What was the "cleanest" Presidential campaign of the last 50 years ?

Cleanest = most free of lies by any party. You notice I deliberately leave out 2004 and 2000 because of the Republicans.

on edit: corrected punctuation mark in subject line

on edit: I also left out this campaign of 2008 because of McSame and Moosehunter.

A Republican was in each of those, or are you trying to defend Republicans?

Both Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford ran decent, honest campaigns.

I remember 1972 and the utter humiliation of McGovern and Nixon tying him to marijuana. I don't remember anything really bad about Ford, beyond 1) he was a Republican and 2) the common meme at the time that he wasn't that smart.

It's surprising to me, considering Bob Dole was on the ticket. He's the king of mean but somehow he doesn't get the credit he deserves in that category.

Carter/Ford was pretty clean, but I've been around since Eisenhower and things weren't so down and dirty back then. But since I was a kid then, my perspective might be skewed.

Something tells me that the high minded intentions that year would've been as big a bomb as this year's. I remember hearing how our generation's Goldwater and our generation's Bobby would run a clean patriotic argument with clear differences and choices for the public and none of that mealy mouthed me-too-ism or bogus "character issues."

Instead, of course, we're fed a steady diet of a candidate's questionable ties to terrorist groups, or his uncertain moral character, or lack of presidential qualities, plus bold assertions about his lack of character or some dark allegiances formed in the past that only now are coming to the surface.

And what McCain has been saying about our guy is a hundred times worse!