THE LOST ART OF MUD-SLINGING

H.N. Burdett

When British statesman Benjamin Disraeli excoriated his chief rival, William Gladstone, as "inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity," he was referring to a real condition, journalist/author Gerald White Johnson once told me.

Not only is it possible to become drunk on words, he said, but someone in that state can get as plastered as anyone who has over-indulged in "the rawest busthead that ever dripped from a moonshine still."

Nowhere is Johnson's supposition more evident than in the overheated realm of politics where rhetorical intoxication transpires well beyond the candidates and their spokespersons, spills over and into precincts far and wide, from polite dinner party conversation to the robust corner neighborhood gin mill give-and-take.

The current United States presidential race is touted as certain to erupt into the most vituperous ever waged. If an eyebrow or two is raised here among those who have delved into American history somewhat deeper than the standard lifeless textbook versions, that reflex emanates from recollections that some of the nation's most revered founding fathers were once targets of more than their share of verbal arrows. Alexander Hamilton was accused of embezzling public funds, George Washington of plotting the subversion of the republic.

Nearly 60 years ago, Professor Johnson, writing in The New Republic, noted that the allegations against Hamilton and Washington came not from politicians but rather from "merely newspaper editors, so it is questionable that their mouthings should be compared with public utterances."

In that same article, he lamented the lost art of mud-slinging of which he deemed John Randolph of Roanoke and Charles Sumner, the virulent Massachusetts abolition leader, its "greatest masters."

Johnson cited Sumner's characterization of slavery advocates Senators Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He called Douglas, who was short, plump and possessed of a propensity for shrill rhetoric, "a noisome, squat and nameless animal" and compared Butler's defense of "the harlot slavery" with a mistress "although ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. . ."

And Randolph described Edward Livingston, close adviser to President Andrew Jackson for whom he served as Secretary of State: "He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. Like mackerel by moonlight, he both shines and stinks."

Johnson contrasted Randolph and Sumner with clumsier purveyors of calumny, two mid-20th century conservative extremist U.S. Senators: Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin and William Jenner of Indiana. McCarthy charged five Democratic administrations with "twenty years of treason." Jenner lambasted General George C. Marshall, architect of the allied victory in World War II as well as the post-war European Recovery Program, as "an eager front man for traitors" and "a living lie."

Johnson wrote: "So while it is true that American political debate wallowed in the gutter (in the early days of the republic). . .it is also true that the worst of the guttersnipes were private individuals, not representatives of any constituency. And while it is true that debate was as fully venomous as it is today, it is also true that the most venomous of the debates sparkled, and sparkling slander is less offensive than stupid slander, even when it is uttered by a man in official position."

"It is regrettable, but true that this world will forgive a great deal to a man who amuses it," Johnson stressed.

As candidates gear up for the quadrennial national campaign, they might do well to heed the sage advice of Johnson, characterized by his friend and mutual admirer, Adlai Stevenson, thus: "When it comes to piercing stuffed shirts, when there are slobs to be speared and poisonous balloons to burst. . .without Gerald Johnson there are but pygmies to bend the bow of Ulysses. He is the critic and conscience of our time." ###