 'Cause let's face it, there's nothing Republicans like more than playing the victim during an election year (on the non-election years, they like to play cowboy and burn everything down around them).

Even though 'lipstick on a pig' is a common political phrase. Ann Richards - a woman, Texan governor by the by - was the one who coined it and used it on a regular basis since the 1990s. MCCAIN HIMSELF USED IT TO DESCRIBE HILLARY CLINTON'S HEALTH CARE PROPOSALS EARLIER THIS YEAR!

What this is, what it needs to be seen as across the whole goddamn country by every voter (but which I know won't happen because there's too many goddamn GOP zombies out there who've already bought the sham), is that this is a contrived invented controversy that shouldn't even be a controversy. Because instead of looking at what Obama really said - that McCain is going to be another Dubya following the same failed policies - people are looking at the perceived slight to Palin's womanhood/motherhood that never happened.

The statement Obama made is not offensive, because he wasn't offending anyone, and he wasn't lying. The actions of McCain, and of his campaign, and of his media sycophants, are offensive, because they're trying to force voters to look away from the things that really matter.

We're losing our jobs. We're losing our homes. Banks are failing. Our military is stretched thin fighting two battlefronts, with troops frayed and veterans unable to get needed health care, emotional support, financial support, everything. And the Bush people are arguing for a THIRD battlefront with Iran. International allies aren't taking our phone calls. Health care costs keep skyrocketing. Schools are losing money, losing students. Gas prices are still too high, and we're not seeing ANY effort to develop effective alternative resources. And the Chinese hold our nation's credit card bills in their hands.

And we're sitting here on Day Three of the Pig Issue and it's not going away. Insert *mother of all facepalms* here.

I want honesty in our public discourse. I want liars punished. I want spin removed from our elections. I want accountability. I want a working functioning government able to maintain a solid working military, able to provide emergency support at all times to all citizens. I want our economic system well-regulated by honest brokers who will get rid of the cronyism and the greed, that would prevent the goddamn con artists from ruining our financial institutions with their quick-rich scams. I want Karl Rove on death row, the bastard. I want Grover Norquist to pay everyone's else taxes and come to the realization that it's not tax cuts we need it's fair taxation. I want my headache to go away, I want my soul back, I want this anger in my heart gone because I don't need it. No one needs this kind of anger in them, despite what the goddamn GOP blowhards think.

And I look at the poll numbers, at how 50 million Americans are still buying the GOP spin-bullshit. God help us.

What amendment could stop mudslinging?

I had started writing this before the November 2006 election, but had gotten distracted by RL issues. This is a continuation post-election, with concerns about how negative campaigning will affect the 2008 elections:

The closer we get to an Election Day, the more negative advertisements you get on your televisions. And your radios. And your telephones. If the campaigns had a way to broadcast directly into your heads, we'd be having psychic mudslinging 24/7.

Here's a set of examples from 2006:

• Incumbent Mike DeWine (R) running an ad claiming his opponent Sherrod Brown (D) hadn't paid unemployment taxes years ago... whichwas false (the tax lien was paid but the paperwork on it wasn't filed by the government until recently). Even after the facts were laid out, the GOP refused to back down from the claim.
• In Tennessee, well if I just say "Tennessee bimbo" you'll immediately recognize the infamous race-baiting ad that Republican Bob Corker had running that insinuated his African-American Democratic opponent Harold Ford had a thing for white women. (Sidenote: the SOB responsible for the ad, Terry Nelson, had been hired by John McCain to assist on McCain's 2008 Presidential bid. One more reason I no longer support McCain).
• In Connecticut, Joe Lieberman pulled out a cartoon bear that attacked his primary opponent Ned Lamont of association with Lieberman's ancient opponent Lowell Weicker, implying that Lamont will share Weicker's weaknesses (absenteeism, wacky voting record, stealing people's picnic baskets, etc.).
• Here's a site factcheck.org which has a list of some of the worst mudslinging across the nation, from both Republicans and Democrats.

And these are just the ones I can fit here. There's bad blood in nearly every state in nearly every election.

