On Obama: "A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee" -Bill Clinton
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...ama-coffee-years-game-change-article-1.197492
Jefferson hired a writer to pen insults rather than dirty his own hands (at least at first). One of his most creative lines said that Adams was a "hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Adams' Federalists carried things even further, asking voters, "Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames... female chastity violated... children writhing on the pike? GREAT GOD OF COMPASSION AND JUSTICE, SHIELD MY COUNTRY FROM DESTRUCTION." I bet the Federalists would be so very upset to know that Jefferson was immortalized in 1936 as one of America's great presidents on Mount Rushmore. After such a nasty election, Congress passed the Twelfth Amendment, stating that the nominee to get the second-most number of votes would no longer be elected vice president.
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/01/28/5-nastiest-us-presidential-elections-in-history/
Apparently those Adams boys are scrappy fellows. When Andrew Jackson ran against incumbant John Quincy Adams in 1828, it was not pretty. Adams' previous term had not been a very successful one, but he was prepared to sling a little mud anyway. He and his handlers said Jackson had the personality of a dictator, was too uneducated to be president (they claimed he spelled Europe 'Urope'), and hurled all sorts of horrible insults at his wife, Rachel. Rachel had been in an abusive marriage with a man who finally divorced her, but divorce was still quite the scandal at the time. The Federalists called her a "dirty black wench", a "convicted adulteress" and said she was prone to "open and notorious lewdness".
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/01/28/5-nastiest-us-presidential-elections-in-history/
Yep, even Abraham Lincoln was dealt his share of crap. But he was pretty good at dealing it too. Although it's normal - and expected - for candidates to stump across the country in any little small town that will have them, but in 1860 it was considered a little tacky. Stephen Douglas chose this tactic anyway, but claimed that he was really just taking a leisurely train ride from D.C. to New York to visit his mom. Lincoln and his supporters took note of the fact that it took him over a month to get there and even put out a "Lost Child" handbill that said he "Left Washington, D.C. some time in July, to go home to his mother... who is very anxious about him. Seen in Philadelphia, New York City, Hartford, Conn., and at a clambake in Rhode Island. Answers to the name Little Giant. Talks a great deal, very loud, always about himself." 'Little Giant' was a potshot at Douglas' height - he was only 5'4". He was also said to be "about five feet nothing in height and about the same in diameter the other way." Douglas took aim at Lincoln, too, saying he was a "horrid-looking wretch, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse-swapper and the nightman." Another good one? "Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs and arms and hatchet face ever strung on a single frame."
