Mudslingers
by Kerwin Swint
Union Square, HK$104
Kerwin Swint has said political campaigns for this year's US presidential race will probably not make it into future editions of his book Mudslingers: The Twenty-five Dirtiest Political Campaigns of All Time. Just as well. Although entertaining in retrospect, his examples reveal not only the mean streaks of candidates in presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial and mayoral races from 1800 to 2004, but also the wonky moral compasses of their supporters. Ranked 25 is the 2004 presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, in which the pro-Bush Swift Boat veterans claimed Senator Kerry had exaggerated his role in combat. Their anger stemmed from his testimony to Congress that soldiers in Vietnam routinely committed war crimes and atrocities. At the top of Swint's list is the battle between George Wallace and Albert Brewer. To win the 1970 gubernatorial race in Alabama, Wallace ran a radio advertisement in which a police siren was followed by an announcer intoning: 'Suppose your wife is driving home at 11 o'clock at night. She is stopped by a highway patrolman. He turns out to be black. Think about it. Elect George C. Wallace.' Wallace won a fourth term in 1982.
