Hart, Ferraro: Today's Dirty Tactics Have Old Roots - a podcast by Laura Flanders

Former New York Times political correspondent Matt Bai is out with a new book about the decline of US campaigns and it’s a timely read in the cold post midterm winter.

Bai’s topic is the downfall of Gary Hart, the Democratic Party’s 1988 front-runner until reporters working on a tip, staked out his home and turned up what looked a whole lot like an extramarital affair. Bai describes the Hart campaign’s unraveling thereafter as a disaster not just for the candidate, but for US elections thenceforth: “The first in a seemingly endless parade of exaggerated scandals and public floggings” that he argues have driven good talent out of politics.

While the rest of the world was finished with the Hart story, Bai says he just couldn’t get it out of his head. Well here’s another, from four years earlier. If, as Bai writes, ’88 was the campaign in which, “politics went tabloid,” ’84 was arguably the year it became hazing, when the candidate was a woman.

While it’s barely recalled in media accounts now, in 1984, the GOP mixed misogyny with mendacity and dirty tricks to defeat Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. Mondale was centrist and dull and Ferraro certainly had her faults, but the first female vp’s opponents didn’t just stake out her house; they followed her every step, hurling abuse and misrepresented themselves as regular citizens.

A Catholic, Ferraro was pro-choice. People posing as regular voters, stalked her route and did their best to drown out her campaign speeches with their heckling. “VP for Death” and “baby killer” were favorite epithets. The language got more brutal from there. The GOP said they had nothing to do with the thugs, of course. An audiotape proved different. On it, pickets could be heard being trained by party operatives to say, “I’m a concerned citizen” instead of “I’m with Students for Reagan.”

Looking for the birth of today’s “dark money” tactics? You’d do well to look more closely at ’84.

Bai blames technology and the proliferation of satellite news for the downward spiral of elections, but what the old media lacked in speed they more than made up for in well-organized mob tactics. The scene at Ferraro rallies came back into my head, when I saw a very similar bunch of bullies shut down the vote-count in 2000 in Florida.

It’s worth noting today, as Democrats wrap up one humiliating election and rush horribly into another, where a woman may, just may be on the ballot. Watch out. If history teaches us anything it’s that the gutter tactics we tolerate being used on some today, have a habit of coming back to haunt everyone tomorrow.

For more from me, watch “The Laura Flanders Show” at GRITtv.org where you can see our exclusive report on the blowback from anti-Sex Trafficking legislation in Alaska. To tell me what you think, write to: Laura@GRITtv.org.

Further episodes of The F Word with Laura Flanders

Further podcasts by Laura Flanders

Website of Laura Flanders