{"id":60,"date":"2012-09-28T15:23:40","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T19:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/?p=60"},"modified":"2012-09-28T15:27:55","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T19:27:55","slug":"the-history-of-nasty-presidential-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/28\/the-history-of-nasty-presidential-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of … Nasty Presidential Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember this one from history class?\u00a0 It is the late 1700s and the secret monarchist President John Adams is scheming to arrange a marriage between one of his sons and one of King George III of England\u2019s daughters.\u00a0 His maniacal plan is only stopped by the great George Washington, who comes out of retirement to ride to the White House and end Adams\u2019 conniving at the point of a sword.<\/p>\n

You do not remember it?\u00a0 Well this tale did not actually occur.\u00a0 However, it was a feature of the brutal Election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.\u00a0 With the 2012 presidential election in full swing and accusations of campaign ugliness unparalleled in US history being thrown about, a look back at previous presidential elections helps to put things in perspective.<\/p>\n

The election of 1800, John Adams verses Thomas Jefferson, was a particularly unpleasant election.\u00a0 The formation of parties had only just occurred during the previous election and candidates still thought it was undignified to campaign.\u00a0 However, this did not prevent electioneering from going on behind the scenes which allowed for more outrageous charges since it was anonymous.\u00a0 Jefferson was labeled an atheist and Adams a monarchist.\u00a0 There was concern that Jefferson\u2019s perceived lack of faith would result in a move away from \u201cthe Christian system.\u201d\u00a0 From the other side there was concern that Adams \u201chad expressed himself in favor of an hereditary President of the United States.\u201d\u00a0 Whichever side you were on there was genuine concern that the results of the election would destroy the fledgling republic.\u00a0 Adams wrote that the result of \u201cboth the extreme parties which divide us, will be a dissolution of the union and civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The election of 1828, Andrew Jackson verses John Quincy Adams, featured accusations both true and false that made it one of the most sordid elections in US history.\u00a0 The false accusations included that General Jackson had ordered soldiers put to death over a simple misunderstanding about terms of enlistment, the accusation that President Adams had provided the czar of Russia female companionship, and the accusation that President Adams had bought \u2018gambling apparatus\u2019 (a billiards table) on the public dime.\u00a0 The true accusations included the revelation that Rachel Jackson cohabitated with Andrew Jackson while still married to her first husband and a rehashing of Jackson\u2019s dueling history and hot temper.\u00a0 Additionally, there was a nose pulling incident (considered a great insult at the time) by a Jackson supporter perpetrated on John Adams II, who worked for the president.\u00a0 The tumult continued at the inauguration when President Jackson opened up the White House to his supporters and they trashed the place.\u00a0 Stewards finally had to put drums of punch outside to get the throngs to leave the White House and then locked the doors behind them.<\/p>\n

During the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland verses James G. Blaine, Blaine was accused, most likely accurately, of taking railroad bribes while a Congressman.\u00a0 Cleveland was also accused, accurately, of fathering a child out of wedlock in 1874.\u00a0 He admitted it and still won the election.\u00a0 Republicans for Blaine taunted the Cleveland camp singing, \u201cMa ma, where\u2019s my pa?\u201d during the campaign.\u00a0 The victorious Cleveland supporters eventually started chanting back, \u201cGone to the White House, ha ha ha.!\u201d<\/p>\n

The election of 1912, William Howard Taft verses Woodrow Wilson verses Teddy Roosevelt, got very complicated.\u00a0 Roosevelt did not like the way his hand-picked successor governed and decided to run against him with the Progressive party (nicknamed the Bull Moose party because Roosevelt often said he was as \u201cstrong as a bull moose\u201d).\u00a0 This created a three way race and an avenue for the unlikely candidate, Wilson, to get to the White House.\u00a0 Other than the nastiness of former friends running against each other, the largest drama came when Roosevelt was shot in the chest during a speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by John Schrank, who was later found to be insane.\u00a0 Amazingly enough, Roosevelt finished the speech and then went to the hospital.\u00a0 The bullet had been slowed by a 50 page speech and Roosevelt\u2019s glasses case which were in his breast pocket.\u00a0 Roosevelt said of the incident, \u201cIt takes more than that to kill a bull moose!\u201d<\/p>\n

In the election of 1928, Alfred E. Smith verses Herbert Hoover, Smith was the first Roman Catholic to be nominated by a major political party.\u00a0 Flyers were sent out that declared if Smith were elected the United States would be ruled by the Pope in Rome.\u00a0 This tactic worked and was tried again, unsuccessfully, when John F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960.<\/p>\n

In the election of 1964, Lyndon Johnson verses Barry Goldwater, Johnson had a spy, who was possibly a CIA agent, working on the Goldwater campaign.\u00a0 This person would feed the Johnson campaign information about scheduling and send advance copies of speeches so the Johnson campaign could out maneuver Goldwater.\u00a0 The FBI was used, illegally, to perform security checks on members of Goldwater\u2019s staff.\u00a0 It is also alleged that President Johnson directed FBI head J. Edgar Hoover to bug the Goldwater campaign plane.<\/p>\n

In the election of 1972, Richard Nixon verses George McGovern, Nixon\u2019s campaign operatives famously broke into Democrat National Committee offices in the Watergate complex.\u00a0 They were trying to get information on the opposition and bug their phones.\u00a0 They were caught and while Nixon won the election in a landslide, the cover-up of the burglary eventually led to his resignation.<\/p>\n

So is 2012 the nastiest presidential election ever?\u00a0 I will let the reader be the judge.\u00a0 What do you think the ugliest presidential election in US history was?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember this one from history class?\u00a0 It is the late 1700s and the secret monarchist President John Adams is scheming to arrange a marriage between one of his sons and one of King George III of England\u2019s daughters.\u00a0 His maniacal … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[38,37],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-united-states","tag-dirty-tricks","tag-presidential-elections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p29EPY-Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}