Mudslingers: The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time Countdown from No. 25 to No. 1

By Kerwin Swint

Book Overview

Americans have a love-hate relationship with negative campaigning, claiming to despise it and ranting about how it turns off the electorate, while at the same time paying an increasing amount of attention to negative ads and tactics during ever-lengthening campaign seasons. Swint gathers the most compelling of these campaigns from the two Golden Ages of negative campaigning--1864 to 1892 and 1988 to the present--in addition to some that fall outside those demarcations, and ranks them in descending order, from No. 25 to No. 1. Mudslingers covers presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and mayoral races and chronicles the dirtiest, most low-down campaign tactics of all time.

The list includes the presidential campaign of 1800, when the disputed outcome of the race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had to be decided by the House of Representatives, and the election of 2004, in which George W. Bush beat John Kerry after one of the nastiest showdowns on record. The first round of negative campaigning in American history was driven by post-Civil War politics, the end of Reconstruction, an increasingly corrupt federal government, and a rabid partisan press. The current Golden Age of mudslinging and dirty politics is driven by huge increases in campaign spending, television advertising, decreased civility in public life, and a muckraking mass media. These fascinating stories from the annals of negative campaigning will entertain as well as educate, reminding us, the next time we are tempted to decry the current climate, that it was (almost) ever thus.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275985105
• ISBN13: 9780275985103
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Good Gift

Brought it as a gift for my supervisor he is so into political history. Needless to say he looooved it!

Loved the book

I enjoy this book. It is brief but to the point about how negative politics is and has been throughout American history. I think people don't want to admit it but the negative campaigning politics is what we really remember in campaigns.

Good, fun read.

I enjoyed reading this book, which may provoke an argument or two. One may disagree with the ranking of some of these campaigns, but there are few which are omitted. He focuses only on the campaigns and not the actual elections, so the controversies of the 2000 election results and of 2004 aren't included. This book is an easy read, and it made me want to further research some of the lesser-known campaigns.

Fun analysis of nasty campaigns, but some of the chapters are a bit thin

When I saw Mudslingers reviewed by John Fund in the Wall Street Journal I was intrigued. I love politics, and for political junkies like myself nothing beats reading about a nasty campaign. I waited a little for the price tag to go down, but since it was never lowered, I broke down and bought it. I was pretty happy with the book. Mudslingers attempts to rank the top 25 most vicious American political campaigns. The book is a very interesting read, but a lot of its analysis is pretty thin and leaves something to be desired. Many of the campaigns the book looks at are pretty well known. These include presidential contests: Bush v. Kerry in 2004, Bush v. Dukakis, 1988, and Nixon v. McGovern in 1972. The author does a good job bringing up the salacious details from these campaigns like the Swift Boat and Willy Horton commercials. Reading about them is fun. But the best parts of the book are the campaigns that aren't known by most people either because they weren't national races or they occurred over 100 years ago. Two particular favorites of mine which I vividly remember despite only being a kid at the time are from New York: the brutal 1998 U.S. Senate race between Chuck Schumer and Al D'Amato and the 1989/1993 mayoral campaigns between David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani. While these races were a while ago, they were incredibly memorable. I almost forgot about D'Amato's famous putzhead insult, and I loved the discussion of D'Amato's hard nosed (and often shameless politicking) which including going to synagogues with his own yarmulke stitched with the name Alphonse. The two close races between Dinkins and Rudy were also classics, and the book does well exploring how much they divided the Big Apple, especially in the wake of the Crown Heights riots. Being a Jersey political guy, I also took a twinge of pride that several New Jersey races made the top 25 (how could the Garden State not be included in a discussion of negative campaigns?). The 1996 Torricelli-Zimmer battle was very bitter, though I was a bit disappointed the 1994 Lautenberg-Haytaian face-off was ignored as that race was legendary for its nastiness. There are some other gems like Harold Washington's groundbreaking run for Chicago mayor in 1983, the Edwin Edwards v. David Duke Louisiana governor's race, and the Robb-Ollie North Senate campaign. All of them are covered in pretty decent detail. Perhaps the best one was the 1990 Senate race between Senator Jesse Helms and Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt. If you don't know about the famous "Hands" commercial that cost Gantt the election, this book is a good read for you. That might be the most devastatingly effective commercial in a non-presidential race ever. Mudslingers is a good read, though perhaps not worth the $45 price tag. I don't think the chapters are big enough to warrant shelling out that much money. Still, if you love politics and campaigning the book is definitely worth checking out, even if the ana