DIRTY TRICKS

There is an infamous, notorious, story about dirty tactics in political campaigns. It involved Lyndon Baines Johnson in his first race for the US Senate out of Texas. He went on to become Vice President and then – when John Kennedy was assassinated – LBJ became president.

In his first campaign Johnson earned the nickname “Landslide Lyndon” because he won by something like 87 votes and some of the voters’ names seemed to come, suspiciously, from tombstones in Texas cemeteries.

The story, which may apocryphal, had Johnson struggling behind his opponent in the final ten days of the campaign.

He told his campaign manager to leak a story that the opposing candidate had sex with pigs.

His aide protested: “LBJ, you know that’s not true”.

And Johnson supposedly replied: “You know it’s not true. I know it’s not true. But watch that son of a bitch squirm as he tries to deny it”.

That story is a long way from Melbourne, Australia. But dirty tricks in politics and smear campaigns are back in the news today in, believe it not, the campaign to elect a new Lord Mayor.

Candidate James Long claims he is the subject of a concerted smear campaign to wreck his candidacy.

Now there is an element of truth to the whispers. Long admits he had an affair with a 15-year-old girl when he was 39. He claimed at the time that he thought she was 18 – above the age of consent – and a VCE student.

He was charged back in 1992 and a County Court jury acquitted him on two sex charges from an affair which lasted almost a year and was consensual.

Now, anybody who has ever listened to me on radio or seen me on television or read my web page knows my views on predators – male or female – who sexually exploit children even with a teenager’s consent.

But this man was believed by a jury. He was acquitted. Should that issue BE an issue in his run for the Lord Mayor’s job?

Where is a line drawn, if ever, over dirty tricks in politics? I believe a politician who wraps himself in family values, and is pictured in brochures surrounded by his kids at the family hearth is fair game if he is also hypocritically having an affair.

I called Tony Abbott a hypocrite when he raised the abortion debate recently because he had given a child up for adoption as a young man. And remember Wilson Tuckey’s reference to “Christine” while trying to get under Paul Keating’s skin. Christine was a woman who once sued Keating under that quaint act of Breach of Promise. What did that have to do with his capacity, years later, as Federal Treasurer?

So the issue today is: Dirty Pool in politics. The grubby factor. Is anything off-limits? Does a Lord Mayoral candidate still have to pay 12 years after being acquitted by a jury?

Wednesday. November 10, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004