Election '82: Slinging Mud and Money

In big-buck campaigns, the price of victory could be scruples

Money and meanness. Those are the factors for which this year's election is likely to be remembered, long after calculations about shifts in party power and legislative policy are forgotten. Well, anyway, until 1984, when, it is altogether too possible, candidates' spending will spin still further into the stratosphere and their ads will become yet more venomous.

But even if that happens, 1982 is assured a place in the annals of American political campaigning. It was the year of two $10 million candidates, for...