“Loser.” “Third rate.” “A total low-life.” Almost every new day brings a bevy of fresh new insults from President Trump.
Trump may be in uncharted territory with his insults, but only in his their sophomoric level. They are brief and not intellectual or clever. He labeled his 2016 Political opponents “Crooked Hillary,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Little Marco.” As president, he branded Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., “Sleepin’ Bob Casey,” Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum “a stone-cold thief,” and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., “Jeff Flake(y).”
Trump is far from the first politician to use political insults. His predecessors also bad-mouthed their opponents, albeit in a more intellectual manner.
In 1833, Harvard University awarded an honorary degree to President Andrew Jackson. Former President John Quincy Adams, a Harvard University Alumnus, who lost his re-election bid to Jackson in 1828, boycotted the ceremony. In his diary, Adams called Jackson, who lacked a college education: “A barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.”
Jackson could also level an effective insult. In explaining why he appointed future President James Buchanan to the post of Minister to Russia. He said: “It was as far as I could send him to get him out of my sight, and where he could do the least harm. I would have sent him to the North Pole if we kept a Minister there.”
After Buchanan became president, one of his most vociferous critics was U.S. Rep. John Sherman, R-Ohio, who opined: “The Constitution provides for every contingency in the executive, except in the mind of the president.”
Political insults have also served as an effective tool in the electoral arsenal of presidential candidates. In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt, running as the nominee of the Progressive Party, labeled his Republican opponent President William Howard Taft “a puzzlewit.” Taft returned fire, calling Roosevelt: “an egotist and a demagogue.” The two had been close friends prior to Taft’s Presidency. In fact, Roosevelt had supported Taft for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1908.
In a speech prior to the Iowa caucuses in 1988, Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was able to poke fun at the two leading Republican candidates, Vice President George H.W. Bush and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., in one fell swoop, averring: “Vice President Bush and Senator Dole have been saying some rather nasty things about each other. Senator Dole says the Vice President is not much of a leader and the Vice President says Senator Dole is not much of a leader. I don’t ordinarily agree with those guys but in this case I agree with both of them.”
Of course, not all insults by politicians are intellectually inspired. Some are very basic, but hilarious. In 1995, Rep. Marion Berry, R-Ark., referred to his 30-year-old Republican colleague, Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., as a “Howdy Doody looking nimrod.”
In 2010, after the organization “Americans for Tax Reform” alleged that then-Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., had changed his position on Health Insurance Reform, Taylor issued a press release chastising the organization. The press release read: “Americans for Tax Reform are lying sacks of scum, and anyone who knowingly repeats this false information is also a liar.”
On rarer occasions, politicians have been known to insult their own constituents. In 1871, Harper’s Weekly ran articles exposing the corruption of New York State Senator William “Boss” Tweed and his political machine. Tweed commented to a reporter: “I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles, my constituents don’t know how to read, but they can’t help seeing them damned pictures.”
Campaigning for a full presidential term in 1948, Harry Truman told voters: “You’ve got the worst Congress you’ve ever had. If you [referring to the audience] send another Republican Congress to Washington, you’re a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are.” Truman won the election, and the Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress.
The late Sen. Stephen Young, D-Ohio, was known for his sarcastic and candid responses to constituents who challenged his views. One letter-writer ended his letter by saying: “I would welcome the opportunity to have intercourse with you.” Senator Young responded: “You sir, can have intercourse with yourself.”
One of the most innovative insulters Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn. In 1967, George Romney, the early front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination, discussed his newfound opposition to the U.S. role in Vietnam. He said that his past support for the war was because during a trip to Vietnam, “I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get, not only by the generals but also by the diplomatic corps over there. They do a very thorough job. McCarthy commented: “A light rinse would have sufficed.”
McCarthy remarked of two rivals for the 1980 Democratic Presidential nomination — incumbent President Jimmy Carter and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. — “The difference between Carter and Kennedy: Carter has this vague religion which he believes in strongly, while Kennedy has this strong religion which he believes in vaguely.”
Perhaps the most imaginative detailed insult came in the 1994 Virginia U.S. Senate race. Sen. Chuck Robb, D, was challenged by Republican Oliver North, who had been implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Presidential Administration of Ronald Reagan. Robb brought out the heavy rhetorical artillery, telling an audience in Alexander, Va., that his Senate opponent “is a document-shredding, Constitution-trashing, Commander in Chief-bashing, Congress-thrashing, uniform-shaming, Ayatollah-loving, arms-dealing, criminal-protecting, résumé-enhancing, Noriega-coddling, Social Security-threatening, public school-denigrating, Swiss-banking-law-breaking, letter-faking, self-serving, election-losing, snake-oil salesman who can’t tell the difference between the truth and a lie.” The next day, Robb won the Senate election.
So next time Trump lashes out with “incompetent,” “mediocre,” “dumb” or “fool,” just remember: he’s an insult amateur compared to some of his predecessors and other political figures. Political insults — a byproduct of the competitive campaign process — are nothing new under the sun.
Rich Rubino is author of American Politics on the Rocks: The Bizarre Side of American Politics.
