Read Online We're with Nobody by Alan Huffman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Alan Huffman
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Bullockâs husband having an extramarital affair? The answer is: We do. We care very much about the origins of the information that fuels negative politics. Once you start gathering that kind of information itâs hard to stop, with the result that entire towns occasionally fall under our critical eye, and now and then we turn our wrath on each other.
Starting out eighteen years ago, we worked in total secrecy. Any investigation requires discretion, after all. But the volatility of todayâs political and media environment has lifted some of the traditional taboos about our line of work. A candidate who canât afford his own researcher may hold a news conference to decry his opponentâs having hired a âprivate detectiveâ to discredit him, but this is a quaint throwback. Most people are now aware that political research is routinely done, and social networking sites have blurred the lines between whatâs public and private, anyway. On one hand, it can be distressing when someone forwards you an inflammatory, baseless e-mail, but itâs also liberating for us as researchers in that people are becoming less easily shocked by our digging.
During a recent research project in Georgia, as I was requesting copies of property tax records for a candidate whoâd been late paying numerous times, the clerk came upon one request and said, âThis isnât the candidate. You must have written the number down wrong.â She knew the candidate, knew what I was doing and was not at all put off or surprised. This is most decidedly not always the case, but the fact that it happened at all represents a minor sea change. In the past, few clerks complied with our requests unquestioningly unless they loathed the candidate we were researching.
When we are confronted by obstructionist clerks and others who attempt to throw obstacles in our path, we gird ourselves with the knowledge that in this, the golden age of lies, we are on the side of truth. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from opposition research. Finding out whatâs going on is about far more than sitting down to Google someone (which, unfortunately, is how many campaigns are coming to view opposition research), or citing an undocumented claim in someoneâs blog. In the end, the cold, hard, documented facts are our best hope of knowing whatâs really going on, and the best way to find them is as close to the source as possible. Thatâs something thatâs understood even in the underworld of recalcitrant clerks. The process of discovering salient facts is crucial to the worldâs greatest evolving democracy and, at times, is also extremely entertainingâas we learned long ago, while hoisting beers in a bass boat on the Tenn-Tom.
Chapter 6
Michael
D uring one of the climactic scenes in 1939âs Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Jimmy Stewartâs affable character, the newly elected U.S. senator Jefferson Smith, rails at his fellow Senate members that âa certain man in my state, a Mr. James Taylor, wanted to put through this dam for his own profit. A man who controls a political machine! And controls everything else worth controlling in my state. Yes, and a man even powerful enough to control congressmenâand I saw three of them in his room the day I went up to see him!â The voters, Smith insists, have a right to know when politics gets corrupted, and itâs his responsibility to tell them.
The idea that negative politics is a recent phenomenon, that once upon a time elections were decided by polite, informed debate, is complete fantasy. Attacking political opponents has been used effectively for centuries. In some cases itâs been done honorably; in other cases itâs gotten people killed.
Among the earliest evidence of oppo, one of the most dramatic episodes dates to the first century B.C. , a tumultuous period during which Julius Caesar was assassinated, a slave named
Starting out eighteen years ago, we worked in total secrecy. Any investigation requires discretion, after all. But the volatility of todayâs political and media environment has lifted some of the traditional taboos about our line of work. A candidate who canât afford his own researcher may hold a news conference to decry his opponentâs having hired a âprivate detectiveâ to discredit him, but this is a quaint throwback. Most people are now aware that political research is routinely done, and social networking sites have blurred the lines between whatâs public and private, anyway. On one hand, it can be distressing when someone forwards you an inflammatory, baseless e-mail, but itâs also liberating for us as researchers in that people are becoming less easily shocked by our digging.
During a recent research project in Georgia, as I was requesting copies of property tax records for a candidate whoâd been late paying numerous times, the clerk came upon one request and said, âThis isnât the candidate. You must have written the number down wrong.â She knew the candidate, knew what I was doing and was not at all put off or surprised. This is most decidedly not always the case, but the fact that it happened at all represents a minor sea change. In the past, few clerks complied with our requests unquestioningly unless they loathed the candidate we were researching.
When we are confronted by obstructionist clerks and others who attempt to throw obstacles in our path, we gird ourselves with the knowledge that in this, the golden age of lies, we are on the side of truth. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from opposition research. Finding out whatâs going on is about far more than sitting down to Google someone (which, unfortunately, is how many campaigns are coming to view opposition research), or citing an undocumented claim in someoneâs blog. In the end, the cold, hard, documented facts are our best hope of knowing whatâs really going on, and the best way to find them is as close to the source as possible. Thatâs something thatâs understood even in the underworld of recalcitrant clerks. The process of discovering salient facts is crucial to the worldâs greatest evolving democracy and, at times, is also extremely entertainingâas we learned long ago, while hoisting beers in a bass boat on the Tenn-Tom.
Chapter 6
Michael
D uring one of the climactic scenes in 1939âs Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Jimmy Stewartâs affable character, the newly elected U.S. senator Jefferson Smith, rails at his fellow Senate members that âa certain man in my state, a Mr. James Taylor, wanted to put through this dam for his own profit. A man who controls a political machine! And controls everything else worth controlling in my state. Yes, and a man even powerful enough to control congressmenâand I saw three of them in his room the day I went up to see him!â The voters, Smith insists, have a right to know when politics gets corrupted, and itâs his responsibility to tell them.
The idea that negative politics is a recent phenomenon, that once upon a time elections were decided by polite, informed debate, is complete fantasy. Attacking political opponents has been used effectively for centuries. In some cases itâs been done honorably; in other cases itâs gotten people killed.
Among the earliest evidence of oppo, one of the most dramatic episodes dates to the first century B.C. , a tumultuous period during which Julius Caesar was assassinated, a slave named
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