Quote (Skinned @ Aug 2 2012 05:12am)
Are you kidding? Thomas Jefferson paid newspaper reporters to smear the name of John Adams during the second presidential election and write articles against him.
The only president that wasn't subject to these sort of attacks was George Washington...and he surely would have if he had run for a third term.
People love blaming FDR for things but dirty commercial politics he is not guilty of creating.
No no no, I mean:
Prior to FDR politics was a gruesome affair in the U.S. Jefferson was one of those who spread outright lies about candidates. I think responses to Jefferson's campaign were that he was a drunken agnostic. Nevermind the Hamilton-Burr duel or the Sumner Cane Incident. A politician inflicting physical harm on another is unheard of today.
My reference to FDR being an asshat was sarcastic. But his politics were far different than anything else any candidate had ever done. Up until FDR, candidates were very direct with what they would do in office. Or they ran vicious negative campaign ads. FDR changed the way politicians think.
For example, he promised to audit the banks when elected. This didn't require any legislation and didn't actually impose any regulations. But what it did do is make FDR look like he had a plan. If the bank audits backfired, FDR could easily brush it off as no harm done. If it succeeded in restoring American economic confidence, he could ride it out.
Politicians do this all the time now. Look at the Obama campaign. "Change" is pretty vague, but it was low risk, high reward. Compare that to how direct Lincoln was with his campaign that the south threatened to succeed (and did) if he was elected.
In short, FDR invented modern American politics of not beating the opposing candidates' faces in with a rifle butt while calling them homosexual communist pedophiles.