Burt Manning Quotes
It’s attack advertising. It’s dirty tricks advertising. It’s dishonest and lowers the level of the political conversation.
Describing political advertising of the era:
Burt Manning, Chairman, American Association of Advertising Agencies, July 30, 1996
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
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.
In 1934 writer Upton Sinclair won the California Democratic gubernatorial nomination. The Republicans spent three times the funds that they had committed against Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election to defeat Sinclair. In particular, they used the first "media consultants" in American political campaigns to comb through all of Sinclair's novels finding dialogue of the villains which were then ascribed to Sinclair in a series of cartoons distributed throughout the state:
After a memo was circulated about House Speaker-elect Tom Foley that implied that the congressman was a homosexual:. at the Republican National Committee, source of the offending letter
A few weeks before his election his opponent accused him of sexually molesting a woman two decades earlier.
The text was actually written by John Kenneth Galbraith who was writing speeches for Stevenson.
He was one of the very few American politicians who could truthfully make that statement.
Calumnaire fortiter, et aliquid adhaerebit. See Pierre Beaumarchais for a later version of this political tactic.
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.
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. (for more details see {619613}) Sinclair lost, but it was close.
The kind of viscous, personal attacks on politicians that was so prevalent in America was also used in France where many politicians and their constituents were shocked.
Steinbeck had been approached by Democratic political operatives (not connected with JFK) to write a novel attacking Richard Nixon. See {629629}. “Swift” referred to Jonathan Swift, the great English Satirical Writer who was greatly admired but did not achieve any political objectives.
Msny critics agree with him observing that, with his rough and tumble campaign tactics, he made them that way.
