American political campaigns have never been for the squeamish. With the sole exceptions of George Washington’s two uncontested elections, every presidential campaign has seen its share of vulgarity, skullduggery, and personal disparagement. Those who imagine that “going negative” is the invention of today’s polls and focus-groups haven’t read very much about the rhetorical character of the senior Adams-Jefferson battle of 1800, the younger Adams-Jackson contest of 1824, or the Blaine-Cleveland fight of 1884, not to mention the dubious goings-on in Illinois and Texas in 1960, or in Florida in 2000. American presidential politics is a contact sport and while we may wish it were not so—while we may wish that JFK and Barry Goldwater had set a new pattern by their plan, aborted by the Kennedy assassination, to rent a plane together and fly around the country, holding something akin to the Lincoln-Douglas debates—what we’ve experienced these past months is likely what we’ll have for the foreseeable future.
But just because electioneering increasingly resembles a reality show, voters are not absolved from treating the electoral franchise as something rather different than casting a vote on “American Idol.”
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