Current Events, History and Dirty Tricks:

Here we are restricting our consideration to the political arena. Wikipedia definitions are in the form of active links.

Wikipedia: Dirty Tricks. As you can see American political dirty tricks go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. I personally became interested in dirty tricks when Joseph McCarthy used them in the 1950s. See Wikipedia: McCarthyism. As part of my American History course I was encouraged to study recent events that might make their way into the history books. Many of us who did not experience McCarthyism experienced the successor to McCarthyism in the form of Wikipedia: John Birch Society.

These events are now some half a century old. They did occur and they did form the foundation upon which people like Lee Atwater and more recently Karl Rove have built political strategies. Both of these men worked almost exclusively for the Republican Party. In fact when you do a Google search for “dirty tricks” there are only minor references to the Democratic Party. Some might say this is a conspiracy on the part of the liberal press. To this I can only reply get serious.

Dirty tricks in very high places can be best demonstrated by the Nixon Administrations break in to the office of Daniel Ellsberg. Following that there was a more significant Watergate break in conducted at the specific request of a sitting President according to testimony of Jeb Magruder.

The current administration has used dirty tricks as well. As part of the build up to the invasion of Iraq Joseph_C._Wilson was sent to Africa to verify certain facts. When he returned and reported that the facts were in error that information was suppressed. Worse when Joe Wilson published an op-ed document in the New York Times his wife’s identity as covert intelligence agent was leaked to Robert Novak. The last dirty trick of the Republican Party was the swift boat campaign.

The reason I bring this entire issue up is charges during this latest Presidential election campaign. These charges largely come from the Republican Party and accuse the national press corps of bias towards Berack Obama. My reply to this criticism is that perhaps the national press corps has grown tired of Republican Party lies and fabrications.