Dirty Tricks
Who Played the First Dirty Tricks in American Presidential Politics? Click here to find out.
Experts Assert 2004 Presidential Campaign Especially Dirty
Vincent P. Bzdek, The Washington Post, 24 Oct. 2004
Political signs are stolen or vandalized every election cycle, but many campaign officials and political historians say this year is different.
"I think this [presidential] campaign ranks at, or near the top of, dirty campaigns post-World War II," said Allan J. Lichtman, a presidential scholar at American University.
Sign snatchings have been reported in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, as well as the home states of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry, according to police, newspaper and television reports. Theft also has been reported in Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Washington, Oregon and Ohio, Kentucky and Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri and Michigan.
In some battleground states, the thievery has been on a grand scale.
Nearly 500 Bush/Cheney yard signs were pilfered from neighborhoods in York, Pa., in late August and early September, Republican Party officials there said, including a 6-by-8-foot banner taken from the downtown Bush/Cheney headquarters.
About 350 Kerry/Edwards yard signs were stolen or vandalized in late August in a Republican region of Pensacola, Fla., known there as "Bush Country." Kerry supporters responded quickly by hanging more signs from high tree limbs, the Pensacola News Journal reported.
Presidential historian Richard Shenkman says the spontaneous outbreak of vandalism across the country is the inevitable venting of high temperatures in a rambunctious campaign -- temperatures that are coming to a full boil as the election nears.
"Any time you've got a divided country, that divisiveness just gets the blood going of these very competitive people who are in the business of getting their candidate elected, and then you tend to have more ugly politicking and smear campaigning."
Lichtman says he thinks the dirty campaigning is a result of polarized, dug-in parties more than a polarized country.
"The country was much more polarized during the '60s, or the Civil War for that matter, or during the run-up to World War II," Lichtman said. "What you've never seen in modern history are parties that are more polarized. . . . The parties are cleanly split and it's getting worse."
Shenkman and Lichtman say they think this campaign is uglier than recent campaigns because negative electioneering tactics and dirty political trickery spread across the country with much more velocity now through new types of media.
"We have a tradition of ugly politics in America," said Shenkman, author of "Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History." "But this campaign is much more intense because of the Internet, 24-hour cable news and talk radio. There are so many more ways to communicate smears. It's all smear all the time."
As Exhibits A through C, he cites:
* The flood of media coverage about documents questioning President Bush's National Guard service, documents that most experts say were probably faked.
* The widely reported but unsubstantiated attacks on Kerry's record in the Vietnam War by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
* Widely circulated e-mail warnings of a possible military draft if Bush is re-elected.
But can dirty campaign tactics and tricks make a difference in a presidential election?
"There's no question they are making a difference," Shenkman said. Kerry received no post-convention "bounce" in the polls because of the timing and effectiveness of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat ads and consequent media coverage, Shenkman said, even though none of the ad's claims about Kerry's actions has been corroborated.
"It is unprecedented for a candidate not to get a bounce after a political convention," he said.
Shenkman cites a presidential campaign in which a dirty campaign trick decided the election.
In 1888, when President Grover Cleveland was running for re-election, one of the most important ways for a candidate to win the Irish vote in the swing state of New York was to distance himself from Britain. Just a few weeks before the election, a letter surfaced that had been sent from the British ambassador in Washington to Charles Murchison, supposedly an Englishman living in California. In the letter, the ambassador endorsed Cleveland.
"That was the kiss of death," Shenkman said. Irish voters abandoned Cleveland in droves and he lost the White House.
After the election, it was revealed that the "Englishman" who wrote the ambassador asking his presidential preference was a California Republican. Cleveland had been undone by a dirty trick.
