Negative campaigning

I get a chuckle out of the allegations, a constant fixture during an election year, that the other guy is going negative in order to distract people from the real issues. That has been a staple of American politics from the beginning.

Take a look at this Web site. It has just about every television commercial ever produced during a presidential campaign.

Pay attention to the 1956 ad titled, “Nixon?” Republicans who are upset with how Obama supporters today are trying to make Sarah Palin the issue should take note. Nixon was, of course, the candidate for vice president.

In the book “Packaging the president,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson describes how Adlai Stevenson reluctantly gave in to aides who said he needed to attack Nixon (read the relevant part of the book here. Start at the paragraph that begins, “In summary…”)

Of course, in retrospect we should have been nervous about Nixon.

My question is whether you think this year’s campaign is unusually nasty or unfair. Given the history of campaigns, I think this year’s presidential race has been tame so far, pigs with lipstick not withstanding.