The 7 Dirtiest Tricks Politicians Use To Make You Like Them

7 Using Someone's Death To Advance An Agenda

I graduated high school and college with a woman called Kate Steinle. If that name sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because last year she was shot and killed by an undocumented immigrant in San Francisco. Since then, some politicians, particularly Donald Trump, have used her death to try to provoke fear in people that all undocumented immigrants are in fact rapists and killers, as if crossing a border without permission acts as the necessary serum to turn Dr. Jekylls into Senor Hydes.

I'm calling bullshit. Now, Kate and I were not close by any means. We probably only said a few words to each other, ever. But I was in her orbit for long enough to recognize, for the first time, that the random name a politician was throwing around had been attached to an actual person, and not a cartoon character who came complete with "boing" sounds when she dropped things. It pissed me off, and even affected our class's ability to mourn:

Her brother wasn't having it either, going on CNN and telling Anderson Cooper, "Donald Trump talks about Kate Steinle like he knows her. I've never heard a word from his campaign manager, I've never heard a word from him. It's disconcerting. I don't want to be affiliated with someone who doesn't have the common courtesy to reach out and ask about Kate, and our political views and what we want."

It's especially upsetting because lost in the noise of using a pretty young woman's death as a political lightning rod is the fact that it might have been a tragic accident, not the cold-blooded killing it was made out to be.

But I can't be hypocritical about this. I support Hillary Clinton, so I was thrilled when the sister of Chris Stevens, the ambassador killed in Benghazi, came out and said that her family didn't blame Clinton for Stevens's death. But now I hope she never uses that to try to deflect any blame people try to place on her. He was just as real as Kate Steinle, and I'll never know how he would have felt. Or if he would have made "boing" sounds when he dropped things. Sorry, I've been watching a lot of Cartoon Network lately.

6 Their Parents' Or Grandparents' Jobs

I'd like to tell you about my grandmother. She is a great woman, who was widowed young and raised three boys on her own in one of the poorest areas of rural Kentucky, all while holding down a job cooking meals at the local hospital and practicing her ninja spin kicks. This information has not affected my life in any real way, but if I ever decide to run for office, that shit right there is gold.

Politicians love to talk about their parents and grandparents. And that's fine, to an extent. After all, they shaped us into who we are, be it beacons of hope for America or bloviating turd-burglars. But there comes a point where it stops being about how proud you are of your family and becomes a competition to see whose relatives had it the hardest.

You see this all the time in debates. One by one, the candidates will bring up the tragic backstory of a parent or grandparent, each one trying to outdo the other. Here's Ted Cruz from one of this year's many Republican debates, talking about how his father left Cuba with just a hundred dollars IN HIS UNDERWEAR and then took a job washing dishes for 50 cents an hour.

It's a good thing he included that underwear detail. Without it, how would people know what to think about Cruz's plan to balance the budget?

You have to walk a fine line, though. You want your relative to have been poor, but not on welfare or any other government programs. No being homeless or anything too tragic, either. Dignified poverty, if you will. And if you have a relative who actually did well for themselves? Unless you're a Bush or a Clinton or a Romney and can't get away with hiding it, don't mention those people. Apparently, there is a hierarchy of jobs that are more "American," with barely-above-the-poverty-line blue collar ones being the best.

5 Their Pets

Did you watch then-President-elect Obama's victory speech in 2008? It was about 45 minutes long. I assume he said a lot of things about bringing the country together and making it better and other hopey-changey stuff, but I only remember 20 seconds of it:

If you didn't click that, it's Obama telling his daughters that they have earned the new puppy that is coming with them to the White House. That is cute as fuck right there. And like everything politicians do, it was totally calculated to make him look good.

Presidents basically have to have pets to make them seem more human and less like cyborgs that run on money and the power of the Constitution. What kind of pets they have and how they treat them are huge. We've told you before about some of the weirder choices, but in general, presidents need to have a dog. It was considered odd when the Clinton's entered the White House with only their cat, Socks. When they got a Labrador, Buddy, in 1997, many people saw him as nothing more than a political prop, especially as Buddy appeared only a month before the Lewinsky scandal broke.

In the past, presidential dogs have been the cause of scandal themselves. FDR had a Scottie named Fala that he brought with him everywhere and was a national celebrity. But Congress threatened to investigate Roosevelt after a rumor started that he had sent a destroyer to pick up the dog after it was left behind in the Aleutian Islands (it hadn't been). When Lyndon Johnson picked up one of his beagles, Him, by the ears to pose for a photo, the country went apeshit, to the point where he had to officially apologize.

And in 1952, when Richard Nixon, then the Republican candidate for vice president, was caught taking money and gifts he wasn't supposed to, he made a half-hour televised speech defending himself. What was the only thing people remembered from that speech? That Nixon said he refused to give back a dog he had been given, which his children had already named Checkers. It went down in history as the "Checkers Speech," and it was maybe the one time Nixon came off kind of likable and not a bloated sack of lies.

4 Being Outdoorsy

According to the people whose job it is to know this stuff, only 6 percent of Americans went hunting in 2011. But you would never know it from the number of staged photo ops of politicians, gun in hand, ready to take the life of an animal in the hopes of getting a few more votes. I don't think you have to be a hemp-wearing vegan to find that a little sick.

