ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603190028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
From the beginning of the two-party system in America, candidates have been reaching into the tar barrel for ammunition to fling at their opponents.
Here are examples from two centuries of American campaigning:
* Thomas Jefferson, 1800: If elected, ``murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced.'' Federalist campaigners.
* John Adams, 1800: ``Fool, hypocrite, criminal, tyrant.'' Republican campaigners.
* James Madison, 1808: The accusation: He would import the bloody French Revolution to American shores because he had been made a citizen of France. The reply: Madison had been made an honorary French citizen only, and so had George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.
* James Monroe, 1816: ``He is one of the most incompetent and improper that could be selected. Naturally dull and stupid ... Indecisive to a degree that would be incredible to one who did not know him. Aaron Burr, 1815.
* John Quincy Adams, 1828: Accused of striking a ``corrupt bargain'' with Henry Clay four years earlier to keep Andrew Jackson from the presidency. Jackson was accused of adultery for having lived with his wife before her divorce from another man was final.
* Martin Van Buren, 1840: Accused of wallowing in luxury in the White House.
* Henry Clay, 1844: Democrats publish a list of 21 reasons Clay should not be elected: Reason Two. ``Clay spends his days at the gambling table and his nights in a brothel.''
* Franklin Pierce, 1852: ``Hero of many a well-fought bottle.'' Whig campaign attack.
* James Buchanan, 1856: ``There is no such person running as James Buchanan. He is dead of lockjaw.'' Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, R-Pa.
* Abraham Lincoln, 1860. ``He ... is not known save as a slang-whanging stump speaker of which all parties are ashamed.'' Atlas and Argus, Albany New York. ``Unmitigated trash, interlarded with coarse and filthy jokes.'' New York Herald. ``He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege, which all politicians have, of being ugly.'' Houston Telegraph.
* Ulysses S. Grant, 1868: ``Grant the Drunkard.'' Democratic accusation.
* Samuel J. Tilden, Democratic candidate, 1876: Republican slogan: ``Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic bodies was given to you by a Democrat.''
* William Jennings Bryan, 1896: Republicans called him ``socialist, anarchist, communist, revolutionary, lunatic, madman, rabble-rouser, thief, traitor, murderer,'' The Democratic platform, said a Chicago clergyman, was ``made in Hell.'' Some bankers told farmers their mortgages would be foreclosed if they voted Democratic. Some employers told workers, ``If Bryan is elected, do not come back to work . The plant will be closed.''
* Al Smith, 1928: Opponents said that if Smith, a Catholic, were elected, the pope would move to Washington, Protestant marriages would be annulled. Campaign slogan: ``A Vote for Al Smith is a Vote for the Pope.''
* Franklin Roosevelt, 1932: President Herbert Hoover warned that if FDR were elected and his tariff proposals enacted, ``grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns; the weeds will overrun the fields of a million farms.'' Hoover also tried to link Roosevelt's New Deal with the policies of communist Russia: ``the same philosophy of government that has poisoned all Europe.''
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB