The first time I ever dealt with such advertising was 1968 in a local primary campaign for constable. Primaries were tantamount to election since Texas' two-party system consisted of conservative Democrats and liberal Democrats.
An ad against one candidate (A) was not from the opposing candidate (B) but rather one of his supporters.
It consisted of a profile photo of the supporter, a bald man, showing a nasty-looking wound with stitches on the side of his scalp.
He proceeded to say that Candidate A had inflicted the wound, and was bad so voters should support his "good guy" Candidate B. I don't remember who won but I never forgot the man who ran the ad.
Four years earlier, the very first "attack" ad on television was used to indirectly reflect badly on 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
It was placed and paid for by Democrats in support of Lyndon Johnson.
It featured a little girl picking daisy petals followed by an atomic blast/mushroom cloud and then a voiceover of LBJ: "We must either learn to love each other, or we must die."
We were reminded of that ad earlier this summer with the death of adman Tony Schwartz, its creator.
Actually, it's not difficult to find dirt on most candidates.
Many have a skeleton or two in the family closet. Republicans happily point to Ted Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick catastrophe in the 1960s in which a car he was driving, accompanied by a young woman to whom he was not married, went into a body of water.
Kennedy managed to escape but the young woman drowned. He suffered no dire consequences.
Texas Democrats revel in the actions of Clayton Williams, the 1990 GOP candidate for governor, who had the election sewed up over Ann Richards until he made a comment about rape and women: "As long as it's inevitable, she might as well lie back and enjoy it."
Then, he compared Richards to cattle on his ranch: "I'd head her and hoof her and drag her through the dirt." Williams also refused to shake Richards' hand at a campaign event, thus driving thousands of women from both parties into her camp.
Then we're reminded of the 1988 presidential campaign between elder George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis.
A convicted killer was paroled while Dukakis was Massachusetts governor and the GOP used ads built around that to help Bush inundate the Democrat. Then came young Bush and Al Gore in 2000 followed by 2004's gunboat debacle with younger Bush vs. John Kerry.
A wise old man once said, regarding mudslinging campaigns: "If two candidates get down and wallow in the mud together, then you can't tell 'em apart." Judge 'em on their qualifications, he told me.
That point was underscored in 1976 while I was a professional campaign manager in a primary run-off election in a Montgomery County sheriff's race.
The campaign committee for incumbent Sheriff Gene Reaves hired me after he'd finished a distant second in a three-man first primary race, against well-heeled businessman Freeman Dunn.
Dunn hired a Houston advertising agency and launched a relentless attack against Reaves, implying ties to organized crime and gambling. It was one of the biggest examples of mudslinging I've ever seen.
We changed the incumbent's campaign to a positive one using photos of Reaves, who looked like a Texas sheriff, and playing on his 16-year record as being the good-guy in a white hat.
A last minute Dunn campaign mailer inferred that not only was Reaves tied to criminal activity but so were his wife and children.
Reaves was incensed over his family being dragged into the campaign and said he wouldn't appear on a live radio debate with Dunn two days before the Saturday run-off.
I insisted he appear but that when his first time to speak came, he should say, "I will not dignify a man who must drag another man's good wife and children through the mud to win an election, therefore I will not stay in the same room with him." With that, per our strategy, Reaves exited the studio.
On balloting day, Reaves came from several thousand votes behind in the first primary to win by 189 votes.
And, he did it by running a clean campaign, getting a larger turnout than in the first primary and not wallowing in the mud.
Let's hope the good guys in the white hats prevail in this presidential election and there is no mudslinging.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher with more than 50 years in the business. He can be reached by email at wwebb@wildblue.net.
