Ben Stein Quotes
The minute you announce as a candidate, your opponents go on a deep sea fishing expedition for your sins.
Benjamin [Ben] J. Stein, Presidential Assistant (Republican), Commentator, Commentary, CBS Sunday Morning, July 9, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
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:
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.
He was one of the very few American politicians who could truthfully make that statement.
Many feel that this reality is one of the major factors that kept him from running for President despite the polls predicting that he could win. He was generally a very positive politicians.
35 years earlier Vice President Hubert Humphrey used the same phrase to describe Republican attacks.
This is one of the earliest documents articulating methods of campaigning in a democracy.
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.
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.
Benjamin Jeremy Stein is an American writer, lawyer, actor, comedian, and commentator on political and economic issues. He began his career as a speechwriter for U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford before entering the entertainment field as an actor, comedian, and game show host. He is best known on screen as the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as the host of Win Ben Stein's Money, and as Dr. Arthur Neuman in The Mask and Son of the Mask. Stein co-wrote and starred in the 2008 documentary Expelled, which portrays intelligent design creationism as if it were a scientifically valid alternative to Darwinian evolution and alleges a scientific conspiracy against those promoting intelligent design in laboratories and classrooms. Stein is the son of economist and writer Herbert Stein, who worked at the White House under President Nixon. As a character actor he is well known for his droning, monotonous delivery. In comedy, he is known for his deadpan delivery.
