Just in Case You Thought Negative Campaigning Started with the Blogosphere...

Just heard about Joseph Cummins' new book, Anything for a Vote, about the history of, shall we say, strenuous campaigning...it's hilarious and enlightening. Here are some snippets:

• 1836: Congressman Davy Crockett accuses candidate Martin Van Buren of secretly wearing women's clothing: "He is laced up in corsets!"
• 1912: Theodore Roosevelt is shot in the chest while preparing to give a campaign speech, then proceeds to deliver it anyway: "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose!"
• 1960: Former president Harry Truman advises voters that "if you vote for Richard Nixon, you ought to go to hell!"
  

And this tibdit about the election in 1800 between Jefferson and Adams...

The Federalists couldn’t get enough of attacking Jefferson in a very, very personal way---their assaults sound like the insults leveled at Bill Clinton, another Southerner, almost 200 years later. "Jefferson is a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia Mulatto father," said one leaflet. A Connecticut paper raised the specter of the French Revolution, supposedly beloved by Jefferson: "Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames ... female chastity violated, [your] children writhing on the pike? GREAT GOD OF COMPASSION AND JUSTICE, SHIELD MY COUNTRY FROM DESTRUCTION!"

Oregon Measure 50 and SCHIP - Thoughts on Children's Health Care

So, there has been lots of talk concerning children's health lately. To summarize:

Measure 50: Would modify the Oregon Constitution to add an 80 cent tax on cigarettes and use the money to pay for children's health. Would not create any new government agencies, but would add staff, so there would be more bureaucracy than now.

SCHIP: would expand plans to provide government assistance for health insurance for children. Families making $80k a year would still be eligible for government assistance. President Bush is proposing a much more modest increase in government assistance.

The Blue Dog View:
I'm not opposed to the idea of government helping provide for children's health for people who truly can't afford it. But government assistance for those making $80k a year? That's hard for me to swallow as a fiscal centrist. the other issue I have is that I think the health system we have in this country is really broken. And I don't think you fix a financially flawed system by simply throwing more government money at it. I haven't heard anything in either one of these proposals about actually making changes to the health care system itself, so to me adding more government money into the system without some kind of structural change is really counter-productive.

Of course I could be wrong...thoughts?

Is the country becoming less polarized?

Isn't it interesting that the leading candidates for President for each party (Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani) are both very much centrist candidates? I think it's interesting that both parties seem to be following the "Bill Clinton model" of pretty much taking the base for granted and going after the middle of the country.

It should get very interesting pretty soon.