‘Face the Nation’ host spotlights 1800 election in new book

The 2016 race has been the dirtiest in presidential campaign history when it comes to the public behavior of the candidates, according to CBS News host John Dickerson.

“Certainly Donald Trump is saying things out of his mouth that are basically, I think it’s fair to say, dirtier than anything we’ve heard from any candidate before,” Dickerson said Wednesday.

{mosads}Trump’s public insults – particularly calling Hillary Clinton a “bigot” and coining nicknames for his opponents such as “Crooked Hillary” and “Lyin’ Ted” – are unlike anything seen before in American politics; while Clinton is more traditional in her political language, Dickerson said.

Dickerson is in a good position to make such sweeping historical analogies.

The host of CBS’s “Face the Nation” is out with a new book called “Whistlestop” recounting his favorite tales from more than 200 years of election history.

The race unfolding in 2016 is in some respects even uglier than what Dickerson unearthed from the infamous election of 1800.

At least in that election it was the candidates’ allies, not the candidates themselves, who were hurling the mud.

During that contest, then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson outsourced his dirty work to a secret attack dog named James Thomas Callender.

Callender was a flea-ridden drunkard who had been charged with vagrancy.

He was also a journalist, who had been thrown in jail for his writings. 

Callender was more savage in his published attacks on Jefferson’s opponent, the incumbent president John Adams, than anything seen today.

As Dickerson writes, Callender described Adams as “a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

Dickerson said the “real-time benefit” of squeezing the writing of “Whistlestop” into his crazy 2016 schedule was that it made him think more broadly about the current race.

Whether it’s been Trump’s crashing of the Republican Party, candidates fighting with the press, Clinton’s wooden public speaking, or an entire media establishment left with a Trump-shaped omelet on its face; Dickerson’s book shows that none of this is new.

Asked about the current Republican attacks on Clinton’s health, Dickerson pointed out that health concerns have been raised, with varying degrees of intensity and legitimacy, in nearly every election since JFK in 1960.

Dickerson believes the best analog for the Clinton illness storyline – which he said is only loosely tethered to reality – is the unfounded rumor that was spread about the mental health of 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.

But there is one aspect of the 2016 campaign that Dickerson believes is genuinely original: The character of Donald Trump.

And it’s at Trump Tower where Dickerson would begin a future “Whistlestop” documenting the 2016 campaign.

“Symbolically, the moment that would still lead any look back at this race would be Donald Trump’s escalator ride down into the basement floor of Trump Tower,” he said.

“We’ve never seen a presidential candidate announce that way. The entire event was encased in his brand management and his brand.

“He took the escalator by the counter that sells his shirts and ties and golf balls. It was in his building,” Dickerson added.

“So I think as a symbolic moment for something that kicked off a campaign that had a lot of the elements that defined the campaign, that would be it.”