Richard Norton Smith Quotes
Anyone who thinks that negative campaigning is a modern invention has never read the nineteenth century press
Richard Norton Smith, Historian, PBS The News Hour
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Msny critics agree with him observing that, with his rough and tumble campaign tactics, he made them that way.
35 years earlier Vice President Hubert Humphrey used the same phrase to describe Republican attacks.
Sinclair was a writer who had written about some of the worst scandals in American politics, leaned toward socialized democracy, and decided to run as a reform candidate in California where he lived. He won the Democratic primary easily even though he had no money, political experience, or backing. He terrified the Republicans who ran one of the dirtiest campaigns in American History to defeat him spending more money than in any election up to then including the Presidential elections. Rogers, who did not usually support individual politicians, made fun of them all, but he thought that Sinclair would be a good political leader. Sinclair lost, but it was close.
His older brother was running for Consul—the highest elected office of the Roman Empire. The Handbook, was his advice to his brother as to how to conduct his campaign.
Richard Norton Smith (born 1953) is an American historian and author specializing in U.S. presidents and other political figures. In the past, he worked as a freelance writer for The Washington Post, and worked with U.S. Senators Edward Brooke and Bob Dole.
