The vice presidential roadshow hits Colorado this week, and the rhetoric from the stump is getting sharper and the reaction from the crowds that turn out for the speeches and photo ops is getting more vocal and more negative.
Republican running mate Sarah Palin will make three stops in the state Monday, while Democrat Joe Biden arrives Tuesday for a two-day swing. They have been fulfilling the traditional role of attacker.
And most experts agree that with the allegations flying that try to link Barack Obama to terrorism, with others resurrecting John McCain’s ties to the Keating savings-and-loan scandal, and with supporters on both sides of the political divide shouting out during candidates’ speeches, this election is getting sharper and meaner.
The reasons vary. Some say it’s the high stakes that voters now are picking up on because of the economic turmoil. Others look to the war in Iraq and the candidates’ very different positions on bringing troops home. Still others argue that we’re simply not as civil a society as we used to be.
The bottom line is that the next two weeks will be ugly, with more negative ads and more sharp attacks.
Palin representative Tracey Schmitt said the tenor of politics really hasn’t shifted dramatically since 2004, when Schmitt was the Western states coordinator for the Bush-Cheney campaign.
“There’s an understanding on both sides that people’s right to protest is a right we have in America,” Schmitt said. But in an important race and with the country struggling through a recession, “clearly we are facing new challenges and clearly voters are anxious,” she added.
History of incivility
George Marcus, a political science professor at Williams College in Massachusetts who studies political psychology, said voter anxiety is rampant, especially on the Republican side as many experts predict a possible rout on Nov. 4.
“Anger arises as an emotional response to something punishing,” Marcus said. “What the Republican base is starting to come to grips with is that they’re going to lose, and anger is a response to something being taken away.”
Schmitt, though, said the anger isn’t that isolated. Protesters interrupted McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in September, and Schmitt said Palin has had to deal with negative and even nasty comments from protesters at her rallies.
Still, the rhetoric in 2008 isn’t hitting historic lows, said Ken Bickers, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Bickers said the 1828 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson was marked by personal innuendo since Jackson’s wife, Rachel, was not legally divorced when she and Jackson wed. And after the Civil War, candidates campaigned using the “bloody shirt” to make claims that their opponent was responsible for the loss of life during the war.
More recently, the 1948 election was marked by heavy infighting in the Democratic Party, with the more liberal wing ultimately being accused of being “Communist travelers” and the conservative wing, based largely in the South, being accused of being “unabashed racists,” Bickers said.
“In the long history of presidential elections, we’re nowhere near the bottom in terms of incivility,” Bickers said, though he added that in this year’s election, he’s seeing more negative rhetoric and anger than in the past 20 years.
“We’re going to have to start using an excavator to see how low it can go,” he added.
Why the nastiness?
Bickers attributes that to the weak economy and the war in Iraq and said the evidence for it can be seen in the low approval ratings for President Bush and Congress.
Tom Kise, the regional spokesman for the McCain campaign, said that one way the campaign will be trying to move the discussion before Nov. 4 is to remind people that Obama doesn’t understand the West and doesn’t care about rural voters or the issues that affect them — issues like gun control and clean coal — and that McCain would be better able to deal with the economy.
“This is the real world where Aaron Sorkin can’t write you a happy ending in 60 minutes,” Kise said.
Federico Peña, the Obama campaign co-chairman and a former Clinton Cabinet member, said the McCain campaign is slipping, which is why the final weeks are turning nasty.
“What happens when you near the finish line and you fall further behind, as Sen. McCain appears to be doing, you become a little more desperate and you resort to personal attacks,” Peña said. “This is the time for us to become more statesmanlike.”
