In Praise of Dirty Campaigning
Tell, David
In Praise of Dirty Campaigning These are heady days for the self-appointed disciplinarians of American politics. There’s so much for them to do, so many Republican and Democratic fannies to...
...But it won’t help America make up its mind about the correct size and reach of the federal government— or about what cultural norms we will strengthen or reject...
...It was unconstitutional legislation, and it is now, mercifully, dead, narrowly defeated by a filibuster threat...
...Like it or not, there really is no objective third-way path to truths and oughts in American politics...
...What does “truthfully” mean...
...Sabato and Simpson set the record straight: “Hoke had joined the Sikh religion two decades earlier while a student at Amherst College...
...And Republicans won’t be much help in that effort, either, it seems...
...Political parties are designed to reflect the disagreements of the people—and settle them, temporarily at least, on behalf of a persuaded majority sentiment...
...The real facts of the matter...
...They have no answers, and bristle when asked to provide them...
...The press boys are weary aristocrats of good-government refinement: They have heard all the policy arguments before, and they already know the right answers, having long since worked them out in neat little op-ed pieces and talking-head guest spots on CNN...
...And how to prevent such dastardly misdeeds...
...American government is structured to resolve questions of national policy in a battle conducted by major parties with opposed ideas...
...Last week, they pulled off two of them...
...But the Sikhs— a respected religious entity—are certainly not a ‘cult,’ even though male members wear a turban and grow their hair long...
...The system is incapable of change from within,” announced Russ Verney, national coordinator of Ross Perot’s new spoiler third party...
...The populists, for their part, do not pretend such sophistication...
...People disagree about such things...
...Both parties are now conditioned to accept such insults without objection...
...First came word that Mr...
...If loud, robust, partisan argument—about abortion, or affirmative action, or anything else—is “dirty campaigning,” we need more of it, not less...
...Abandon liberal orthodoxy...
...The president, we are meant to understand, is tough on immigrants...
...Reaction to the loss was swift and predictable...
...Clinton had suddenly discovered a gaping hole in the Constitution: It fails to guarantee crime victims the right to speak at the sentencing and parole hearings of their victimizers, an oversight by the Founders that the president proposes to correct by amendment...
...And the party’s titular leader, presidential nominee-in-waiting Bob Dole, appears similarly fixated by last year’s news...
...Get it done...
...Find the middle...
...But the callers may not disguise themselves as “reputable” hired-gun pollsters (no smirking, please...
...Twenty-four hours later was unveiled a nationally distributed television advertisement produced by the Democratic National Committee and organized around footage of a burglar’s hands prying open a backyard window—and dark-skinned people leaping over border fences and being arrested by the feds...
...Their party’s animating principle, liberalism, is broadly and deeply unpopular...
...Defending it is dangerous...
...But they are just as certain as the pundits that those answers exist, blocked from public view by the selfinterested cowardice and dishonesty of our elected officials...
...No such trick is too cheap or shameless to be employed...
...It works...
...They must clearly reveal the partisan motivation for the call...
...David Tell, for the Editors It’s a seductive impulse, this sense that modern politics would be better if less rambunctious...
...He doubts that vaguely partisan and independent middle America can be persuaded to conservatism...
...So he mutters about President Clinton’s thievery of the oldest and most popular Republican ideas—and neglects to come up with any new ones...
...The GOP’s most articulate and interesting ideological spokesman, Newt Gingrich, stung by the low poll standings he earned during the 1995 legislative session, has made himself almost completely invisible...
...Take one example that Sabato and Simpson apparently regard as horrifically beyond the pale: In a 1992 Ohio congressional race, the Democratic polling firm of Cooper & Secrest phoned voters in the district to tell them that Republican Martin Hoke “in the past was part of a religious cult where he wore a turban, a beard, and had an assumed name...
...In this essential respect, Ross Perot and the New York Times editorial page march in lockstep...
...Each, in fact, is almost eager to confess and repent its sins of debating excess...
...And the information in question may not be “false or misleading...
...But our party politicians never come when they are called to complete that assignment...
...Push polls are the crime du jour of dirty campaigning...
...The president and his party colleagues are for everything that’s nice and uncontroversial, and opposed to everything that isn’t...
...Political parties are designed to reflect that disagreement— and settle it, temporarily at least, on behalf of a persuaded majority sentiment...
...So they’ve packed its arguments in dry ice and locked them in storage...
...Find the middle...
...How, then, will the national agenda be advanced...
...Quite the contrary: Fearing its power, they rush to embrace its logic...
...And often, in a transitional era like this one, and on issues like last year’s Republican budget, the fight is an inelegant stalemate...
...As directed by President Clinton’s White House, current Democratic advocacy is an elaborate, image-protecting nothingness...
...they’re out running wild with their fellow gang members, extorting campaign contributions and getting into knife fights with the rival mob...
...Something called the American Association of Political Consultants, a bipartisan guild of campaign handlers, has now gone on record denouncing the practice of “push polling...
...Clinton enjoys a solid and steady 20-point lead in preference polls about the 1996 presidential election...
...They will argue about restricting the scope and form of their own arguments...
...But The honor of democratic discourse should be defended against it...
...Creation of an effective majority must await further national elections, in which the parties have at it some more—with even greater heat and directly before the voters—until one side outpersuades the other...
...It’s a seductive impulse, this sense that modern politics would be better if less rambunctious and smaller, its layers of partisan “dirt” removed...
...What will the two parties argue about...
...You’re still allowed to inform voters that Martin Hoke was a Sikh, in other words...
...According to the reform agenda proposed by Sabato and Simpson, and now adopted by the consultants’ association, campaigns may still phone voters with embarrassing information about their opponents...
...This year, once again, the Senate was cowed by critics of political “corruption” into taking up a campaignfinance “reform” measure that would have applied strict limits on the amount of money congressional candidates might use to run for office—to proclaim their views and engage their challengers...
...If only these children could be made to quiet down, clean up their act, and finish their chores...
...But the panjandrums of Big Media and the alienated swing voters of grassroots populism have lost patience with the never-ending, rigorous debate that democracy requires...
...Festering national problems demand commonsense, compromise solutions, you see...
...Truly awful,” harrumphed the New York Times...
...Cease the squabbling over partisan orthodoxy, they demand of “the system...
...And therein lies the central and ugliest problem with the entire goo-goo project to shame partisan political debate back into its paddock...
...Do the two parties defend themselves—and the honor of democratic discourse—against this fundamentally anti-political crusade for “reform...
...But you may only do so “truthfully...
...There’s so much for them to do, so many Republican and Democratic fannies to spank...
...Democrats have learned an obvious lesson from the mid-term election of 1994...
...They do not...
...As described by Larry Sabato and Glenn Simpson in their recent bible of political reform, Dirty Little Secrets, the technique involves phoning targeted voters late in a campaign, pretending to be conducting scientific survey research unconnected to the interests of a particular candidate, and quickly revealing misleading and derogatory information about that candidate’s opponent...
Vol. 1 • July 1996 • No. 42
