Is Ted Cruz really a dirty campaigner?

In 2016, it's become rather hard to run a truly dirty political campaign. Distraction, deception, and demagoguery are still as prevalent as ever, but the black arts are getting harder to execute in a society so permeated by surveillance of all types. So when people start saying that Ted Cruz is an unusually "dirty" campaigner, we have to remind ourselves that the bar for dirty tricks has fallen pretty low. But is Cruz really any dirtier than anyone else?

Well, there were those flyers his campaign sent out before the Iowa caucus, operating off a legitimate finding in political science — that people are more likely to vote if they think whether they voted will be public — and turning it into a weirdly hostile message, accusing voters of a "voting violation" and giving them poor grades for turning out. And then there were the phone calls that went out on caucus night, alleging (falsely) that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race.

Then there was the strange story of a moment captured in a hotel lobby by a college newspaper reporter, when Marco Rubio passed by Ted Cruz's father Rafael and a Cruz staffer who was reading a Bible. Rubio pointed to the Bible and said "All the answers are in there," but the transcript that appeared on screen when the video was uploaded said "Not many answers in it." The idea that Marco Rubio would say something uncomplimentary about the Bible to someone he passed by is beyond preposterous, but for whatever reason, Cruz's communication director, Rick Tyler, posted the video on social media, before quickly taking it down and apologizing. Before the day was over, Cruz had fired Tyler.

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Did Ted Cruz have personal knowledge of any of these things? It's hard to imagine he did. It's not like someone was going to say to him, "Hey boss, we're thinking of making some calls on caucus day telling people Ben Carson is pulling out of the race, what do you think?", and he said, "Great idea — make it so."

Nevertheless, the candidate has to bear responsibility for what's done in his name. Even more importantly, campaigns are a reflection of the person whose face is on the posters, even if an imperfect one. Staffers and volunteers are attracted to the candidate who not only shares their beliefs but seems like he or she shares their attitude.

So now, Cruz is fighting the perception that he's the dirty one. A new ad from a pro-Rubio super PAC calls Cruz "underhanded," and Donald Trump has been calling him a liar at every opportunity.

But the charges against Cruz are actually pretty mild, as has been the campaign as a whole. In South Carolina, a state notorious for knife-fight politics, this year's GOP primary was almost genteel. Apart from a few accusations of push polls and misleading robocalls, there was almost nothing dirty to speak of. That's a state where back in 2000, when George W. Bush and John McCain were fighting for the nomination, somebody spread rumors that McCain's adopted daughter (who is from Bangladesh) was actually a child he fathered with his black mistress.

Nobody ever knew for sure if Karl Rove was responsible for that rumor. But as Joshua Green documented in a 2004 article, the man known as "Bush's Brain" had a long history of using rumor-mongering, often about his client's opponent's sexual orientation, to turn elections around. In one notorious case, he apparently spread rumors that an opponent, an Alabama judge who had done volunteer work to prevent child abuse, was in fact a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," said a former Rove staffer. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out — he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out."

In 2000, the internet was in its infancy and social media didn't exist. Today, rumors can spread faster, but they can also get shot down faster. And the more concrete dirty tricks — the kind that involve something like printing up flyers or making robo-calls — leave a trail that can quickly be traced back to its source. If someone were to put up notices in black neighborhoods saying that the election had been moved to Wednesday or telling people they can't vote if they have any unpaid parking tickets — tactics Republicans have used in the past — chances are that within minutes Democrats would be emailing, texting, and tweeting the correction to keep people from being misled.

The most underhanded campaign tactics depend on both anonymity and secrecy: Nobody knows who did it and nobody realizes it even happened until it's too late. That hasn't become completely impossible, but it's a lot harder than it used to be. Just look at what happened to Cruz. The robocalls someone connected with him were making on the night of the Iowa caucuses were identified and publicized almost immediately, meaning they probably ended up doing Cruz more damage than Carson.

To be clear, there are many varieties of dirty tricks still available. Some of which, like voter ID requirements that fall much more heavily on certain kinds of people, are acts of the state and have even been blessed by the Supreme Court. But the dark arts are in retreat. In this campaign, most of the nastiness has been visible for everyone to see. Sometimes that may not feel like progress, but it is.