A Brief History of Rough and Tumble Politics, with Roger Stone | Big Think

Politics in this country is not being bad; it has always been rough and tumble. It's always been a contact sport. When Abraham Lincoln was running, his opponents had handbills saying that he was a half-breed; he was a mixed race, for example. So, all that's really changed is the technology. Now we use the internet, we use television, we use cable. In those days, we used newspapers; we used handbills.

When William McKinley ran for president, his campaign manager, Mark Canha, was the first guy to realize that he could print hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fliers and distribute them to the 50 states. Since people didn't have reading material and newspapers were generally passed from person to person, when he moved across the country, you'd finish reading a newspaper, you wouldn't throw it out; you'd give it to somebody else. They would read it, and they would pass it to somebody else. Newspapers printed in New York would find their way all the way to California because newspapers were rare, and people wanted to read them.

All the newspapers were partisan. You were either hardcore Democrat or hardcore Republican, and if you were in either party, you would print the most scurrilous, negative, vicious attacks on the other party. So, it's always been a part of our society. Now, the very same voters who tell pollsters, "I hate negative ads, I hate that the negative tone," those are the same voters who can tell you exactly what was in those ads because they've absorbed them. They particularly absorbed them on the basis of the high level of repetition that most professional political consultants now realize is necessary.

Think of it this way: when I was growing up, there were three television networks. I grew up here in the New York area, so we had ABC, NBC, and CBS. Then we had two independents, WPIX and WNEW. That was it. All the other channels on the dial were nothing. Meaning that if it didn't happen on one of those five channels, it didn't happen at all. So if they declined to cover any news event, it's as if the news event never really happened.

Contrast that with today. We have hundreds of choices on cable and dozens abroad. The three major networks continue there, so a viewer literally has hundreds of choices when he or she sits down in front of their television set or their computer. Therefore, it takes any political message a greater number of repetitions before people get it. The general consensus in my old business, because I worked as a political strategist and consultant for many years, is that a voter needed to see an ad ten times before it permeated their consciousness, before they started to retain the facts.

The sad truth is negative advertising, which I prefer to call comparative advertising, it works. That's why politicians use it. Voters who tell you they're not interested still retain the facts.