We're with Nobody

by Alan Huffman

  Most of what Cicero revealed appears to have been factual, with the possible exception of his claim that Catiline sought to “destroy the whole world with fire and slaughter,” which would be pretty tough to document.

  Public disclosure of the damning details had the desired effect. When Catiline took his seat in the senate, other senators got up and moved, leaving him a solitary figure on his bench. Emboldened, Cicero called for his execution. In what was essentially history’s first documented attack ad, which ran live, Cicero asked, “For what is there, O Catiline, that you can still expect, if night is not able to veil your nefarious meetings in the darkness, and if private houses cannot conceal the voice of your conspiracy within their walls—if everything is seen and displayed?” Perhaps it wasn’t catchy, but people caught his drift. Today, “O Catiline” would be the opposition’s mantra.

  Catiline attempted to respond, but his fellow senators shouted him down, labeling him a traitor. He scurried from the chamber, throwing out verbal threats, as often happens when there’s no meaningful rebuttal. In the end he fled north, where he was killed by Roman troops. As a result of Cicero’s later attacks, Mark Antony had his hands chopped off and displayed them in a smartly designed exhibit in the forum.

  Although it would be centuries before it really hit its mainstream stride, oppo was here to stay. When scandal-mongering pamphlet wars between England’s Whig and Tory parties broke out in the eighteenth century, freelance writers such as Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, whose only alternative was to wait tables, were only too happy to stoke the public’s political bloodlust with the necessary diatribes (under assumed names). Soon Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin got similar gigs in the increasingly raucous political environment of the American colonies.

  In the 1800 presidential race of the fledgling United States, incumbent John Adams found out just how vicious oppo could be when his opponent, Thomas Jefferson, accused him of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” It didn’t exactly get people talking about the substantive issues, and the claim itself was apparently undocumented, judging from a web search of “John Adams” + “nude hermaphrodite,” which produces a few hits that, while terrifying, fail to support Jefferson’s accusation. Adams didn’t take kindly to the introduction of his sex organs into the presidential debate, and saw no need to present proof of his countercharge that Jefferson was “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” The name-calling continued: fool, hypocrite, criminal, weakling, atheist, and so on.

  To make sure voters weren’t confused about who was which, Jefferson secretly hired a cunning, sleazy Scotsman named James Callender, who had earlier exposed a sexual liaison between Alexander Hamilton and a married woman. Jefferson liked what he’d seen of Callender’s work, and on his behalf Callender convinced voters that among other things Adams had an overwhelming desire to go to war with France. Prior to Callender’s efforts, the electorate had shown limited interest in the subject of attacking France, but afterward became rabid about it. So it goes with sensational, unfounded attacks.

  Somewhere along the way the Adams administration imprisoned Callender for sedition, and on his release he approached Jefferson about a job but was rebuffed. In response, he publicly disclosed their clandestine relationship, adding that, oh, by the way, the president had fathered children with one of his slaves. Two lessons can be drawn from this: Friends turned enemies can serve as excellent sources, and it’s never a good idea to alienate the oppo guy.

  Considering the lengths to which Adams and Jefferson went to portray each other in a bad light, it’s curious that Abraham Lincoln got off as easy as he did during his own presidential bid. Obviously, the mores of the time influence whether potentially damaging information about a political opponent is useful in a campaign, but it seems odd that something that has preoccupied Lincoln biographers in recent years—questions about his sexual orientation—caused so little public debate during his political career. Perhaps it’s because men commonly slept in the same bed back then, or because people of the era were loathe to openly discuss homosexuality.

  According to some historians, Lincoln slept with at least eleven boys and men during his youth and adulthood. Lincoln never denied the practice, and even raised the subject on occasion, but you can bet we’d hear a great deal of conjecture and supposed “facts” if such a detail came to light during a political race today.

  Reporter: Mr. Lincoln, I understand you enjoy sleeping in the same bed with other men—a lot. Don’t you think it’s natural that the voters would wonder about your relationships with these men and . . . occasionally, boys?

  Lincoln: I slept with them. That is all. With the men it was mostly a matter of convenience, nothing more. Perhaps we discussed politics before drifting off to sleep, or in the early morning hours. I don’t recall much of what we discussed in bed when I was a boy. Perhaps Indians.

  Reporter: Can you tell me about this Joshua Speed fellow? You two lived together over in Springfield for four years and slept in the same large double bed, according to people we’ve talked with.

  Lincoln: According to which people you’ve talked with?

  Reporter: I can’t say.

  Lincoln: Was it that Mrs. Pritchard? The landlady with the hairy ears?

  Reporter: Let’s stick to Mr. Speed. Is he a Republican, too?

  Lincoln: He wasn’t then. But he is now.

