ZU Magazine is a publication of ZU Media. Below is an article from Issue 4, “Character.”
Staff Writer | Chloe’ Bagley
Nearly as long as we have had Presidents of the United States, we have had smear campaigns.
One of the earliest American political smears dates back to 1796. John Adams was accused of supporting George Washington as a candidate for president, while secretly wanting him ejected from the presidency. Not even 30 years later, Andrew Jackson and his wife were painted in the press as adulterers. In 1844, The New York Chronicle quoted a Baron Roorbuck who had allegedly witnessed James K. Polk purchasing slaves. The story was, in fact, fabricated and it was discovered there was no purchasing of slaves and no Baron Roorbuck to begin with.
As our country has grown older, these types of campaigns have continued to be calculated and malicious.
Psychologist Spee Kosloff conducted a study during the 2008 presidential election on the effectiveness of these types of campaigns. Kosloff found that smear campaigns fed into an “us-versus-them” mentality in American society.
Some of the most memorable reputation smears from the 2008 election were those created to discredit former President Obama during his election campaign. Multiple allegations surfaced questioning his religious affiliations as well as his origin of birth, and both rumors were proven to be false.
President Donald Trump has also claimed to be on the receiving end of this sort of political tactic.
“I am a victim of one of the great political smear campaigns in the history of our country,” he said at a rally in North Carolina in October of 2016. This was in response to sexual harassment allegations made by at least 16 women, according to Time magazine, against the president.
Getty Images
President Trump has been accused of spearheading smear campaigns of his own, specifically those against Hillary and various FBI officials.
On Jan. 28 of this year, U.S. Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi tweeted, “If you suspect the Trump administration and its allies have launched a smear campaign against senior FBI officials in order to protect the President from potential witnesses who can corroborate the testimony of former FBI Director @Comey, you’re right.”
For centuries, Americans have been validating the effectiveness of smear campaigns.
Joel Weinberger, a professor of psychology at Adelphi University, was interviewed with The American Psychology Association during the 2012 elections between Obama and Romney.
“I wish candidates wouldn’t use them, but attack ads work perfectly,” he said.
A 2016 Oxford study shows that attacks on opposing candidates made up nearly 87 percent of all campaigning in the 2012 elections.
These numbers have only escalated in the country’s most recent elections. According to CNN, of 70,000 television ads, 93 percent were negative attacks on the candidates. More specifically, 96 percent of the Clinton campaign ads were attacks on President Trump, while 83 percent of the Trump campaign ads were attacks on Hillary.
Smear campaigns are often full of inaccurate or simply irrelevant information. USA Today has an entire “Hall of Shame” in which they chronicle, “the most unfair, inaccurate or just plain offensive,” political ads. Similarly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact has a “Pants on Fire” category which informs readers of false stories and, during elections, debunks smear campaigns.
Studies have shown that smear campaigns work because a large portion of the public is uninformed about politics. This political apathy makes society more susceptible to believe what is said in negative campaigns against politicians.
Because negative campaigns work, America ends up with political candidates who utilize them. This excludes politicians who are unwilling to participate in the mud-slinging and the de-characterization of their opponents.