“We need better candidates. They’re all crooks and liars and womanizers and liars and crooks and drunks”
We need to vote those guys out!
Me: Who do you replace them with? It doesn't matter! They can't be any worse!
Me: No matter how bad things look, thay can always get worse.
Think about that. “We need better candidates.”
Where do we find them?
Now, ask yourself why any sane person would subject themself and their family to a political campaign. Think about the abuse all candidates receive. I’ve talked with quite a few former candidates and potential candidates who won’t run for office because of that.
This isn’t a new problem and it’s not about to go away anytime soon.
During the 1800 presidential election a supporter of Thomas Jefferson referred to his opponent, John Adams, as “that hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Adams gave as good as he got. In 1806 he described Alexander Hamilton as “the bastard brat of a Scottish peddler”. Another rumor was that Hamilton was George Washington’s illegitimate child. Jefferson was accused of numerous affairs, as was Benjamin Franklin. Both of the major current presidential candidates have been accused repeatedly of all sorts of sexual improprieties.
Andrew Jackson fought a duel with a man who accused his mother of being a prostitute for British soldiers. He fought another with a man who accused Jackson’s wife, Rachel, of bigamy. When Rachel Jackson died immediately before Jackson’s inauguration he blamed her accusers for her death. "May God Almighty forgive her murderers. I never can."
President James Buchanan was rumored to have had affairs with both the widow of a former president and with a sitting Alabama Congressman with whom he shared a room at a boardinghouse.
State politics is just as bad, with candidates, or more often a deniable surrogate, accusing opponents of every moral and ethical failing known to man. Even more common, it’s us-everyday people unrelated to any campaign who repeat rumors. The nastier ones always seem to get the most play in the cafes and barbershops.
The 1912 Mississippi Democratic primary for Senate saw armed confrontations and fist-fights between candidates LeRoy Percy and eventual winner J.K. Vardaman and their supporters. Percy’s son, author and decorated WWI veteran William Alexander Percy, wrote that he never attended one of his father’s campaign appearances without his hand on the butt of his pistol.
More recently one Mississippi governor was rumored to have had sexual encounters with male cross dressers.
The most recent round of Tate county elections was rough. A couple of candidates told me that they wouldn’t have run for office if they had known what people would say about them. I can only imagine what some of them went through. After I spoke out on a couple of issues I was told by strangers that I better watch my back and that I was going to need a body guard. Worse than that, I heard stories from families about adults purposely saying nasty things about candidates within knowing earshot of the candidate’s children.
That takes a special kind of low-down that I don’t have words for. Let’s all try to do better.