I'm not the only one complaining about this: here's a link to a Slate commentary on it. Pick your choice of newspaper and you're bound to find an editorial comment decrying the mudslinging and how worse it's become. Because, sad to say it, this sort of crap has been flung about ever since the parties came into existence here...

Let's go back to the first true open election, the one in 1796 when George Washington refused to serve a third term. For the love of all that's holy, we had mudslinging back then between the Federalists and the Republicans (they would evolve into Democrats waaaaaay later). And that was just the beginning of open partisan politics.

• The election in 1800 was worse than that. Sally Hemmings *is* the original scandal girl.
• Let's try 1824, with the mudslinging directed at Andrew Jackson, and specifically at his wife: her divorce hadn't been finalized when they married, so critics accused them of bigamy. She died during the election year, and Jackson believed those mudslingers had killed her.
  
• Try 1860 and 1864. Southerners burned Lincoln in effigy in 1860, which kinda made it tough for him to campaign in those states. Race-baiting Democrats for the 1864 election, in the midst of the Civil War, actually invented a new word miscegenation to accuse Republicans of wanting black men to marry white daughters.
• Try the greatest election scandal ever in 1884 when Grover Cleveland was running for the White House: "Ma! Ma! Where's my Pa?" Which the Republicans were using to hide the fact that their candidate Blaine was caught in business and financial scandals. Mark Twain famously noted that as Cleveland was honest in politics and Blaine honest in private life that Cleveland should be elected to public office and Blaine left to the private life.
• Try 1964. LBJ's campaign painting Goldwater as a nutcase. The infamous Daisy ad, implying Goldwater would call down a nuclear countdown, the crowning achievement of mudslinging advertisements.
• Try 1988. Willie Horton.
• Try the Clinton years. Oh ye Gods. The Republicans are still throwing mud at Slick Willy, and he's not even in office anymore.

And again, I could go on.

And the problem is, how in God's name can we stop this?

Mudslinging may be traditional but it's a horrible one: it forces voters to look at the negatives, and sometimes those negatives are fabricated or unrelated to the issues at hand. Why worry about failing schools and low wages and almost no job security when you could worry instead about the snuke in Hilary's crotch?

The problem is, for all intents, this gets up close to the First Amendment if not fully under its protective umbrella. The rules allowing for free speech, for the right to assemble, to petition grievances. You have the right to point out the flaws of others, and especially the right to point out the flaws of potential political leaders. But honestly, does that give the right to insult and defame, which is all we really get anymore?

One possible solution at hand is to point out that not all speech is protected: Speech that could could form a clear and present danger, for example, any speech that would incite violence or rioting - that's not protected speech. Calling out 'FIRE' in a crowded theater when there is no fire, almost certain to cause a stampede of doom, is certainly not protected speech. We should extend that a little further:

• Lying is not protected speech.

That should be a given anyway. Hell, aren't we getting hammered for the need to put the Ten Commandments into our courtrooms and classrooms and offices and all? Isn't there a Commandment against false witness? Gee, you'd think a lot of politicians would support an effort to make false witness/lying a crime in all circumstances, right...?

The judicial system has penalties in place for things like Obstruction, Perjury, and Lying to investigators. We need something like that in the public arena of the media and in official political statements. Libel and slander laws don't seem to cut it anymore. We need laws that say a politician, or a spokesperson, cannot make statements that can be proven false. If we do have a law like that on the books (and why does it look like we don't?), then it needs to be renewed, reinforced, re-established. With succifient penalties to back it up.

If you think that would force politicians into revealing state secrets, relax. They can always rely on a truthful statement like "I cannot comment on that." There. Truthful without having to say anything. Of course, if your spokesman has to keep saying "No Comment," you're going to have problems of some kind anyway so...

All I'm saying is: If we can penalize those in office who lie, or those running for office who lie, that should have the proper effect of reducing a lot of the mudslinging and negative campaigning out there. Less mudslinging = more positivie campaigns = more voters with a positive view of elections and commitment to civic duties.

UPDATE: Oh great this is originally showing the post-date of October 2006, when I first started writing it, rather than the date I finally got around to finishing it (April 12, 2007). Wonder if this updating will fix it...