Gets shittier / a Plague on all their houses

The US state of New Hampshire holds the presidential campaign's first voter primary election, and Iowa holds a political caucus, a candidates' popularity poll. Both events attract a huge amount of media and voter attention, and are the first major hurdles that can greatly boost a candidate's fortunes or dash them. Before these events, both states become hubs of intense political activity -- television and radio advertising blitzes, multiple visits and big public events by candidates ...

And this kind of crap.

Look, if this is how the major candidates are going to run for president, why don't we all just sit out the entire campaign? Let the political professionals disgust everyone, piss on the whole democratic election process, bend the laws, break the laws, get indicted, get sent to prison -- but we can all set personal limits for how much of it we have to get involved in. A plague on all their houses.

For what little it's worth, this isn't really new in American politics, which have always been (to use a charitable term) rough and tumble.

A scandal-monger dogged and stalked Thomas Jefferson, spreading lies (and a few ugly truths) throughout Jefferson's political career.

As Abraham Lincoln's political star began to rise in Illinois, he secretly purchased a German-language newspaper with a large immigrant readership, and used it to plant anonymous personal attacks against his political rival (the typical accusation of fostering an illigitimate child). Years later Lincoln admitted to this episode and said it was the only moment of his political career he deeply regretted.

But American politics have always acted as a shit magnet, powerfully drawing the worst creeps and sociopaths in public life, and for the motives of political power and huge sums of money, the campaigns voyage through a Dark Zone completely devoid of Ethics, Morals, Decency, Truth, or Community. Along the way, federal and state election laws are regularly broken, the Rule of Law in a Democracy takes a holiday, and lying and fraud are elevated to high professional technologies. Any amount of damage, to the personal lives of innocent individuals, or to entire communities, is just the way the cookie crumbles. It's the American Way.

Because New Hampshire has election laws which seem specifically to forbid the kinds of telephone activities that have been occurring there as the hotly contested primary nears, the state's Attorney General appears to have already begun looking into these activities. If the laws are clear and Constitutional, some of these creeps and sociopaths may have already crossed the line which will land them in a state prison.

However, in general, the U.S. Supreme Court, both in liberal and conservative eras, has tended to protect many of the nastiest political campaign activities and immunize them from criminal strictures and punishments. Political elections are considered the nation's ultimate test of Free Speech, and court decisions suggest that legislative efforts to "sanitize" campaigns and force politicians and their creepy subordinates to "behave" violate the letter and spirit of free political speech.

Even the right to distribute negative political literature anonymously (during an Illinois race) has been declared a form of protected free political speech, which states cannot constitutionally forbid. You can wear a mask and use a false name; that's how we do things in politics.

A plague on all their houses. America is in the process of choosing the most powerful official on Planet Earth, whose decisions and leadership will effect the lives literally of billions of human beings and of all living things on Earth, and we seem obsessed and addicted to doing it in the filthiest, most immoral, unethical, fraudulent, and shallowest way imaginable.

For a year or more, love, romance, wooing, dating and consentual sex take a holiday, and we dive into a national celebration of date rape and gang rape. After the next president is inaugurated, one or two of the worst professional serial rapists might say he or she is sorry a little bit. (The guy who cooked up the Willie Horton ad eventually said he was sorry.)

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The Chicago Tribune (daily Illinois USA)
Friday 16 November 2007

New Hampshire investigates
anti-Romney calls

McCain joins rival in condemning "push poll"

by Jill Zuckman, Tribune national correspondent
jzuckman@tribune.com

CONCORD, New Hampshire -- The GOP presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and John McCain -- rocked in different ways by a highly negative "push poll" targeting Romney's Mormon faith -- demanded Friday that the New Hampshire attorney general investigate who is behind the tactic.

The attorney general's office said it was investigating the phone calls.

As part of the poll, which began Sunday, callers have been asking voters in Iowa and New Hampshire whether they know that Romney is a Mormon, that his five sons did not serve in the military and that Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible.

The callers also inquire if voters are aware that Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, accepted deferments to avoid military service in Vietnam while he was on a mission with other young Mormons in France.