Stephen Hayes ... Those CBS Memos About Bush's Guard Service
Stephen Hayes, in the Weekly Standard (Sept. 20, 2004):
LAST WEDNESDAY, CBS News's 60 Minutes II aired a report that strongly challenged George W. Bush's service in the National Guard. It's a story that has been explored dozens of times in the past five years. Two things in the 60 Minutes II story made it fresh--or, in newsroom parlance, gave it a peg. Ben Barnes, who served as attorney general in Texas at the time of Bush's service, claimed that he had been pressured to help Bush avoid going to Vietnam. But there were problems with Barnes's story, not least that he had previously, and rather specifically, denied the account he gave on 60 MinutesII. (Republicans questioned Barnes's motive, too, pointing out that he is a lifelong Democrat who has raised significant money for John Kerry's presidential campaign.)
The second news peg was more important. 60 Minutes II had obtained "new documents" from the "personal files" of the late Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer. That the documents were unearthed some 32 years after the activities they describe must have greatly excited the CBS producers who worked on the story.
According to an Associated Press story, the Killian memos "say Mr. Bush ignored a direct order from a superior officer and lost his status as a Guard pilot because he failed to meet military performance standards and undergo a required physical exam."
If accurate, then, the memos would provide documentary evidence to support the long-circling rumors that Bush received preferential treatment to get out of serving in Vietnam.
But almost immediately, the authenticity of the typed memos was questioned. Although CBS claimed to have had them reviewed by document experts, numerous forensic document examiners interviewed last Thursday by THE WEEKLY STANDARD and several other media outlets concluded that the documents were likely forgeries.
"These sure look like forgeries," said William Flynn, a forensic document expert widely considered the nation's top analyst of computer-generated documents. Flynn looked at copies of the documents posted on the CBS News website. "I would say it looks very likely that these documents could not have existed" in the early 1970s, he says, when they were allegedly written.
Several other experts agreed. "They look mighty suspicious," said a veteran forensic document expert who asked not to be quoted by name. Richard Polt, a Xavier University philosophy professor who operates a website dedicated to the history of typewriters, said that while he is not an expert on typesetting, the documents "look like typical word-processed documents." He adds: "I'm a Kerry supporter myself, but I won't let that cloud my objective judgment: I'm 99 percent sure that these documents were not produced in the early 1970s."
Philip Bouffard, another document expert who plans to vote for Kerry, reviewed the documents at the request of Bill Ardolino, a weblogger who runs INDC Journal. Says Bouffard: "It is remotely possible there is some typewriter that has the capability to do all this . . . but it is more likely these documents were generated in the common Times New Roman font and printed out on a computer printer that did not exist at the time they were supposedly created."
Sandra Ramsey Lines, a document expert from Arizona, told the Associated Press: "I'm virtually certain these were computer-generated."
The experts pointed to numerous irregularities in the Killian memos that aroused their suspicions. First, the typographic spacing is proportional, as is routine with professional typesetting and computer typography, not monospace, as was common in typewriters in the 1970s. (In proportional type, thin letters like "i" and "l" are closer together than thick letters like "W" and "M". In monospace, all the letters are allotted the same space.)
Second, the font appears to be identical to the Times New Roman font that is the default typeface in Microsoft Word and other modern word-processing programs. According to Flynn, the font is not listed in the Haas Atlas--the definitive encyclopedia of typewriter type fonts.
Third, the apostrophes are curlicues of the sort produced by word processors on personal computers, not the straight vertical hashmarks typical of typewriters. Finally, in some references to Bush's unit--the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron--the "th" is a superscript in a smaller size than the other type. Again, this is typical (and often automatic) in modern word-processing programs.
There are also problems with the substance of the memos Killian allegedly authored. One of the memos, dated May 19, 1972, recounts a telephone conversation Killian is to have had with Bush. "I advised him of our investment in him and his commitment. I also told him I had to have written acceptance before he would be transferred, but think he's also talking to someone upstairs."
But as Byron York of National Review points out, Killian signed off on a "glowing report" about Bush on May 26, 1972, just one week later. Lt. Col. William D. Harris authored the memo praising Bush. "Lt. Bush is an exceptional fighter interceptor pilot and officer," it read. "He eagerly participates in scheduled unit activities." Killian signed below a statement indicating he agreed with Harris. "I concur with the comments and ratings of the reporting official."