  Though Lincoln was never publicly challenged about his bedfellows during his political career, there were whispers about his relationship with a Captain David Derickson, his bodyguard and companion for eight months during the Civil War. The two reportedly shared a bed during Mary Todd Lincoln’s absences, until Derickson was promoted in 1863. The relationship was the subject of gossip. Elizabeth Woodbury Fox, the wife of Lincoln’s naval aide, wrote in her diary, “Tish says, ‘Oh, there is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L is not home, sleeps with him. What stuff!’ ”

  Such musings were typically limited to private conversations and diaries, but other topics, particularly a man’s political dealings, were fair game for the public discourse, and Lincoln did not shy away from doing his own oppo on that. Prior to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, William Herndon, his law partner, reportedly did some dirt digging in the Illinois State Library to collect “all the ammunition Mr. Lincoln saw fit to gather” for his run against Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 race.

  In response, as still happens today, Douglas decried the use of investigators to vilify him, charging that some of his former political allies had secretly conspired to sabotage him and that one group had published a document “in which they arraigned me as having been guilty of a criminal betrayal of my trust.” While other senators were attending church, Douglas asserted, they had “assembled in a secret conclave,” devoting the sabbath to their own conspiratorial and deceitful deeds. Considering his constituency, it was good stuff, but it didn’t help Douglas in the end.

  Opposition research crops up in almost every presidential election thereafter, though the actual phrase did not appear until Edmund Muskie’s 1971 presidential bid, when newspapers reported that a female Republican volunteer had infiltrated his campaign organization. Soon after, during the Nixon administration, the practice became systemized: The Republican Party began keeping up-to-date files on potential opponents rather than waiting on the campaigns to dig up dirt on them. Nixon, of course, resigned over an episode in which his lackeys broke into the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate building to steal potentially revealing files. Say what you will about Nixon—he was a tyrant and arguably a criminal—but he recognized the importance of facts. In an era when people create them out of whole cloth, and are rarely called to task for it, the idea of breaking into a building to steal documentation seems almost quaint.

  Oddly, considering that political research is more pervasive today,
and is done on a far grander scale, there appears to be less accountability than in the past, which is one reason Alan and I have become disenchanted with the meanness of the political posturing that grips the nation. Too much is based on undocumented claims and base contempt. We recognize that we’re part of a dubious tradition, but as long as the information can be proved true, it clearly serves a purpose. The problem we have with the political fact-free zone—aside from the effectiveness of certain of its purveyors—is that it’s counterproductive. It results in an electorate that is, by turns, sanguine and jaded, and it inevitably pushes the debate further from the truth.

  Karl Rove, who for us symbolizes the enemy (and not merely because of our ideological differences), is a particularly venal denizen of the fact-free zone. From his days as a college student, when he stole campaign letterhead from a Democratic candidate and printed and distributed fake campaign fliers touting free beer, food and girls; to the “black love child” whisper campaign about John McCain during the 2000 presidential race, Rove has stunk up more voting booths than anyone else in recent American political history. He may liken himself to a protégé of the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater, but even Atwater conceded toward the end of his life that he regretted many of his less scrupulous methods. Atwater had his hand in the now-infamous Willie Horton ad that torpedoed the political career of Michael Dukakis by highlighting how, as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had granted Horton weekend passes from prison. At least that effort was based on fact. Horton was indeed a convicted murderer who raped a woman while on a weekend furlough during Dukakis’s tenure as governor. Rove, who masterminded the Valerie Plame fiasco and sought to purge U.S. attorneys who didn’t meet his loyalty standards, cares only whether a story will further his agenda. He gives opposition research a bad name, which, considering some of the transgressions committed in its service in the past, is saying something.

  The irony is that widespread disregard for documenting the truth has come about at a time when access to public records is vastly improved. Every state now has an open records law, which means that if you don’t fall for the bluff of the obstinate courthouse clerk you can get your hands on at least a facsimile of the truth, and much of it is easily accessible online. Between access and technology, nothing in politics stays hidden for long anymore. What’s strange to us is that as the public has grown more and more jaded by the process, they’re still as seduced by it as the Romans were centuries ago. Sometimes the attacks are legitimate and sometimes they’re invented, but the stories, true or not, get a life of their own and become a part of history.

  Chapter 7

  Alan

  I am sitting in the municipal office of a New Jersey township so small and insignificant that it doesn’t warrant a single exit off the nearby freeway. I can hear the cars and trucks, a distant murmur of life passing by, as I sit across the table from a bored policeman in the nondescript anteroom of the township office. It’s early summer, when our campaign season really cranks up, and Michael and I have hit the road for an extended period of time, going our separate ways for now as we undertake several research projects simultaneously. I’m focused on a diminutive race, an example of how some political organizations strive to ensure that even third-tier opponents stay where they are.

  The cop is reading a hunting magazine as I pore through a tall stack of bound township council minutes, the contents of which are both mind-numbing and, for some reason, jealously guarded by the local powers that be. It isn’t as if much happens in the council meetings, but all sorts of bureaucratic alarms went off when I asked to review the minutes, which is why the cop is there, reading about recreational deer urine.

