Donaldson: A Presidential Race, Not a Garden Party

Jan. 24, 2008 — -- Kill Bill?

Pardon me for playing the role of skunk at the garden party intent on flaying the skin off Bill (and Hillary) Clinton for hitting Barack Obama below the belt on the campaign trail.

Have the Clintons, in fact, struck low? You bet!

But let us consider the circumstances and the likely result.

To begin with, this is no garden party the candidates are engaged in, it's a presidential race. And there is no more furious struggle in American life than the contest for the presidency. The timid need not apply. And to those who are outraged at the Clinton tactics and who believe those tactics must surely backfire, walk with me for a moment through recent history.

Gov. Mike Dukakis, well ahead in the polls in late August 1988, scoffed at the notion that he could be brought down by the misleading and downright dirty advertising that used convict Willie Horton and a revolving dark image of other convicts let loose from Massachusetts prisons by a heartless governor to rape, murder and commit crimes of further unspeakable nature. Dukakis believed the American people would not believe such distortions and would probably punish those who resorted to spreading them. Oh yeah?

Eight years ago, John McCain came roaring out of New Hampshire, having beaten Texas Gov. George W. Bush there by 28 points only to hit the "firewall" of South Carolina, where the smears on McCain by Bush operatives were so gross -- nay, evil -- with malice aforethought that you might have thought no one would believe them. ("McCain fathered an illegitimate black baby," was one of the smears.)

Disbelieved? Did the smears boomerang against the smearers? Ho, Ho, McCain's bid was stopped cold!

And only last cycle, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who may be fairly faulted for various sins of omission and commission, but who won his medals for bravery in Vietnam fair and square, was "Swift boated" into oblivion. Did the public protest such mistreatment? Not so you'd notice.