By Sean Sullivan Lagniappe columnist

Well “O.K. Tuesday” has passed and believe it or not, our state and nation are still here. I say “O.K. Tuesday” since it was a midterm election and therefore not quite as “super” as the second Tuesday in November 2008. Although, if you didn’t pay attention to the facts and just followed the hype of the political ads, you would have thought this was the election of the apocalypse and that your vote had some sort of bearing on the timeless battle between good and evil.

This midterm was taken more seriously than usual in Alabama and nationwide, with a sort of “Presidential election in Congressional clothing” transpiring. With the end of the Bush presidency in two years, the future battle for the U.S. C.E.O. position has been fought through rehearsals in Congressional and state elections all over the country. In the wake of what was a pretty dirty political battle at both a state and federal level, you might feel “mud slinging” is at a zenith in American politics and you, my electorate friend, would be wrong.

What did Billy Joel say? “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and while the piano man has enough problems and skeletons in his closet to qualify him as a potential candidate for the U.S. Congress, he does make a good point, and also writes a damn good song. The dirt-lobbing candidates are just doing what has been passed down by a cadre of historically successful politicians on the local and national scene. It’s as American as baseball, apple pie and unfortunately dirty politics.

Dirty campaigns came as early as the 1820s with what has been called one of the dirtiest campaigns of all time, Andrew Jackson versus John Quincy Adams in 1828. In that campaign Adams called Jackson’s wife an adulteress and him a murderer for treatment of Army deserters and opposing Indian armies. “Old Hickory” fought back and stated that Adams promoted gambling in the White House and prostituted an American servant girl to a Russian Czar to help him gain political advantage while serving as diplomat in Russia.

This was almost 200 years ago when polite discussion was the rule. These accusations would make Jerry Springer blush today. I can only imagine what the interchange would be like if the Adams vs. Jackson election was held today. One ad might have a caricature of Adams in a big purple pimp hat, pinching the nether cheeks of a servant girl while he also rolls dice using a wall of the Oval Office as backboard. The opposing ad could have a window silhouette of Jackson’s wife with another man while he is out massacring villages full of Indians.

So the bar was set low long ago in the gutter of American politics. Unfortunately the lowest spot in the history of mud slinging might be here in Alabama. Some researchers call the 1970 George Wallace versus Albert Brewer race the “dirtiest campaign” in American history. In this election race baiting was taken to the limit, with Wallace suggesting to white Alabamians that a vote for his opponent Albert Brewer would mean blacks would take over state government, which in 1970 was strongly incendiary language to a largely segregationist white voting block.

One particular ad had a white girl surrounded by seven black boys with the slogan “Wake up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama.” One would think this kind of dishonest and racially charged campaign would be offensive to the voting populous, but in 1970 a Gallup poll ranked George Wallace as the seventh most popular man in America…some denouncement of dirty politics, huh?

So here we are on the backside of another political melee and we are still here. Feelings have been hurt, enemies have been steeled in there hatred of one another, but the government is still here. The rule of law is still in place…although I might debate that in a later column.

As a state and a nation we need to wipe the mud off and if not kiss and make up, at least move along with the business of running the best country in the world knowing the good and bad of our political system is our heritage and we may have to accept the bad while we embrace the good.

Sean Sullivan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact him at ssullivan@lagniappemobile.com.

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