A must read  from this past Sunday’s New york Times is a piece by PAUL VITELLO titled, How to Erase that Smear.  Vitello reminds readers that attack campaigns, enlisted by politicians seeking office, have been around since the days of our founding fathers.  Below I have included excerpts of Vitello’s piece and sprinkled in some of my commentary and analysis.

When Thomas Jefferson found himself accused of planning to burn all Bibles and legalize prostitution if elected president in 1800, he was ready with a counterpunch that might make today’s most vitriolic campaign operatives stop short, if only to gape upon the greatness that once was presidential campaign slander.

Jefferson’s rival, President John Adams, was endowed with a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman”; and if re-elected he would crown himself king; and, by the way, he was “mentally deranged.”

The author of the attacks was not Jefferson himself, of course, but a master poison-pen pamphleteer named James Callender, who, historians have since determined, was bankrolled completely by Jefferson. (For his efforts, Callender spent nine months in prison under the Sedition Act for saying those things about a sitting president; Jefferson pardoned him immediately after defeating Adams and taking office.)

Essentially, negative smear campaigning is as Americana as apple pie and is arguable an older past time than baseball.

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What are America’s “fictional Everyman couple” doing now? The stars of the famed 1994 TV ad, Harry and Louise are back for some more – 14 years later to be exact.

The original spot centered around two actors, who effectively portrayed an average working class couple, distraught by the flawed healthcare system which was then being touted by first-lady Hillary Rodham Clinton .  The spot became the focal point of the opposition’s message, which effectively derailed Clinton’s socialized healthcare reform agenda.

This time conveying a somewhat different message, the couple engages in another discussion on healthcare, this time encouraging John McCain and Barack Obama to make healthcare reform a center of their message for America:

The spot will air through both conventions on a variety of cable and broadcast media. It is intended to influence both party’s leaders and policy makers expected to visit Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul media markets over the next three weeks.

See the original Harry and Louise spot after the jump

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