MB Civic

By Lou Cannon | Wednesday, May 31, 2006; A19 | The Washington Post

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — When Ronald Reagan watched reruns of old movies in which he was a young actor, he said that “it was like seeing a son you never knew you had.”

Well, at least he knew he’d made the movies. Recently I was amazed to learn the source of a nasty attack ad being used in a race for governor of California: me.

In an oft-shown 30-second commercial, California state Controller Steve Westly calls his opponent in the Democratic primary race, Phil Angelides, a “champion smear artist.” The quotation is attributed prominently to The Post, with the date given in smaller letters: May 31, 1994. At that time I was writing a syndicated column, but I had no memory of writing those words 12 years ago. Perhaps I’d quoted someone? No such luck. My wife looked it up and found that the someone was me.

Perhaps my memory lapse was caused by the fact that Angelides was really just a side issue in that column, which focused on the “politics of fear” as practiced by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. The Wilson reelection campaign of 1994 featured a scary black-and-white television commercial showing hordes of Mexicans running across the California border. “They keep coming,” a narrator’s voice intoned. “The federal government won’t stop them at the border. . . . Governor Pete Wilson sent the National Guard to help.” The ad could have been made yesterday.

But the real central figure of the column wasn’t Wilson, either. It was Richard M. Nixon, who pioneered the art of the smear. Although I did indeed call Angelides the “champion smear artist of the current campaign,” I would never have given him top billing over Nixon, who in 1946 won a seat in Congress after what the late historian Stephen E. Ambrose called a “dirty” campaign. Nixon defeated incumbent Jerry Voorhis, a liberal Democrat, by suggesting that he was in league with the Communist Party. In fact, as Nixon knew, Voorhis opposed the Communists and was opposed by them.

My eldest son, Carl, a Washington journalist, thinks the column is dated. He believes vile campaigning has become so commonplace that now I’d call Angelides a “run-of-the-mill smear artist” instead of a champion. I’m not so sure. In 1994 Angelides ran a Nixonesque campaign against State Sen. David Roberti, who was vying with him for the Democratic nomination for state treasurer.

Roberti, the author of California’s stringent assault weapons law and a respected legislator, had just survived a recall effort led by the National Rifle Association, in which one piece of literature by pro-gun forces depicted him in the crosshairs of a marksman’s sights. He was still savoring his victory over the NRA when Angelides commissioned an ad linking Roberti to the murder in Florida of a doctor who performed abortions. The basis for this character assassination was that 17 years earlier Roberti had co-authored a state legislative resolution calling for federal adoption of an antiabortion amendment.

I have two thoughts inspired by my long-ago column. The first is that negative campaigning works. Four years after he smeared Voorhis, Nixon launched himself as a national figure, advancing to the Senate in a campaign during which he branded Democratic opponent Helen Gahagan Douglas as the “pink lady.” Pete Wilson handily won reelection in 1994, and voters approved an initiative (Proposition 187) denying health and educational benefits to illegal immigrants — much of which was later eviscerated by the courts. Angelides defeated Roberti, who was fiscally and emotionally drained by the recall campaign, but he then went on to lose to a Republican in November. Four years later he was elected to the office he now holds.

My other thought, as the writer Anton Chekhov said in a different context, is that “nothing passes.” The determination to win at any cost that led Nixon to destroy Voorhis and Douglas eventually produced the Watergate scandal, which forced him from the presidency. Wilson, who never smeared any opponent, was, on balance, a good governor who guided California through a fiscal crisis by having the courage to raise taxes in defiance of his party. But his “they-keep-coming” ad still resonates with Latinos, who have, since 1994, registered and voted Democratic in increasing numbers.

Angelides, in a less demanding office, has performed capably, although one wouldn’t know it from the barrage of wild charges that he and Westly, also capable, are hurling at each other in the closing days of the primary. But whether he wins or loses, Angelides will not easily erase the stain of the campaign he waged to win state office 12 years ago. Negative campaigning has consequences — and not only for its victims.

The writer, who covered the White House for The Post during the Nixon, Ford and Reagan presidencies, is the author of five books on Ronald Reagan, most recently “Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power.”