With President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in a virtual dead heat and political ads saturating the airwaves, it's easy to believe America is living in a time of unprecedented negative campaigning and personal attacks.
But according to experts, the practices used in the current election are nothing new.
\Ever since there have been contested elections on a party basis, there has been hyperbole, there have been arguments that it would be truly disastrous if the other side wins,"" said UW-Madison political science Professor Donald Ferree.
Experts cite the 1800 election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams as one of the first examples of personal attacks surfacing in an election.
""[They said Jefferson] was going to serve up young American women to the Russian Czar and he was in bed with the French, and all sorts of negative things,"" said Ken Goldstein, UW-Madison political science professor.
John Cooper Jr., a UW-Madison history professor, added Jefferson's opposition also accused him of fathering children with a slave, a charge that turned out to be true.
""It was a time when there was a lot of what we would consider now to be pretty vicious stuff,"" Cooper said.
The causes behind so-called negative campaigning are hard to trace. Ferree noted not all questionable campaign behavior is malicious.
""You can honestly believe that you're the best single candidate and it would be much better for the country if you win,"" he said. ""If that's the case, you're going to have a pretty strong motivation for doing something as long as it's not actively illegal, immoral or outside the pale.""
It makes sense, then, that a candidate, convinced of his own value to the country, would do whatever he could to win.
""The one I always like to use,"" Goldstein said, ""is that the major reason why Abraham Lincoln didn't air negative television advertising is because there wasn't any television. Because if there was television, he would have.""
According to Ferree, there are two major reasons negative campaigning has been prevalent in U.S. elections.
""Even while people say they don't like ads that are labeled as negative, it's reasonably clear that they-at least on some level-will work,"" he said. ""It's a little bit like disarmament, that it's difficult to get one side to give up on something if they think the other side will be pursuing it.""
Americans who were surprised by the confusion following the 2000 election need only look back to 1876 for precedent. Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, and to some it seemed the electoral vote. But Republicans contested the electoral vote in three states.
A 15-member commission of senators, representatives and Supreme Court justices eventually awarded the electoral votes and the election to Tilden's opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes, and with some political dealings, the Democrats agreed not to block Hayes' ascent to office.
Although negative campaigns have been the norm throughout history, there have been exceptions--campaigns that tended to be positive in nature. Most notable, according to experts, is the 1912 election between Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Taft, and also the 1940 election between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie.
Speaking of the 1912 race, Cooper lauded the tone of the political discourse between Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
""They went after each other's vulnerable spots,"" he said. ""But basically they engaged in what in many ways was a debate over political philosophy.\