Killian's son and widow also claim that Bush's commanding officer liked Bush and would have been unlikely to have authored the memos. "It just wouldn't happen," Gary Killian told the AP....
Nicholas Kristof: War Hero or Phony?
Nicholas Kristof, in the NYT (Sept. 18, 2004):
So is John Kerry a war hero or a medal-grabbing phony?
Each time that I've written about President Bush's dalliance with the National Guard, conservative readers have urged me to scrutinize the accusations against Mr. Kerry. After doing so over the last week, here's where I come out:
Did Mr. Kerry volunteer for dangerous duty? Not as much as his campaign would like you to believe. The Kerry Web site declares, "As he was graduating from Yale, John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam - because, as he later said, 'It was the right thing to do.' "
In fact, as Mr. Kerry was about to graduate from Yale, he was inquiring about getting an educational deferment to study in Europe. When that got nowhere, he volunteered for the Navy, which was much less likely to involve danger in Vietnam than other services. After a year on a ship in the ocean, Mr. Kerry volunteered for Swift boats, but at that time they were used only in Vietnam's coastal waters. A short time later, the Swift boats were assigned exceptionally dangerous duties up Vietnamese rivers. "When I signed up for the Swift boats, they had very little to do with the war,'' Mr. Kerry wrote in 1986, adding, "I didn't really want to get involved in the war."
Did Mr. Kerry get his first Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound? That's the accusation of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who say that the injury came (unintentionally) from a grenade that Mr. Kerry himself fired at Viet Cong. In fact, nobody knows where the shrapnel came from, and it's possible that the critics are right. It's not certain that the Viet Cong were returning fire. But the only other American on the boat in a position to see anything, Bill Zaldonis (who says he voted for Mr. Bush in 2000) told me, "He was hurt, and I don't think it was self-inflicted."
Did Mr. Kerry deserve his second and third Purple Hearts? There's not much dispute that the second was merited. As for the third one, the Swift Boat Veterans' claim that he received it for a minor injury he got while blowing up food supplies to keep them from the enemy. But documents and witness accounts show that he received a shrapnel wound when South Vietnamese troops blew up rice stores, and an injured arm in a mine explosion later that day.
Did Mr. Kerry deserve his Bronze Star? Yes. The Swift Boat Veterans claim that he was not facing enemy fire when he rescued a Green Beret, Jim Rassmann, but that is contradicted by those were there, like William Rood and Mr. Rassmann (a Republican). In fact, Mr. Rassmann recommended Mr. Kerry for a Silver Star.
Did Mr. Kerry deserve his Silver Star? Absolutely. He earned it for responding to two separate ambushes in a courageous and unorthodox way, by heading straight into the gunfire. Then he pursued one armed fighter into the jungle and shot him dead. According to Fred Short, a machine gunner who saw the event, the fighter was an adult (not the half-naked teenager cited by the Swift Boat Veterans) who was preparing to launch a grenade at the boat. "Kerry went into harm's way to save the lives of the guys on the boat," Mr. Short told me. "If he hadn't done that, I am absolutely positive I would not be here today." Mr. Kerry's commander said he had wanted to give him an even higher honor, the Navy Cross, but thought it would take too long to process.
Did Mr. Kerry exaggerate his exploits? Yes. For example, he has often said over the years that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia as part of the secret war there. Others who served with him confirm that on Christmas Eve 1968 (not Christmas Day) he got very close to the border, and possibly even strayed across it. But it doesn't seem to have been, as Mr. Kerry has suggested, a deliberate incursion into Cambodia.
