Daniel Inouye Quotes

Describing political advertising of the era:

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:

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.

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.

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.

The George W. Bush re-election campaign tactics were so polarizing that the two parties would not work together thereafter and little was accomplished at a time when the Bush administration had led the country into terrible problems. Ironically, what seemed like a brilliant re-election for a Republican Administration in retrospect caused an atmosphere where the voters ousted the Republican control margin in 2006, and by the election of 2008, Bush had the lowest approval rating of any President in history, and many historians felt he had become the worst President in American History.

In 2011 and 2012, there were several candidates vying for the Republican Nomination for the Presidency. The contest was close, and the candidates unleashed on each other the negative advertising and outrageously false accusations which they had previously only reserved to attack Democrats. They were so good at it, that they all drove up each others’ negatives—so much so that the potential Republican Candidate would be permanently scarred in the minds of the public. More mature and senior Republicans like McCain urged an end to the face to face confrontations of debates.

Romney and his surrogates had more than usual difficulty with getting their facts right. Fact checking organizations would call them on this and in April of 2012, Romney ran a TV ad that was grossly wrong and misleading. When asked about the expose of the falsehood of the ad, Newhouse made this classic response. The reason this is an important quotation is that the statement drew much more critical attention than the false had or its classification as untrue did. Even President Obama made fun of it in his campaign speeches. See Martin Amis {631017} for a serious critique of the meaning of the quotation.

The Grammar Curmudgeon

In this dirty technique some people who knew the candidate at one point in his/her life “organize” and “independent” organization with funding from a partisan individual or organization. They then create attack TV and web ads against the candidate that include serious untruths as well as misleading accuracies. When the candidate is asked about the lies and exaggerations, he/she refuses to comment and only says that he/she cannot be held responsible for anything that anyone says against his/her opponent or anyone else. The candidate adopts a policy of not commenting on any political ads other than the ones he/she is responsible. This produces viscious false attacks on an opponent with the candidate completely shielded from responsibility.

Taft was a jurist whose tendency was to respond to each point his opponent made and argue it logically and then to on to the next point much as in a formal debate. However, Bryan was a very dynamic speaker who was a populist and demagogue. Roosevelt who could debate logically or thunder like a demagogue was of the opinion that you should not let a demagogue control the agenda in a campaign. Trying to answer was futile. Instead attack the demagogue where he is weak and stay on the attack. This was hard for Taft to do as he was not the skilled speaker or politician that TR was. Taft won, but Roosevelt was actively campaigning for him and attacking Bryan. The notion of attack, as Theodore Roosevelt used it was NOT negative campaigning. Roosevelt did not attack Bryan personally or make ad hominum arguments. What he advocated was that when Bryan made a speech and criticized a policy that Taft supported, instead of answering him point by point, as one would do in a debating society (at which Taft excelled) attack some of the worst policies that Bryan was advocating or had advocated. Control the agenda so that Bryan would have to answer Taft’s criticism, not the other way around.

Msny critics agree with him observing that, with his rough and tumble campaign tactics, he made them that way.