As 2016 presidential campaigns work to increase support, let’s take a look back at some campaigns that self-destructed.
Even as candidates rush for the Republican presidential nomination, many have begun to flounder or sink. Scott Walker flailed his way to an unpleasant end, already. Now, all eyes are on Donald Trump following his brutal beating at the second Republican debate.
We have yet to see whether or not Trump will sink or swim, but even so, that doesn’t mean we can’t take a look at the campaigns that barely scraped by or didn’t scrape by at all.
In 1860, a New York senator named William H. Seward was considered the frontrunner of the Republican party. By frontrunner, I mean “nominee-before-the-nomination-process.” Seward was so popular, in fact, he decided to leave the country for eight months in an attempt to avoid making any political mistakes.
Unfortunately for Seward, as he was vacationing in Europe and Asia, a tall and lanky young man from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln decided to run for president. While Seward was busy deciding which Arabian horses he wanted, many Republican party members aligned themselves with the more moderate Lincoln, resulting in Seward being upset at the nominating convention.
Despite the chuckles that Seward’s loss merits, they don’t achieve the guffaws that poorly-run and extremely-active presidential campaigns cause.
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Meet Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. In 1988, Hart was considered a frontrunner. However, he was immediately plagued with accusations that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Hart vehemently denied the allegations, and said, in a statement published to The New York Times, “Follow me around ... If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.”
Unfortunately for Hart, this statement was published the same day Miami Herald published an article with evidence of Hart participating in an affair with actress Donna Rice.
Despite the flak he received, many voters still believed that Hart had a chance of winning the nomination. This notion lasted until a second article was published that featured a photograph of Rice sitting on Hart’s lap aboard a yacht named “Monkey Business,” which had actually been taken before the scandal had even occurred.
At this point, Hart decided to pull a Seward and headed out of the country for a few weeks. Upon his return, Hart restarted his campaign, proclaiming confidently, “Let’s let the people decide!”
Hart ended his campaign after receiving a puny 5 percent on Super Tuesday.
A bad campaign doesn’t necessarily mean a loss. A bad campaign that results in victory simply means that the victorious candidate were less of an idiot than the other candidate. This was certainly the case when Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in 1976.
Ford was coming out of a very brief and very rough first term. Having weathered criticism for pardoning Richard Nixon from the crimes he committed in connection with the Watergate Scandal, Ford also struggled with boosting the economy. The then-president Ford wasn’t helping himself either when he said things like “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” when the Soviet Union was dominating Eastern Europe. Carter started out the general election duel with a 33 percent advantage.
He then promptly blew the massive lead by saying to Playboy magazine that, secretly, he “lusted in (his) heart” for women besides from his wife. Read that last sentence three more times just to take in what Carter is saying.
Yes, that’s right, Carter is saying that deep down in the darkest hole of his soul, he was interested in having an extramarital affair. No, I don’t know why he would ever say such nonsense. In the end, Carter barely scraped by, beating the extremely unpopular Ford by a measly 2 percent.
As the weeks and months of the relentless 2016 campaign continue, we can only sit back and wait for the next gaffe that will have us rolling in our seats, regardless of who falls from the top.
Richard Hwang is a student at Athens High School. What do you think of the current political campaigns?Email him at rhwang999@gmail.com.
