林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

Foreign Affairs   May/ June2012

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?

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)