At the beginning of the 20-minute survey, voters are asked whether they are aware of McCain's decorated military service [Navy combat pilot, later prisoner of war] during Vietnam. That has led many voters to assume the poll was sponsored by the Arizona senator's campaign. But McCain's campaign immediately denounced the effort and insisted it had nothing to do with it.

"Whoever did this wanted to hurt us by implication," said Mark Salter, a senior aide to McCain. "That's why we were very forceful."

Romney's supporters have long feared that a shadowy whispering campaign would arise at some point targeting his Mormon faith. The new push poll may be the most explicit anti-Mormon message to emerge in the campaign so far.

But Dean Spiliotes, a New Hampshire political analyst and founder of NHpoliticalcapital.com, said the attack may inadvertently help Romney.

"It certainly gives Romney a platform to speak about his religion, something that people have advised him to do," Spiliotes said. "It may also get him some sympathy from voters who don't like seeing religion mixed so intimately with politics."

Push polling, in which negative information is disseminated under the guise of a poll, is a well-known tactic, if a widely condemned one.

Former Rep. Chuck Douglas (R-N.H.), vice chairman of McCain's New Hampshire campaign, handed his complaint to Deputy New Hampshire Atty. Gen. Orville Brewster Fitch II on Friday, calling the phone calls "repugnant.

"We find the whole thing a very bad trend eight weeks before the primary," Douglas told Fitch.

Aides to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) also filed a complaint with the state's attorney general on behalf of the Romney campaign. Campaign officials said they are providing names of people who received the calls.

"Whichever campaign is engaging in this type of awful religious bigotry as a line of political attack, it is repulsive and to put it bluntly un-American," said Romney communications director Matt Rhoades. "There is no excuse for these attacks. Gov. Romney is campaigning as an optimist who wants to lead the nation. These attacks are just the opposite. They are ugly and divisive."

Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [proper name of the Mormon church] say the church embraces the truths accepted by other Christians, but also accepts "additional information" from later revelations.

Campaigning in Las Vegas, Romney called the poll "un-American." And he essentially blamed McCain, saying it was a direct result of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation, which he said has been "ineffective" in removing special-interest money from campaigns.

Aides to McCain pointed out that before the legislation was ever passed, McCain was a victim of push polling in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary.

"It is appalling, but not surprising, that Mitt Romney would seek to take advantage of this disturbing incident to launch yet another hypocritical attack," said Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's spokeswoman. "It's the hallmark of his campaign."

New Hampshire law requires all political ads -- including phone calls -- to identify the candidate behind the effort, or at least the candidate who is being supported. The push polling calls were made by Western Wats, based in Utah, and did not identify a candidate that the calls were intended to help or hurt.

Previous news reports have linked calls by Western Wats to the Tarrance Group, which works for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Ed Goeas, the head of the Tarrance Group, told the Associated Press that there is no connection between Giuliani and Western Wats.

Katie Levinson, Giuliani's communications director, said there is no room for push polls in the campaign.

"Our campaign does not support or engage in these types of tactics and it is our hope other campaigns will adhere to the same policy," she said.

McCain, who arrived in New Hampshire Friday for a three-day swing through the northern and western parts of the state, called the phone calls "cowardly.

"I call on all other candidates and their supporters to repudiate these attacks and join me in pledging not to engage in such despicable tactics throughout the balance of this campaign," McCain said.

During the 2000 presidential race, South Carolina voters received phone calls and pamphlets alleging that McCain's wife, Cindy, was a drug addict, and that McCain had an illegitimate black daughter. The whispering campaign also suggested that McCain was mentally unbalanced after spending 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi.

Following the South Carolina primary, which McCain lost, McCain's campaign made thousands of "Catholic voter alert" calls in Michigan informing voters that then-Gov. George W. Bush had appeared at Bob Jones University and describing Jones, the institution's leader, as someone with a history of anti-Catholic statements.

The phone calls infuriated Bush, who said he did not like being called a bigot. McCain won Michigan by 6 percentage points, but lost the Republican nomination.

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Copyright © 2007 Chicago Tribune