Mud makes the game of politics miserable and memorable

It's been an intense election season to say the least.

All the rallies, town halls and all of those commercials have led to what therapists call political depression or fatigue.

It’s understandable. The 24/7 access to social media and news has some people feeling overloaded and overwhelmed by political content.

My doctor told me just yesterday, "What has been happening more and more is we're hearing about individuals who are expressing a sense of more anxiety, exacerbated anxiety, exacerbated depression … for the last few elections.”

Political depression is not a true medical diagnosis. It is a real issue that is impacting an increasing number of people, as it has as long as I have been covering politics.

Some would say it is meaner. Really?

Let’s go back to 1950 in North Carolina. The Democratic primary decided who would fill the seat left vacant by the death of Senator Melville Broughton. The state was split between Willis Smith and Frank Porter Graham, conservative and liberal ideas and ideals.

As the North Carolina History Project remembers,

Franklin P. Graham was born in Fayetteville in 1886, and he served as president of the University of North Carolina before his senate nomination. Gov. W. Kerr Scott selected Graham as his choice candidate because Graham was an educator, and he was a liberal progressive on race and social programs. Graham, in direct contrast to his opponent Smith, was believed by many in North Carolina to be “the most renowned Southern liberal of his time.”

Willis Smith, born in Virginia in 1887, and according to historian William Powell he was a member of “the conservative ‘plutocracy’ that had governed North Carolina since the 1930s” (p. 1050). Before his Senate run, Smith served as speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives and president of the American Bar Association. Smith was a conservative Democrat who was a Raleigh attorney at the time he decided to enter the 1950 political contest.

Smith labeled Graham a socialist. A communist sympathizer. A leader for integration. And with the help of a radio news manager named Jesse Helms, Smith won the race by 20,000 votes.

Graham never recovered from the mudslinging.

Sometimes you might think we would run out of mud, yet it seems the fertile political earth keeps producing more.

The Hunt-Helms race of 1984, Helms vs. Harvey Gantt in 1990 and the infamous ‘White Hands’ ad. Pat McCrory and Roy Cooper in 2016.

Those ads seem to pale with the onslaught of what we have seen in the 2022 congressional races.

One can only imagine what we might see in 2024 with the likes of Mark Robinson running against Josh Stein.

Why do we respond to the ads? We say we despise them. Yet most every political operative and campaign manager you speak with will tell you they work.

Paul Shumaker who works with Republicans recently reminded me, “This is not a NASCAR race. Finishing second gets you nothing but debt.”

His Democratic counterpart Morgan Jackson agrees. “The difference in a good candidate and a great candidate is the one who never loses focus. Do you want to be remembered as a good guy or do you want to win so you can do good work and move public policy?”

Moving public policy.

When is the last time you heard those words on a political ad?

When is the last time a candidate told you what they would do vs. what their opponent did wrong (or at least appeared to do wrong)?

Maybe we are simply used to the mud, that soft, sticky, sometimes nasty matter resulting from mixing earth and water.

And a few other items.

I think it is why we laughed so hard at a particular line in the movie Forest Gump.

Forest’s mom, played by Sally Field, has taken her young son to the doctor. The little boy’s legs are in braces from an earlier misdiagnosis.

The doctor, with cigarette dangling from his mouth and ashes falling on his protruding belly exclaims, “Mrs. Gump, there’s nothing wrong with your boy's legs. They’re straight, but his back is a crooked as a politician.”

Paul Shumaker chuckled when he reminded me of that scene.

“There is a level of understanding of the people they elect. They’re not going to be perfect. They (the voters) just want them not to be overly bad,” he said.

On Nov. 8, 1864, President Lincoln said, “I am thankful to God for this approval of the people. But while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me. It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one; but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and the rights of humanity.”

Will we ever hear those words from an elected official again?

Do we really want to?

Sometimes playing in the mud is just too much fun.