Evening star., 1960-05-29
By HOLMES ALEXANDER and
LUCIAN c. WARREN
Contributing Writers


Political campaigning since the
convenient date of 1900, when
partisanship reached national size,
has grown up with one foot on the
ladder of aspiration and one in
the gutter. The presidential
campaign of 1860 has extra sig
niflcance since it contains both
the aspirational and the mud
singing contains them in
the person of one man, Vice Presi-
dent Nixon.
THE first objective of our effort
and attention is Nixon" says
Democratic National Chairman
Paul Butler. He is our common
target" At the January %
gathering here of Democratic
chiefs nearly every speaker
zeroed in on Mr.. Nixon's record
and, to lesser extent, his char
acter. The Democratic charge
against Mr.. Nixon is that in every
campaign between 1946 and 1858
he has struck at the dignity and
honor Of his opposition.
This time Mr.. Nixon has ex-
pressed and demonstrated his in
tention of keeping his aim high.
He so demonstrated when he dis
avowed the SoftneSS on COM
munism charges levied against
Senator Kennedy by his New
Hampshire primary campaign
manager. Perhaps the Democratic
candidate will also keep his cam
paign in the clouds. But even
should the heads of the tickets
maintain lofty performances there
is no guarantee that their parti-
sans will not take the low road.
Through the years -Slinging
has come to be a part of the
American political game, and few
have escaped unspattered as they
headed towards the White House,
JuguIor Fighting
John Quincy Adams was de-
scribed by a contemporary as a
man with an instinct for the
jugular and the cartoid artery, as
unerring as that of any carnivo-
rous animal" Adams supporters
in the 1928 election reached for
Andrew Jackson's jugular by de-
nouncing the latter's duel fight
ing and accusing him of marrying
Mrs. Jackson before she had be-
come legally divorced. Jackson's
partisans had a return clutch on
Adams windpipe with allega-
tionS that as a diplomat Adams
had aided in the Russian Cars
seduction of an American girl, and
furthermore he had bought a bill
lard table for the White House
with public funds.
Sometimes the smears have
backf1red. When the opposition
suggested in 184O that William
Henry Harrison would prefer
drinking hard cider in a log cabin
to the presidency the Wings
marched Harrison to victory in
torchlight parades featuring log
cabins and coonskin caps. More
than century later the coonskin
cap was to figure in another un-
successful smear as Tennessee
Boss Crump denounced Estes Ke-
fauver as pet coon" with radi-
cal tendencies. Replying that the
only thing red about him was
the hair of his wife Senator Ke-
fauver gleefully donned a COON
skin cap, was elected to the Sem
ate and put crimp in Crump
from which the boss never recov-
cred.
Ridicule, effectively used, is one
OF the most potent weapons in the
politicians arsenal. Horace Gree
ley, derisively nicknamed "Old
White Hat" because of sloppy
dress, was so savagely ridiculed in
1872 that he complained he
hardly knew whether he was a
candidate for the presidency or
the penitentiary. Herbert Hoover
must have felt the same way in
1882 as both the depression and
Charley Nicholson closed in on
him. AS publicity director of the
Democratic National Committee
Nicholson was assigned the goal,
in the words of one columnist, to
picture President Hoover as an
inept, bewildered, weak and un-
worthy man."
The FoIo Incident
Franklin D. Roosevelt's most
famous use of the ridicule weapon
was the Fala dog incident. When
in 1914 the Republicans charged
that a destroyer had gone 1000
miles out of its way to pick up
the Roosevelt dog, Roosevelt had
the Nation chuckling with him by
his comment: The Republican
leaders have not been content
with attacks on me, or nv wife.