November 6, 2006
Campaign Tricks Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 11:45 AM EST Dirty tricks have been a staple of American political campaigns for as long as political campaigns have existed, and they come in several varieties.
There’s the “whisper campaign,” in which one party spreads damaging rumors about the opposition. This was the case in 1828, when President John Quincy Adams’s backers disseminated rumors (which were, in fact, accurate) that challenger Andrew Jackson had married his wife, Rachel, before she obtained a legal divorce from her first husband. Fast forward to 1884, when Republicans spread word that Democrat Grover Cleveland had fathered an “illegitimate child,” a rumor that may or may not have been true, but that worked to no greater effect than the smear campaign against Jackson. Both men were elected to the White House.
In its modern-day incarnation, the smear campaign is often conducted by “push poll,” a controversial practice in which paid phone bank operators conduct seemingly ordinary political surveys that feed prospective voters a menu of negative—and often inaccurate—information about their opponents. The purpose of the calls is primarily to disseminate negative information about a candidate, rather than collect statistical information about public opinion. Such was the case in the 2000 South Carolina primary, when someone paid for a push poll that asked Republican voters, “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” Conveniently, George W. Bush’s campaign left no fingerprints on the poll.
Then, there’s the garden-variety campaign prank, which Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign perfected to the level of high art in 1972. In the days when men could leave shoes outside their hotel rooms at night and collect them, polished, the next morning, Nixon’s staffers trailed Democrat Ed Muskie’s campaign, stealing the shoes of reporters who were covering the Democratic senator, thus interrupting press coverage of his campaign. The Nixon team also circulated false press releases under their opponents’ letterhead and ordered pizzas to rival campaign headquarters, cash on delivery. As sleazy as these tactics were, it’s hard not to laugh. They were, at least, funny. (Less amusing was a GOP operation against Muskie’s wife, making it appear, falsely, that she had used an ethnic slur against French Canadians. Defending his wife’s honor, Muskie teared up in front of television cameras and soon dropped out of the race.)
Then, of course, there are the truly egregious dirty tricks, like the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel complex.
Sure enough, the dirty tricks are in full evidence this year, and they seem to be of the third variety. As Josh Marshall has revealed on his popular news and blog site, www.talkingpointsmemo.com, The National Republican Campaign Committee has been sponsoring highly suspect “robo-calls” in several competitive districts. As Marshall explains: “Automated political campaign calls are a staple of modern politics. Both sides put in millions of them every election year. That’s because they’re very cheap, fairly effective and they get less scrutiny than ‘public’ ads on tv and radio. . . . What we’re talking about [here] is something a bit different. What we’re seeing is an apparent coordinated effort from the NRCC—the House GOP committee—to place calls that appear to be from the local Democratic candidate and then automatically call the same number back as many as seven or eight times each time the caller hang-ups. If the caller listens to the whole message it goes on to bash the Democratic candidate. But if the caller hangs up prematurely, the computer calls right back. Hang-ups are the achilles heal of robo-calls. So this seems to be an attempt to cover for that weakness by making those who hang up think the Democratic candidate is basically harassing them with phone calls. The GOP wins either way.”
The GOP is effectively harassing tens of thousands of swing voters, inundating them with five, six, or seven phone calls each, and leaving them under the impression that it’s the Democratic challengers who have placed these calls. In some states, this practice is explicitly banned, including New Hampshire, where the attorney general has ordered the NRCC to cease and desist.
Of course, the Republican congressman on whose behalf the NRCC is harassing New Hampshire voters, Charlie Bass, is shocked and appalled. “I’ve heard of them, but it has nothing to do with me or my campaign,” he told local reporters. “It’s an independent expenditure. I don’t like any independent expenditures, whether it be Democratic, Republican or anything else.”
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
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