  Assigning a cop to guard me in the Jersey township was a bit of institutional indulgence owing, perhaps, to the fact that the focus of my work is a minor township mystery. The implication is that I might try to steal the treasured minutes, for some unknown reason, or that my interest poses some other threat for the mayor, which it actually does, though it’s not a threat an armed guard could prevent. All they’ve done, really, is make it slightly safer for others to speed through town on a summer day.

  I was doing my best to take a genial approach to the whole situation because the clerk had at least been nice about assigning me a guard. Small public offices don’t generally get a lot of strangers who arrive with what appears to be a very specific yet unrevealed interest. When they do, the staff can choose between being accommodating or officious in their efforts to find out what they’re looking for and why, and, if necessary, to simply gum up the works. Michael and I can likewise choose between being polite and unforthcoming or impervious and unforthcoming. We typically take our cues from them.

  Michael was once similarly placed under guard during a review of education records in Ohio. He reacted by indignantly asking the clerk, “What do you think I’m going to do, stuff them down my pants?”

  One wonders, “Who steals education board minutes, anyway?” The implication was that anyone who wanted to review the actions of public officials was somehow a threat. It was about fear of the unknown. For all the administration knew, Michael might have been a schoolteacher, but because they didn’t know, they responded with hostility. By contrast, a records clerk he encountered during another race erroneously had the impression that he was some kind of federal agent working on behalf of an ongoing investigation, and cheerfully gave him everything he asked for, saying, “Oh, yes, sir, we can give you that immediately.” The clerk also provided him with a personal workspace and did not charge him for what turned out to be a voluminous number of copies.

  “When things are going that well, why say anything to the contrary?” Michael told me later.

  Because the arrival of an inquisitive, evasive stranger with a Southern accent may represent the most provocative episode of a small township’s official day, I give my current clerk credit for at least being sociable, though I’m aware that sociability often masks a hidden agenda.

  “You sound like you’re a long way from home!” she’d said, brightly, when I arrived at her window with my records request. After a meaningful pause, during which I failed to offer a response, other than to nod and smile, she’d asked, “So what brings you here?”

  My answer—“research”—failed to satisfy. So she’d added, as if on cue, “And who are you with?”

  I glanced behind me at the empty office, as if checking to see if I was with anyone, and concluded, “Nobody!” Then I smiled and extended my arms in mock surrender. A tiny furrow formed in her brow. I later overheard her telling someone in the back that perhaps I was a journalist who was comparing the institutional procedures of various town councils around the country, which led me to wonder where such a review might find publication. The supposition that I might be someone who studied small-town council minutes for a living had the effect of making my task seem even duller than it already was.

  Opposition research can be exciting when you’re on to something, but much of the work is like studying for a minor exam. A big part of it involves evaluating voluminous records of meetings by government agencies and ad hoc tree-pruning committees. That said, there’s nothing like being bored to lower the threshold for what you find interesting. You may initially resist talking to the computer programmer in the seat beside you as your plane waits in line on the tarmac, but as the wait lengthens to hours, with no sign that you’re ever going to take off, it is possible, out of synaptic desperation, to find yourself developing a low-grade interest in the computer programmer’s life, including his recent foray into a master gardening class, held in a temporary building at a school currently undergoing sensitive renovation in a suburb of Milwaukee. When was the school built? What style is the architecture? The thumbnail sketch of his life may be a tour de force of forgettable scenes, but each painstaking detail instills in you a growing determination to find something, anything, to chew on.

  Michael and I are similarly inspired to take note of documented details we might otherwise have
overlooked. A subtle shift in the tenor of the township council discussion about sidewalk repairs or a bored cop reading about deer becomes a source of minor fascination. It doesn’t have to be directly related to the task at hand, though that helps. The point is to keep the synapses firing. We search for anything or anyone of note, such as the escapee from The Twilight Zone whom Michael and I stumbled upon in an otherwise abandoned office building in Jersey City, where municipal public records were archived. He sat smoking, alone, at his desk, and insisted he knew nothing whatsoever about where the records we were searching for were located, nor about the boxes of moldering documents stacked in the darkened hallways, nor about the whereabouts of anyone who did know or when they might return. Because Michael and I are not easily deterred, even by someone who comes across more as an apparition than a living, breathing government employee, we pressed him for answers. Eventually he exhaled a puff of smoke, waved a hand toward the hallway beyond the door and said, “Help yourself.”

  I looked at Michael, who had a quizzical expression. We proceeded to poke through the cardboard boxes stacked shoulder-high in the halls, but there was no order to anything. It was a futile endeavor. The archives of this particular government agency were like the memories of an elderly, demented brain. You could root around in there for as long as you wanted, but the odds were against your finding anything useful. Once we decided to give up, we returned to the office, but the employee/apparition had disappeared. I half expected the formerly busy streets to be eerily devoid of human life when we stepped back outside.