Candidates’ curses stir debate

Call it the potty-mouth primary.

With two Democratic presidential candidates uttering obscenities in public forums this month and the nine-candidate field trying to one-up each other in attacking President Bush, some observers are wondering whether political discourse is hitting new lows in coarseness.

Wesley Clark, talking to a man at a forum in New Hampshire this weekend, told the man live on C-SPAN that if Mr. Bush or Democrats questioned his commitment to the military and veterans, he would kick the spit out of them. Only the retired Army general didn’t say “spit.”

And Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, in an interview with Rolling Stone published this month, said he never thought the president would go and muck up reconstruction in Iraq. Only he didn’t say “muck.”

“The acceptable language has probably become slightly rawer over time, and maybe that’s what we’re seeing now,” said Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “The Little Book of Campaign Etiquette.”

He said campaigns are harsher or gentler depending on the “ideological heat of the moment,” and war often brings hotter times, meaning that 1968 would be much more heated than 1988.

“I do think we’re at a moment where discourse is rough — that is, a separation between positions, and people feel very strongly about them,” he said.

In this weekend’s incident, Mr. Clark was asked by the man what he would do if Mr. Bush or the Democrats challenged him on his support for veterans. After responding with his fighting words, Mr. Clark then said, “I hope that’s not on television.”

A television camera from C-SPAN, the cable public-programming network, had followed Mr. Clark as he worked the crowd, just as it has with other candidates throughout the campaign, and aired the exchange live. It since has been replayed by other TV news programs.

Clark campaign spokesman Bill Buck said Mr. Clark’s remark was that of a “military man and a fighter.”

“He’ll stand up to President Bush or any of the administration’s chicken hawks that attack his patriotism, military record or commitment to veterans,” he said.

He also said the comments weren’t any rougher than what Mr. Bush said about then-New York Times reporter Adam Clymer in the 2000 campaign. In that instance, Mr. Bush was on a stage and, in an exchange not heard by the crowd but picked up by a television microphone, leaned over to Dick Cheney and famously characterized the reporter’s personality.

Mr. Hess and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, both said it’s important to distinguish between utterances such as Mr. Bush’s, that were not meant to be public, and Mr. Kerry’s, which was.

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