The Decline and the Fall of Political Putdowns

By Martin H. Levinson

What’s up with the second-rate political insults that are being bandied about in the 21st century? Branding your political opponents as Crooked this or Sleepy that, and saying the opposition is low-IQ and deplorable is beyond lame. It’s stupid. Our pols can do better than that.

Indeed, American politicians have done better in slinging mud creatively and with panache. The following are some notable examples:

In his pamphlet The Prospect Before Us, James Callender, a man Thomas Jefferson secretly funded to go after his political enemies, wrote that John Adams was a “hideous hermaphrodite character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Not to be outdone,  an Adams proxy said if Jefferson won the election, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”

Andrew Jackson, reflecting on his presidency, declared, “I have only two regrets, that I have not shot Henry Clay, or hung John C. Calhoun.” Historians often point out the deliberate wording of the insult: In Jackson’s mind, you settled scores with an equal (like Clay) but you executed a traitor (like Calhoun) on the gallows.

Abraham Lincoln, whose formal schooling added up to less than a year, mocked his opponent’s legal arguments during the Lincoln-Douglas debates by comparing them to “homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.” Not bad for a grade-school dropout.

Frustrated by William McKinley’s hesitation to enter the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt famously remarked that McKinley had “the backbone of a chocolate éclair.” The line went viral (by 1898 standards). The public loved it. Political cartoonists did too. Hard to know how McKinley felt because, true to his prized Christian patience, he largely ignored it.

Moving into the 20th century, in 1952, Adlai Stevenson beautifully skewered Nixon’s opportunistic politics: “Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree and then mount the stump to make a speech for conservation.” Stevenson also knocked what he viewed as dishonest campaign tactics from the Republican party, saying, “I have been tempted to make a proposal to our Republican friends: that if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower also dumped on Nixon. When a reporter asked President Eisenhower to name a major policy contribution made by his Vice President, Nixon, Ike replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”

A few years later, Lyndon Baines Johnson, a master of intimidation, targeted Gerald Ford’s intellect, saying Ford was a nice guy, but “he played football too long without a helmet.” One of LBJ’s most biting social commentaries lampooned politicians who weaponized racism to distract voters from economic realities: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Known for his acerbic humor, Senator Bob Dole said of a meeting attended by former presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon that they perfectly embodied the three wise monkeys: “See no evil, hear no evil, and… Evil.” Dole also said, ”If you’re hanging around [Washington] with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the Senate.”

American politicians may not be able to walk the walk but, clearly, over the course of our nation’s history, a number of them have been fairly adept at trashing the talk. There is no reason our current pols can’t do the same. So please, give us less of the lazy name-calling—if you are going to bankrupt the nation’s future, at least do it with some style.