Even before the election, slander was being spread about Gore, too. I have a conservative neighbor who told me in all seriousness that Gore had diagnosable pathological lying disorder.
Yeah, us crazy liberals are just paranoid.
You think Bush wouldn’t have Roe v. Wade overturned if he could nominate even one SCOTUS judge to replace one of the liberal or middle-of-the road ones?
You don’t think only funding approved science is a mark of fundamentalism?
Interesting.
Another additive factor is the rise in “rights talk” as a factor in politics. You no longer just want to do X - you have a right to do it, and anyone who hesitates is trying to deprive you of your rights.
My perception is that the moralization of politics largely started during the civil rights struggle of the 60s, as you mention. In that case, people were fighting a genuine, definite evil. They then formed the habit of thinking of their opponents as not merely mistaken, but evil. A lot of that carries over to this day.
I am reading the FBI files on Malcolm X, and he habitually refers to the white man as “the devil”. (This is before his making the hadj to Mecca). And he got a lot of people to agree with him. Here it is forty years later, and we are still at it.
To be fair, you are correct in citing the increase in such rhetoric coming from the Moral Majority in the 80s. And you see it today in anti-abortion groups. Baby-killer == devil, for all intents and purposes.
Regards,
Shodan
Let’s not forget the role that 24 hr news stations play. It’s not much of news story if everyone gets along. The NYT Sunday Mag did an article on “Divided America” a few months back. Can’t remember the date, but the overall conclusion was that we are, if anything, less divided today than we were in the recent past.
Wow you really think Bush is more hated than Nixon? I think you should take a step back and get a little perspective. I don’t even feel that Kerry is hated, except for some Viet Nam vets. Those opposed to him just don’t want him elected.
I can remember elections back to 1960, and while the candidates may have been civil, their supporters certainly weren’t always.
In 1960 the fear was that Kennedy, a Catholic, would take his orders from the Pope.
In 1964, getting us into nuclear war was only one of the fears about Barry Goldwater. He was also accused of wanting to end Social Security and wanting to cut the east coast off the rest of the U.S.
In 1968, people thought Humphrey was a stooge of Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon was “Tricky Dick.” George Wallace basically ran a camapign of being angry about everyone.
In 1972, George McGovern was a Commie for opposing the Vietnam War. Nixon was a crook.
In 1976, Ford was a Watergate stooge and Carter was an ignorant hillbilly.
In 1980, Carter was an incompetent hillbilly and Regan was an incompetent old man.
In 1984, Reagan wasn’t incompetent, he was dangerous; while Mondale was a tax-happy liberal.
In 1988, Dukakis was soft on crime and incompetent, while Bush Sr. was a stooge of Reagan.
In 1992, Clinton was a lightweight, Bush was clueless and Perot was just crazy.
In 1996, Clinton was corrupt and Dole was nasty. Perot was still plain crazy.
In 2000, Bush Jr. was a stooge and Gore was all of Clinton’s liberal weaknesses with none of his political skills.
And don’t forget, people DESPISED Franklin Roosevelt.
Now, thanks to the Internet and cable, everybody who hates everybody has a much bigger platform from which to spew.
Glenn Reynolds has an interesting column on this in
The Guardian today. His thesis is that we have too much of a religeous mentality on both sides. Check it out.
kunilou nice summation. Lets not forget that Lincoln’s election started a civil war. I think things were a bit more decisive then.
What are you all complaining about? This is the nastiest, bitterest presidential election cycle since 1972 – and it’s also the most fun! The most exciting! The most (in the Chinese sense) interesting! 2000 was a boring election year! Wasn’t 2000 boring? Until they had to count the votes, that is. But all this high-energy backbiting and slander and machinations and demonstrations and all – this is fun! This is civic life at its lowest and highest combined!
H.L. Mencken once cynically remarked that democracy is the one truly amusing form of government humanity has devised. I say that’s one of the things that make it worthwhile! 
You want a bitter, polarized election? Try the presidential election of 1864.
The nation was in the middle of a civil war. The southern states had rebelled upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate in 1860, and many in the north still felt the war was all the fault of the Republicans, with their Abolitionist platform, for “provoking” the south to rebel. In the summer of 1864, things didn’t look rosy for the north. Early hopes that the rebellion would be quickly defeated had been squashed. Some territory had been retaken but the south still seemed as defiant as ever. The war had been appallingly bloody in terms of percentage of population, and the end still wasn’t in sight. A confederate army led by Jubal Early actually came close enough to Washington DC to provoke a panic. Lincoln was so pessimistic about his chances of reelection that at one point he contemplated a “contingency plan” of what to do to try to win the war in the few months he had left before a peace candidate won the election.
Lincoln’s administration was in trouble. He had spent his first term being derided as an incompetent by both parties. Democrats opposed virtually every measure the administration took to fight the war. The radical faction of his own party resented that he steered a moderate course instead of instituting the reforms they wanted. In 1864 Lincoln technically ran not as a Republican but under the Union party banner: a fusion of supporters he had in the Republican ranks, plus whatever support he could get from the faction of Democrats who favored continuing the war. Lincoln dumped his first term vice president Hannibal Hamlin and chose Andrew Johnson, a southern Democrat, as his running mate. The election became a referendem on the war, Lincoln’s administration, and the fate of slavery. A war where the Union soldiers would be voting, in effect, whether they were willing to keep fighting or not.
Despite Lincoln’s soft-peddling the issue, many felt that Lincoln and the fanatical Abolitionist Republicans were determined to use the war as a pretext to abolish slavery, de facto if not formally (which was what in fact happened). Even in the states of the north, there was tremendous opposition to freeing the slaves, much less accepting Negroes as political and social equals. As an example of just how vulgar the retoric became during the campaigning, the Democrats proclaimed that the Abolitionist’s “plan” for integrating the freed negroes into society included the forced breeding of white women with black men to form a intermediate caste of creoles.
The “Copperheads”, or the Democratic faction opposed to continuing the war, chose Joseph McClellan as their candidate. McClellan had been the leading general of the early war effort, and was as well liked as Lincoln was reviled. Popular with the troops and an extremely efficient organizer, the one thing McClellan had not been good at was defeating the rebels. McClellan had invariably presumed that rebel forces had his outnumbered two to one, even though the reverse was true. He counted his battles and campaigns as “victories” if they succeeded in repulsing a rebel attack; he persistantly failed to follow up with any sort of counter-attack against the retreating rebels, and insisted he had narrowly saved his armies from annihilation by the rebel forces! Finally removed from command by Lincoln, McClellan painted himself to anyone who would listen as a scapegoat for the administration’s blunders, and a martyr to political infighting. In 1864 he was the perfect antiwar candidate to front the Copperhead’s claims: that the war had been lost by political blundering, the South could not be defeated and the North would destroy itself if it kept trying.
Suffice to say, it was a contentious election.
Thanks for the examples…
Well at least I can safely say that this isn’t a “normal” election like I’ve seen it put. It might not be the nastiest in history… but its certainly isn’t par for the course/ regular. Smear tactics are certainly above acceptable in my view at least.