Ripping
To get into politics you have to have skin like leather. It's interesting how we seem to point fingers at how slanderous and defamatory political campaigns are now, when, in fact, this phenomenon has been going on for centuries.
A flip side to a competitive spirit is that people tend to play dirty. Put millions of dollars at stake, and that ugly side shows up even more. Part of the problem is that slanderous and defamatory campaigns work. If it didn't work, campaigns wouldn't be spending so much money on it.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were two of the pioneers of political slandering in the United States.
Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a hideous unisexual character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.
In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.
As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.
The campaign slander and defamation of John Q. Adams vs. Andrew Jackson is legendary.
A good deal of mud was slung on both sides, much of it aimed at Jackson's marriage, his violent escapades, and the incidents of ferocious discipline and of disrespect for civilian authority that dotted his military career. Adams men painted him as a grasping and bloodthirsty character, a budding tyrant in the model of Caesar or Napoleon, whose election would spell the death of the republic. Jacksonians branded Adams as a corruptionist, an aristocrat, and, ridiculously, a libertine.
As you can see, political slander has been a great American pastime for quite a while and for a time to come.
Psychology Today
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