The Anatomy Of A Smear Campaign By Richard H. Davis

655 Words3 Pages

Famous people have more rumors spread throughout society and the internet about them than ordinary people. The most rumored target is presidential candidates.“The Anatomy of a Smear Campaign” by Richard H. Davis follows John McCain’s campaign for president in the 2000 primary election. Another article regarding John McCain and the 2000 primary election is “How to Fight A Rumor” by Jesse Signal which entails the best way to fight against rumors in the public spotlight. In “How to Fight A Rumor,” the best way to fight a rumor was to not fight against it verbally in case one says the wrong thing, but to immediately create a factual platform to show the truth. In the primaries of the 2000 election, John McCain was most favored to win the nomination for the Republican party. The Bush campaign started circulating rumors about John McCain to make him lose popularity. …show more content…

In addition, they promised never run on media any further negative ads. Even though the McCain Campaign had more integrity than any others, this was likely the reason of McCain losing the presidential primaries. This shows how powerful rumors can be and the effects they can have on reputations. John McCain and his campaign never figured out who caused these smear rumors. These rumors added up after a while, and ended up in him losing South Carolina by a large margin. John McCain learned from his mistake in the following situation: According to “How to Fight A Rumor,” with the Palin rumors, “John McCain came out and immediately laid the facts on the table, he was able to short-circuit the cover up theories, and reroute the conversation to the more easily managed topic of Bristol’s pregnancy.” He learned from his past experience that it is better to refute the arguments at the beginning before they get too big and cannot be