Presidential campaigns: 200 years of mudslinging

Americans have always cast votes partly on a candidate’s personality and looks.

By DINESH RAMDETION

ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Project President: Bad Hair & Botox on the Road to the White House” by Ben Shapiro (Thomas Nelson, $22.99)

With the presidential election still 10 months away, voters seem to be tiring of political posturing, endless debates and negative ads. It’s enough to make a voter nostalgic for the good ol’ days.

You know, the days when politicians put the country’s needs first, when informed voters favored substance over style, when campaigns were free of the endless mudslinging of recent generations.

The only problem is, those good ol’ days never existed.

In “Project President,” syndicated columnist Ben Shapiro demonstrates how voters have been swayed by superficiality since the birth of our nation.

“When we vote, we vote not for a platform, but for a person,” he writes. “And we judge our presidential candidates the same way we judge everyone else: based on the whole package.”

That package includes factors more suited for online dating than a presidential race. According to Shapiro, we prefer candidates who are tall, have good hair, have a cowboy streak and would be good drinking buddies.

No surprise there. But we tend to think of these preferences as products of the ultra-visual Television Age. Not so, Shapiro says — at one point or another, all presidential campaigns have waged personal attacks, on topics ranging from an opponent’s lack of warmth to his unsightly physical appearance.

Say it ain’t so, Ben. Surely Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected only because people cherished the way he held the country together during the Depression? Certainly Jefferson won only because of his tireless work as a founding father? And Honest Abe — doubtless he of all people was above such petty tactics?

Shapiro proves otherwise. He bases his arguments on plenty of engaging campaign anecdotes you won’t find in the average history textbook, such as Jefferson supporters mocking John Adams as mentally unstable and Lincoln delivering biting insults with wit and impeccable timing.

Despite Shapiro’s checklist, however, winning in politics is never a sure thing. There have been cases where the shorter candidate wins, where a bald man is elected, where advanced age trumps youth. Shapiro puts these exceptions into perspective with other factors that helped those winners overcome their perceived shortcomings.

Shapiro ends by analyzing the current crop of candidates, judging three Democrats and three Republicans on a series of factors that include height, personal warmth, military experience and spousal contributions.

Shapiro makes clear that there’s no magic formula for success, and candidates can emphasize other positives to overcome a lack of favored characteristics. He also defends the phenomenon of image influencing voters’ decisions.

But the biggest benefit of “Project President” may be that it reassures us. Yes, we voters may be shallow, but no more so than the centuries of voters before us. Maybe it’s time to stop blaming TV, and just accept that our political decisions have always been influenced by superficiality.