What do those who served with him say? Some who served on other boats have called Mr. Kerry a hypochondriac self-promoter. But every enlisted man who was with Mr. Kerry on various boats when he won Purple Hearts and Silver and Bronze Stars says he deserved them. All praise his courage and back his candidacy. "I was there for two of the Purple Hearts and the Bronze and Silver Stars, and he earned every one of them," said Delbert Sandusky, in a typical comment. "He saved our lives."
The bottom line? Mr. Kerry has stretched the truth here and there, but earned his decorations. And the Swift Boat Veterans, contradicted by official records and virtually everyone who witnessed the incidents, are engaging in one of the ugliest smears in modern U.S. politics.
Dems Opposed to Nader Pack a Meeting
Michael Janofsky and Sarah Kershaw, in the NYT (July 1, 2004):
In his search for access to the ballot, Ralph Nader can sometimes seem as if he has never met a third party he did not like.
After all, Mr. Nader, the left-leaning consumer advocate, and Patrick J. Buchanan, the right-leaning commentator, hardly seem like political soul mates. But four years after Mr. Buchanan won the endorsement of the Reform Party, Mr. Nader has succeeded him as the party's standard-bearer.
His alignment with the Reform Party is but one example of how Mr. Nader is facing such daunting forces to get his name on statewide ballots this year that he is seeking support from groups that do not necessarily share his long-held liberal beliefs.
Mr. Nader's efforts have only intensified given that last weekend he was spurned by the Green Party, which endorsed him for president in 1996 and 2000.
He is also getting helping from other unexpected quarters. Democrats have sued to keep Mr. Nader off the ballot in Arizona and Illinois and may be planning a similar challenge in Texas, but Republicans and some conservative groups in Oregon, Arizona and Wisconsin are feverishly, if not cynically, mobilizing to get him on ballots in those states in a drive to siphon votes from the likely Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry....
In the interview, Mr. Nader said he had not seen any evidence that Republicans had acted inappropriately and instead accused Democrats of "dirty tricks" to keep him off ballots. He said that while representatives of an antitax group encouraged Republicans to attend a meeting last Saturday in Portland, Ore., to help him collect 1,000 signatures, he said Democrats were "infiltrating" the same meeting merely to block other supporters from getting in.
Mr. Nader said Democrats crowded into a meeting hall, kept other people out and gave the false impression that they had signed petitions for him.
Democratic officials did not dispute Mr. Nader's account.
"I felt it as my obligation due to the dirty tricks that the far right were doing to stack the seats at that convention," said Moses Ross, communications secretary for the Multnomah County Democratic Party. "I felt obliged to encourage our Democrats to do something about that."
Responding to charges that Democrats are intentionally blocking Mr. Nader's efforts through lawsuits and other means, Jano Cabrera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said: "We are aware that different state parties are challenging the validity of signatures Ralph Nader has gathered. While we support these efforts, we have not been asked to provide any resources or asked to participate by any state parties."
Smearing Richard Clarke
Paul Krugman, in the NYT (March 30, 2004):
Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."
So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government.
The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including "Bush at War," by Bob Woodward.
And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."
That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way it responds to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a campaign of character assassination.
Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard operating procedure" for this administration and cited "a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster," the Medicare actuary who revealed how the administration had deceived Congress about the cost of its prescription drug bill.
But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well."
Women Denies an Affair with Kerry
From the Associated Press (Feb. 17, 2004):
A woman who has been the subject of rumors linking her to Sen. John Kerry denied Monday that she ever had an affair with the Democratic presidential candidate.
Breaking her silence four days after the allegations surfaced on the Internet, Alexandra Polier issued a statement to The Associated Press, saying, ``I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false.''
Kerry already has denied reports that he had an extramarital affair. On Monday, his campaign said he would have no further comment.
Polier's statement was released to the AP in Nairobi, where the 27-year-old freelance journalist is visiting the parents of her fiance, Yaron Schwartzman, an Israeli who was raised in Kenya. She previously worked as an editorial assistant for the AP in New York.
``Whoever is spreading these rumors and allegations does not know me,'' Polier said, appealing to the media to respect her privacy and the privacy of her fiance and his family.
