林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

林中斌序：競選抹黑在兩千年前的羅馬民主就有了。那還是雄辯家-西賽洛所採取的作法。結果呢? 輸掉選舉的人不服，起兵掀起內戰。民主為獨裁所取代。共和結束成為帝國。廿年後，西賽洛死於戰場。

兩千年後，柯林頓競選大將自豪的承認，他從年輕時代便從事競選抹黑，並為老闆贏得總統大選。美國的將來會如何?學習美國的台灣民主將來會如何?
勿忘：歐巴馬拒絕抹黑對手。                  (2012. 5.15)

Chong-Pin Lin’s Note: Negative campaigning is nothing new to politics. It had existed two thousand years ago in the Roman Republic, and was adopted by the famous orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. He is known to us as the one who conquered his stuttering by practicing public speech on the beach with a pebble in the mouth.

What happened to Cicero’s election campaign? He won. But his rival who apparently refused to accept the result took to armed rebellion and was killed in battle. Cicero, two decades later, was also killed in the civil wars. And the democracy became dictatorship, while the Roman Republic was replaced the Roman Empire.

President Bill Clinton won his elections thanks to campaign strategist James Carville who introduced Cicero’s campaign manual written by the latter’s brother. Carville honestly or unabashedly admitted that he began applying negative campaign tactics soon after his college graduation.

 What will become of America’s democracy? What will become of Taiwan’s democracy modeled after the U.S.?

A reminder: In 2008, Barack Obama refused to engage in smearing campaigns. He only pushed back when attacked by his opponent. (May 15, 2012)