A History of Incivility

Via Dave Weigel (a blog that’s quickly becoming my favorite) here’s a video that puts this year’s negative campaign ads in perspective:

In fact, there’s a kernel of truth to this. Presidential campaigns have historically been rather brutal, particularly the election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson depicted in the video. Obviously there were no TV spots, but the negative sentiment was definitely there. The Federalists (Adams’s party) accused the Democratic Republicans (Jefferson’s party) of being radicals who threatened to destroy the country (sound familiar?). And the Democratic Republicans said the Federalists were eroding the values of the Republic, especially through the ostensibly anti-immigrant Alien and Sedition Acts.

Then there was the election of 1828 between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, where Jackson’s marriage became an issue and Adams was accused of giving an American servant girl to a Russian Czar. Adams was also accused of using what today we would call taxpayer money to buy gambling equipment (it was actually a pool table and chess set). Jackson’s colorful military record also came up.

Campaigns like this span American history. In the late 1800s, an attack on Grover Cleveland’s morals as they related to his illegitimate child generated a big scandal during campaign season.

So yes, political campaigns today aren’t perfectly civil but that’s nothing new.

–Daniel Strauss