Booth Tarkington Quotes
People will forget almost any slander except one that's been fought.
This quotation is the root of a great dilemma for all politicians who are attacked on a personal level. Most slanders are soon forgotten. The politician who reacts and publicly counters the slander inevitably does two things. More people become aware of the slanderous charges then there is a public battle over it, and the media tend to report the contest and hence the slanderous charge for a longer period of time than if it were uncontested. However sometimes the undefended charge is perceived as being true especially if it is a major charge. If the politician does not defend, the charge can get accepted and damage the politician’s standing. In the Kerry-Bush Prudential campaign, Kerry had the edge until the so-called Swiftboat Veterans made up a fictitious tale of Kerry, a decorated war hero, being a coward in the Vietnam war. Kerry thought the charge so preposterous that he didn’t bother to defend it. His lack of reaction was taken by much of the public as his admission of the charge. Kerry’s hero image was destroyed by a large enough proportion of the electorate that the electoral votes shifted to Bush, even though Kerry had the most votes by far. For each politician, the decision must be made for each charge and there is no clear way to know in advance which is the better strategy when a false charge is made.
Booth Tarkington, 1869–1946, Novelist and Dramatist, The Magnificent Ambersons
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Calumnaire fortiter, et aliquid adhaerebit. See Pierre Beaumarchais for a later version of this political tactic.
Comey was objecting to the firing of several Assistant Attorneys General whom he thought were victims of parisanship.
During the 1988 presidential campaign, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado was accused of womanizing. Reporters from The Miami Herald staked out Hart's Washington DC townhouse and determined that a young woman spent Friday night and Saturday with him while his wife was in Denver. Confronted with the story, Hart's campaign manager said:. Shortly after this statement was made, Hart withdrew from the race. The story was true.
Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead. In the 1910s and 1920s he was considered America's greatest living author. Several of his stories were adapted to film. During the first quarter of the 20th century, Tarkington, along with Meredith Nicholson, George Ade, and James Whitcomb Riley helped to create a Golden Age of literature in Indiana.
