Since the Lake City is taking a stretch between innings in America's "real national pastime" of politics and the recent non-partisan elections turned out to be so hotly contested, I thought it might be timely to share a little inside baseball from the political arena in preparation for what might an interesting October and November. In a recent editorial The Coeur d'Alene Press anticipated the use of "smear" tactics in the upcoming elections in a context that I, personally, would not consider anything like a smear; that is, accountability for a recorded vote on a controversial question. So you might ask, if that is not a smear, what is?

The smear is a traditional, if deplorable, part of politics. From George Washington's "hidden monarchial ambitions" to Barack Obama's "secret Kenyan birth" every successful politician has to learn the cut and parry of the untruths, half-truths and innuendo that are part of the game. Most people involved in putting campaigns together are very good at simulating outrage, but in reality they have seen it all and are so intimately acquainted with the various species of smears that they have developed a kind of grudging admiration for the more creative and audacious ones. When you see them screaming it is only the political equivalent of "working the ref." They even have nicknames for smears, which might prove useful to the voter scoring at home this fall.

A "First Degree" is the most common and unsophisticated type of smear. It usually emerges at the beginning of the campaign, and is disseminated by means of a whispering campaign. It is usually propagated by well-intentioned supporters, who pass it on like "the wave." First Degree smears have two characteristics: they are unverifiable, and they have an odd authenticating detail attached to them. For example: "I hear the people he used to work with at the City Sewer Department didn't respect him. They hated him so much they left a 'present' on his desk the day he retired." Or, "I understand he only wants to be re-elected to go to DC to play house with a blonde lobbyist. She represents the cosmetic surgery lobby." Of course the insinuation is never the object. The goal is to provoke a reaction. If the candidate is unwise enough to be caught denying a detailed accusation, along the lines of, "I categorically deny that I knocked down and stole money from a 60-pound Girl Scout while she was collecting for 12 boxes of Do-Si-Dos from a shut-in, disabled, Korean War veteran back in Dubuque, Iowa in 1981." The story is the denial, which is now etched the minds of the voter.

The only defense for a First Degree smear is to simply ignore it. This might help explain why our elected officials are so irritatingly insensitive: Thin skin never wins. If First Degrees are crude, "Second Degree" smears are works of art. They openly originate with the campaign and play out over several weeks. They require a lot of pump-priming because, in and of themselves, the allegations are not actually damning. They are doled out in little droplets, like water torture, as "indicative of a pattern." In fact, you can identify this type of smear by the inclusion of that phrase. A classic example of the type was the 1988 Joe Biden plagiarism smear.

The first allegation was that Sen. Biden modeled his speeches on feisty, British Labour Party politician Neil Kinnock's. This was followed by the heart-stopping revelation that he had improperly attributed quoted text in a college term paper. Sound harmless? Remember, the faulty footnotes were "indicative of a pattern" of plagiarism. The season ended early for Joe that year. The defense for a Second Degree is to muddy the waters. First the campaign has to guess what is going to be suggested, and then the candidate endlessly repeats preemptive comments like, "My opponent is so desperate, the next thing I expect him to say is that I left off an endnote in a high school book report!"

"Third Degree" smears are the easiest to identify. They always come in the closing days of the campaign. No matter where they seem to come from, they originate with the campaign. There is never a paper trail. A surrogate will be used, or the evidence delivered over the transom. These smears always come from a losing candidate and are directed at a leading candidate. Although they are usually (not always) accurate, they are never true. Sound confusing?

Essentially it means the charge could have been explained if time allowed. For example: "Candidate J publically admitted to having engaged in sexual intercourse with a teenager!" (Candidate J and his wife of 40 years married when they were both aged 19.) Or, "Candidate Q uses the same PO box number as a notorious racist group!" (The numbers are randomly assigned by the post office, the second usage coming decades after the first.) The defense for a Third Degree smear is to get the word out quickly. Thankfully, these types of smears often backfire, and are less and less successful, as fewer and fewer people vote at the polls and responses to the accusation can be made in minutes via blogs and the like. Nowadays, they mainly just lift the spirits of the smeared candidate's supporters because they confirm that he or she is, in fact, winning.

My suggestion for the voter this fall is to ignore all the foofaraw around the sidelines: the cheerleader's tiny skirts, the T-shirt cannons, the silly-string battle to the death between the opposing mascots, all the political smears of any degree. Focus on the field. Question any unverifiable, oddball factoids; or anything "indicative of a pattern;" and every late-breaking item. The only things that really matter in an election are "the big three": the candidate's over all political orientation, the candidate's positions on key questions of interest, and the candidate's character as evidenced by documented past behavior.

Let the games begin.

Paul Matthews of Rathdrum is a longtime political campaign volunteer and a current precinct committeeman.