In 2007, Mike Huckabee went on a pheasant hunt that was conveniently taped. He wasted no time in showing off the three birds he killed on his YouTube page:

But that pales in comparison to the shoot he went on in 2015, where he flat-out exploded a bird. His people were so excited about this that they actually put it in an ad. TAKE THAT, ISIS.

It's even worse when Democrats try this tactic, since they have to walk the fine line between getting the hunter vote while not angering animal right supporters. When John Kerry went on a much-mocked goose hunt in 2004, he was the only one of the group who didn't hold up a carcass, and journalists noted that he made sure to hide his bloodied hand from the cameras.

But at least Kerry had a bit of a hunting history he could point to. When the equally elitist Mitt Romney claimed he had been a "lifelong hunter," he was suddenly faced with the problem of looking like a liar or a lawbreaker, since it was revealed he had never taken out a hunting license in any of the states he'd lived in. He clumsily attempted to clarify that he had always hunted "small varmints," and compared himself to Jed Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies. At least he got the Beverly Hills part right.

But hunting is far from the only physical pastime that they use to try to look virile. Ronald Reagan had lots of pictures of himself on horseback, while George W. Bush made sure that everyone knew he spent most of the time at his ranch clearing brush.

3 Eating In Diners

What the hell is up with politicians and diners? Do they know there are other places to eat in the world? Are their doctors concerned that they are all suffering from a severe grease and kitsch deficiency? How stupid do they think we are?

Politicians: It's enough. We get it. You want us to think you are just a normal local and you know all the down-home places to eat. But Yelp isn't a secret only your campaign manager knows about, and you are not fooling anyone.

It's gotten to the point where even diner owners themselves can't take it anymore. During the 2012 primaries, a diner in New Hampshire put up a sign letting politicians know that they weren't welcome, and when interviewed, one employee compared them to hobos.

But if politicians want us to believe that they are men and women of the people because they mingle with us commoners at diners, then maybe they should make sure to treat those places well. Clinton had a terrible news cycle in 2008 after a waitress claimed she had not been left a tip when the candidate visited. When Romney and his team went to a diner in Iowa, they ripped tablecloths, broke a truck they borrowed, and even smashed a picture of the owner's father. And virtually every owner complains that the incessant campaign stops slow down their service, annoy their customers, and keep them from making money.

Maybe diners were once the place to connect with the average voter, to find a mix of people from a town all in one place. But these days, we have 24-hour news networks and the internet. We don't need to meet a politician in person to know their views. Now, the only real reason to go to a diner is to improve your image. In 2008, when Obama was being accused of being an arugula-eating elitist, he fled to a diner and ate a pie. Then he began talking about that pie on the campaign trail, managing to mention it 12 TIMES in one speech.

2 Faking Local Accents

If a politician wants to get a two-for-one deal, they can go to a diner AND slip into the local accent. This is the best way they know how to beat you over the head with their folksiness. The problem is, it is usually Northern politicians slipping into a Southern accent, which makes them sound like they've had some moderately severe head trauma. It tends to be Democratic politicians who do this. (That may just be because more Republican politicians are actually from the South.) And nothing good has ever come from it.

Despite being from North Carolina, the late William F. Buckley claimed that Senator John Edwards had to work hard to keep his accent, even "practicing" it before important events. The cosmopolitan Edwards pushed his Southern credentials to their absolute limit when he used the term "highfalutin" during a debate in 2008. John Kerry, born in Colorado, educated at Yale, and married to the Heinz heiress, walked into a general store on the campaign trail in 2004 and asked "Can I get me a hunting license here?" thereby trying and failing to combine being local and being outdoorsy. Even Hillary Clinton, a Chicago native who also attended Yale, sometimes slips into her husband's Arkansas accent when in the South. And Obama himself has been known to use a "y'all" or two in his speeches delivered below the Mason-Dixon line.

1 Pretending To Know About Sports

Aside from Gerald Ford, we have never expected our politicians to be sports stars.

But because sports remind us of achievement, leadership, and power, politicians keep trying so hard to look like they know what the hell they are doing. And it makes for some of the most entertaining political moments ever.

Pity Barack Obama, who looked so cool playing basketball on the campaign trail, but once he became president was forced to go outside his comfort zone and throw out the first pitch at a Nationals game.

Hillary Clinton grew up as a Cubs fan in Chicago, so no one was fooled when she said she would split her allegiance and also become a Yankees fan if she was elected a New York senator. Mitt Romney wanted you to know that he was just like your average TV-watchin', beer swillin' NASCAR follower when he said that, while he didn't watch "as closely as some of the most ardent fans," he did "have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners."

Then there was the time Vice President George H.W. Bush went bowling and managed to make even the drunkest guy in the place look good:

This primary season, Donald Trump went to Pennsylvania and asked "How's Joe Paterno?" The answer, of course, is that he's been dead for four years, and before that was fired in disgrace in the middle of his assistant coach's child molestation scandal. Ted Cruz was trying to talk about the beautiful way sports is the same across the country and transcends our differences when he referred to a hoop as a "basketball ring." While in Indiana. The home of basketball. And Marco Rubio's team actually thought that if they gave him a football to throw around in an ad, maybe he wouldn't look like such a punchable goober. At least they tried.

Kathy wrote a very funny book called Funerals To Die For, and you can buy it here. Or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

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