“Political campaign: a matter of mud, threat, and smears”

“Political campaign: a matter of mud, threats, and smears” appeared in a humor handbook in 1958 and was used to describe John F. Kennedy’s campaign in 1960. “Mud, threat(s) and smears” is a parody of Winston Churchill’s famous 1940 speech on “blood, sweat and tears” (or “blood, toil, tears and sweat”).
 
The “mud, threats and smears” joke is dated (although “blood, sweat and tears” is still remembered) and is rarely told today.
     
 
Daffynition
Political Campaign: 1. A war in which everybody shoots from the lip; 2. A matter of mud, threats, and smears.
   
Google Books
High points in the work of the high schools of New York City
Volume 28
New York (N.Y.) Board of Education
1946
Pg. ?:
An indignant citizen, writing to the newspaper PM, defined diesism as: mud, threat and smears.
 
Google Books
The Reader’s Digest
Volume 69
1954
Pg. ?:
A matter of mud, threat and smears.—Jack Kofoed in Miami Herald.
 
Google Books
Braude’s Handbook of Humor for All Occasions
By Jacob Morton Braude
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
1958
Pg. 328:
Political campaign: a matter of mud, threats, and smears
 
Google News Archive
13 March 1960, Rock Hill (SC) Evening Herald, pg. 4, cols. 1-2:
Definitions For International News Followers
Thumbing through Braude’s Handbook of Humor for All Occasions, one finds several humorous definitions which might be of interest to people who try to keep up with world affairs.
(...)
Political campaign: a matter of mud, threats and smears.
 
Google News Archive
26 July 1960, Daytona Beach (FL) Morning Journal, pg. 2, col. 1:
Underwood (Gov. Cecil H. Underwoood of West Virginia—ed.) parodied the famous “blood, sweat and tears” phrase of a famous Briton, Sir Winston Churchill, to slap briskly at Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy.
 
Kennedy, he said, “has taken the low road of mud, threats and smears.”