Going Negative

by Jeffrey Hart

The attempt to take the high road, stick to the “issues,” and avoid “negative campaigning” has produced some interesting episodes this year. For example, in one of their New Hampshire debates, Bill Bradley accused Al Gore of lying. Bradley said something like this: “When someone says something that isn't true, it can be out of ignorance. But you, Al, know what is true and what isn't, and you are telling untruths.”

Quite brilliantly, Gore turned this around and projected himself as a victim of Bradley's negative campaigning, more or less as: “Now, Bill, I have never accused you of lying, and I never will. I had hoped to keep our disagreements to a discussion of the issues,” etc. Gore had “caught” Bradley campaigning negatively. He entirely avoided the question of his own lying.

Of course, Gore had been lying like a rug, as when his Iowa campaign ran TV ads claiming that Bradley had opposed flood relief for Iowa farmers. In fact, Bradley had voted for it, while Gore, as vice president, had not cast a vote. Gore lied when he said that he had “always” been a supporter of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights; he had opposed abortion when he was a congressman, and he had scored high on the right-to-life index. Gore lied when he said that Bradley a) would abolish Medicaid and hurt “minorities,” and b) would substitute “vouchers” for $150 per month.

The fact is that Bradley would substitute for Medicaid a plan he thinks is better, and the $150 per month is a basic sum that could be raised depending upon which state you are talking about. And Gore lied when he denied advocating a “litmus test” on gay policy when making appointments to the Joint Chiefs.

But in debate Gore was able to turn the tables on the slow-thinking Bradley by accusing him of negative campaigning. (Bradley's verbal SAT score entering Princeton was 486. No wonder he loves affirmative action.)

Bradley's trouble is that his original charge about Gore's lying was made in wearied and regretful tones, as if he hated to point out the lying. It lacked edge, lacked specifics. It lacked understandable joy that accompanies catching a scoundrel. Bradley should have appointed a “Whopper Watch” as soon as he noticed Gore's habitual lying. He should have awarded Gore a prize for “Whopper of the Week.” Someone should have painted “Home of the Whopper” on the asphalt outside Gore's Nashville headquarters.

Of course, accusing a man of lying is certainly an attack on his character. But if he is lying, it is perfectly legitimate to point that out.

Negative campaigning isn't what it used to be. Abe Lincoln called the “Peace Democrats” copperheads—that is, poisonous snakes indigenous mainly to the South. Indeed, the Northern peace Democrats were dangerous.

Gen. George McClellan ran against Lincoln as a Peace Democrat in 1864, and he might have won if Sherman hadn't taken Atlanta.

For decades after the war, Republican candidates “waved the bloody shirt.” That is, they accused the Democrats of treason. And, until 1948, the South was “solid” for the Democratic Party.

Of course, some negative campaigning does go way over the line. In 1948, President Truman compared his opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, to Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. His crowds yelled “Give 'em hell, Harry,” taking this as his feistiness.

In 1968, when I was in New York writing speeches for the Nixon campaign, I was surprised to hear Hubert Humphrey say, “If England hadn't fought, Hitler would have been in London. And if you don't get to the polls, Nixon will be in the White House.”

Of course, some of us writers had our own parodies of Nixonian rhetoric, such as: “There are many who say that my opponent is an atomic spy. I myself do not believe that.”

Certainly Nixon could fight with brass knuckles. When he ran for the Senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas, one of his leaflets was called “The Pink Lady” and was colored pink. It listed her voting record. The color pink implied she was a pale version of the “red” communists. (A “pink lady” was a popular cocktail at the time.) Was this fair? Helen Gahagan, married to actor Melvin Douglas, was a Hollywood leftist and not conspicuous for her opposition to communism. Nixon's leaflet was fair only if you think there's something “soft” about the relationship of left liberals to communism. I judge the leaflet fair.

But, of course, Harry Truman had called the charges against Alger Hiss a “red herring,” and Dean Acheson, after Hiss was convicted, said, “I will never turn my back on Alger Hiss.” If he had said, “I won't kick a man when he's down,” he would have gotten away with it, but he didn't say that. (In fact, Acheson was a tough anti-Communist and he deserves credit for NATO and the Marshall Plan, but the Republicans were playing hardball.)

Still, Joe McCarthy went too far when he spoke of “20 years of treason” and was unfair, if roguishly funny, when, at the Republican convention, he referred to “Alger, I mean Adlai, Stevenson” and “Acheson's College of Communist Knowledge.”

Still remember Truman and “Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo” as applied to Dewey.

Those were the days.

But there is something strange about Gore's lies. They are immediately checkable against the record. The Whopper Watch people will have an embarrassment of riches. They will be like mosquitoes at a nudist colony, not knowing where to sting first.

When Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, the people at the Defense Department must have been surprised. It was invented by the Pentagon.

When Gore claimed that the young Harvard couple in Love Story was based on Tipper and him, its author Erich Segal emphatically denied it. When Gore said he had always been pro-choice on abortion, the record of his votes and speeches contradicts this. During his years in the House, he had an 84 percent positive record, according to the leading anti-abortion estimate.

One of my favorite Whoppers is Bill Clinton's claim in 1992 that, if elected, he would be the first farmer president. He was never a farmer. And what did he think Washington and Jefferson were? Urban planners?

These guys are truly fabulous, approaching mythic standing.