Walter Mondale, losing badly to Ronald Reagan in October, 1984:
Walter F. Mondale challenged President Reagan late today to pledge his full commitment to Social Security and Medicare and said Mr. Reagan had failed to keep promises four years ago to continue the programs intact.
Meanwhile, what was Reagan doing while crusing to victory?
In their debate Sunday, the President chided his Democratic rival about a campaign commercial that Mr. Reagan said was filmed on the aircraft carrier Nimitz, which Mr. Mondale opposed while in the Senate.
Mr. Reagan said that if Mr. Mondale ''had had his way while the Nimitz was being planned, he would have been deep in the water out there, because there wouldn't have been any Nimitz to stand on.''
Mondale aides said today that the advertisement was filmed aboard the aircraft carrier Midway, commissioned in September 1945.
Obviously not a big incident, but pretty representative. Mondale wants to talk about Social Security, and Reagan is busy making up trivia that might be embarrassing to Mondale if it were true.
Michael Dukakis, late October 1988:
In an unusual 90-minute television interview, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis bitterly criticized his opponent's political tactics today and expressed confidence that his Presidential campaign message was finally getting through to American voters.
''Perhaps I responded too late'' to Vice President Bush's attacks, Mr. Dukakis told Ted Koppel of ABC News, who came to Denver for the interview. ''Perhaps I should have been out there attacking or counter-attacking from the beginning,'' he said.
''But I think it's clear they've run that kind of campaign deliberately,'' Mr. Dukakis said. ''They questioned my patriotism, they questioned my wife's patriotism, they questioned my health, and that kind of thing has made this a tough and difficult campaign.''
I picked these two, because they both went down to large defeats, and it was obvious they were losing by this portion of the campaign. Gore and Kerry didn't fit because neither was certain to lose in the weeks up to the election. What I'm looking at here is how the movements react to approaching doom.
As for Mondale and Dukakis, both seemed intent on running issue-based campaigns to the end. History hasn't been kind to either of them so far as electoral tactics and strategy, but neither man surrendered his dignity in the process of losing. I'm sure someone could dig up a below the belt shot taken by either toward the end, but in fairness that would not represent the substance of their late campaigns akin to what we are seeing from McCain.
Now let's see what happens when the conservative movement loses. Let's try October 1992:
The Bush campaign began broadcasting three new commercials in local markets yesterday; [...]
PRODUCER The November Company. TELEVISION SCRIPT Man No. 1: "If you're going to be President you have to be honest."
Man No. 2: "Bill Clinton hasn't been telling anything honestly to the American people."
Woman No. 1: "The man just tells people what they want to hear."
Man No. 2: "About dodging the draft."
Woman No. 2: "I think he's full of hot air."
Man No. 3: "I wouldn't trust him at all to be Commander in Chief."
Woman No. 3: "I think that there's a pattern, and I just don't trust Bill Clinton."
Woman No. 4: "I don't think he's honorable. I don't think he's trustworthy."
Man No. 4: "You can't have a President who says one thing and does another."
Woman No. 4: "Scares me. He worries me. You know, and he'll just go one way or another."
And some more:
The offensive followed the pattern set by the Bush campaign's earlier handling of Mr. Clinton's draft record: a common political tactic of gathering damaging information about an opponent and making it public initially through surrogates. This generates the news coverage the campaign is seeking, and it allows the candidate to say that he is merely responding to questions that are already in public discussion. (This would be "Cokie's Law" - Dan)
Mr. Bush, pressed by Republican lawmakers at a breakfast on Tuesday to be much tougher in his comments on the draft and related issues, signaled today that he intended to continue attacking Mr. Clinton over his antiwar activities. Republicans hope the issue will haunt Mr. Clinton at the first Presidential debate on Sunday night, just as the Clinton team hopes that by raising questions about Mr. Bush's Iraq policy and the Iran-contra scandal now, those issues will come up in the debate.
Mr. Bush might feel uncomfortable about raising Mr. Clinton's antiwar activities himself at the debate. But they are the sort of issue that Bush aides think might be raised by the panel of reporters that they insisted be included in two of the debates. "We're urgently trying to find out everything we can" about Mr. Clinton's past, a Bush aide said today.
Classy stuff from elder stateman HW Bush. Care to try again Herb?
President Bush used an unscheduled appearance on a live broadcast from the White House today to renew his attack on Gov. Bill Clinton's activities during the Vietnam War years and to raise questions about his ability to serve as President because of his antiwar activities.
Mr. Bush pressed his offensive in a moment of political theater played out on breakfast television. He strolled, as if casually, into the Blue Room of the White House as Katie Couric, the co-host of the NBC program "Today," was interviewing Barbara Bush about White House history and furnishings.
[...]
The President spent about half his time talking about the Vietnam years, trying to counter accusations that he was questioning Mr. Clinton's patriotism. And he offered a rebuttal to Mr. Clinton's effort at the debate Sunday night to turn the tables on Mr. Bush by accusing him of McCarthy-like tactics and reminding him that his father, Senator Prescott Bush, had stood against Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Continuing to Press Attack
Transparent stunt? Check. Character assaults based on decades old information? Check. Desperate and undignified? Yup. We can see almost literally the same pattern here: Republican candidate losing, comes under increasing pressure from the party to go increasingly negative and does so over more and more trivial character issues using a series of escalating campaign tactics that devolve into gross comedy clumsy stunts to get the media to talk about some silly foible of the Democratic candidate's past.
McCain is a bit worse than usual, but mostly because these tactics when applied to a black candidate bring out even more hatred from the conservative base than when applied to white dudes like Mondale or Clinton. Mondale and Dukakis got to fade from public consciousness because they lost, while Bill Clinton became target for a coup d'etat by lies. What will President Obama face?
As Nobel laureate (heh) Paul Krugman notes:
What it came down to was that a significant fraction of the American population, backed by a lot of money and political influence, simply does not consider government by liberals (even very moderate liberals) legitimate. Ronald Reagan was supposed to have settled that once and for all.
What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some violence.
They have no compunctions because they are not small-d democrats. They tolerated the 2006 loss because they were able to convince themselves it was just bad luck of Iraq going poorly and Foley-gate. They told themselves they lost for not being conservative enough. Now they are losing again. But again, they will fill their heads with tales of voter fraud, and nefarious schemes involving William Buffet, George Soros and the Kenyan government. They will talk of McCain's deviations from conservative dogma on mortgages and his past sins on campaign finance and immigration. For congress, the bailout and the Bush administration's willingness to nationalize will be the target.
And they will go far beyond shouting "traitor" to stop the terrorist consorting illegitimate secret muslim who was not born in the US from fulfilling his term in office. I only hope Obama is willing to welcome their hatred and make use of it. Bill Clinton mostly parried it, but the environment is now open for a vigorous rhetorical counter attack on the authoritarian right. We don't have to take their shit anymore. |
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