Polier also took issue with reports that referred to her as a former Kerry intern.
``I never interned or worked for John Kerry,'' she told AP over the phone.
In a separate statement, Polier's parents, Terry and Donna Polier of Malvern, Pa., dismissed the ``completely false and unsubstantiated'' allegations about their daughter.
``We love and support her 100 percent and these unfounded rumors are hurtful to our entire family,'' the statement said. ``We appreciate the way Senator Kerry has handled the situation, and intend on voting for him for president of the United States.''
The statement did not address purported quotes by Polier's parents in the British tabloid The Sun that were harshly critical of Kerry. But in a later statement e-mailed to the AP in New York, Terry Polier said he was misquoted by the Sun and that his wife never talked to the Sun reporter. Contacted early Tuesday, the Sun had no immediate comment.
The Campaign Gets Dirtier: Did Kerry Have an Affair?
Paul Reynolds, in the BBC (Feb. 16, 2004):
The 2004 American presidential election is shaping up to be a rough one by recent standards with questions already rife about President Bush's National Guard service and Senator John Kerry's private life.
But in historical terms, this is quite mild stuff and there is a moderating influence these days in that the heavyweight US media are reluctant to get involved in what they see as private issues.
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post, for example, have written about whether President Bush actually carried out his duties as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in 1973.
That has public importance given that trust and national security issues are major campaign themes. John Kerry's record as Senator and the support he has or has not received from lobby groups are also obviously fair game.
But neither paper has covered the John Kerry story which has engaged the attention of websites, radio and TV talk shows, some of the tabloid papers and elements of the foreign press.
The Kerry story
The story is about whether Senator Kerry had a recent affair with a young woman intern. (Interns are young people, often students, who take short-term, unpaid jobs in political and other offices in order to get experience. Monica Lewinsky, of course, was one.)
The question, it appears, was first raised by aides in the campaign of retired General Wesley Clark, who himself was quoted as saying that Kerry's campaign might "implode". It has not so far and Clark has even endorsed Kerry himself.
Senator Kerry himself said initially: "There is nothing to report" and then when that was challenged as a Clinton style non-denial, he stated clearly enough: "I just deny it categorically. It's untrue."
His supporters hope that this is an end to it. His opponents perhaps hope that he will be caught out. Lying in these cases is usually far worse than the original offence.
Mainstream media defence
The Washington Post London correspondent Glenn Frankel, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former editor of the Post's Sunday magazine, defended his newspaper's editorial judgment.
"We've been down this road many, many times before. We are extremely reluctant to follow this kind of thing up unless there is a really, really compelling public interest. We don't feel there is any reason to until it reaches a threshold.
"All we have at the moment is that the woman's parents, who are republicans, don't like Senator Kerry.
"In any case, nobody would be too shocked if Kerry lied about an affair. Even if someone came to us with photographs we still wouldn't run it. Lying to Don Imus [the radio host to whom Kerry gave his initial denial] is not a federal offence."
The early jousting holds the promise of a campaign with few holds barred. It is a delicate game because it can backfire and allegations are often floated through the undergrowth of the internet to see how far they get. Both campaigns muster big teams to counter whatever might emerge.
The Fake Photo of John Kerry and Jane Fonda
According to an article in the NYT on Feb. 14, 2004 and the website Snopes.com , in early February enemies of John Kerry circulated a picture on the Internet showing Kerry and Jane Fonda sharing the same stage at an anti-war rally. According to Snopes:
The picture was created by merging two different photographs (both available through the Corbis archives) taken at two completely different times and places. The picture of John Kerry was captured by 20-year-old photographer Ken Light and documented Kerry preparing to give a speech at the Register for Peace Rally held in Mineola, New York, on 13 June 1971. The picture of Jane Fonda was snapped by Owen Franken over a year later while the actress was speaking at a political rally in Miami Beach, Florida, site of the Republican National Convention, in August 1972 .
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