"So how do citizens learn about
the weaknesses of their candidates? The answer is obvious: the opposition."
Nasty, brutish and short
Everyone hates political attack ads --
but they're informative and crucial to our democracy.
By John G. Geer | Los Angeles Times | April 23, 2006
Political science professor at Vanderbilt University, author of In
Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns
THERE ARE few pieces of conventional wisdom more deeply held than the idea that
negative political advertising is a danger to our society. David Broder, the dean
of Washington's political journalists, claims that "trivial is too kind a
word" for the content of today's campaigns. And the public apparently agrees.
In February 2004, for instance, 80% of Americans claimed in a Pew Research Center
poll that negative campaigns bothered them either "somewhat" or "very
much." A USA Today headline captured the general sentiment well: "Orgy
of Negativity Has Many Voters Disgusted."
The argument against attack ads is straightforward: They take our minds off the
real issues by distracting us with meaningless personal attacks; they encourage
deception and incivility, and they disillusion voters. In her book, "Dirty
Politics," Kathleen Hall Jamieson claimed that a Republican ad in the 1988
presidential campaign " suffers from the weakness that pervades contemporary
campaigning: It tells us what Dukakis is against, but not what Bush is for."
But is that really a weakness? The commercial in question was the now-famous "tank
ad" in which Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was shown driving a tank
wearing a helmet that his advisors had hoped would convey a pro-military image.
But Dukakis looked foolish, and the Republicans appropriated the footage for their
spot, superimposing a list of all the defense programs Dukakis had opposed.
What's so bad about that? Shouldn't the public have known that Dukakis had a record
of opposing various defense programs, especially with the Cold War still raging?
Given that Dukakis was claiming to be strong on defense, wasn't it fair that George
H.W. Bush's campaign comment on the accuracy of that claim?
The reality is that politics is a rough-and-tumble game, and campaigns are pitched
battles for control of the government. The stakes are often high, and the competition
is usually fierce. Attack ads may be uncivil, but what's so important about civility
when the future of the country is at stake? They may constitute "scare tactics,"
but fear also may be appropriate. The real issue should not be the tone of an
ad but whether the information presented is useful to voters.
There is little doubt that some of the ads that will be coming into our living
rooms during the congressional elections this fall will be nasty and mean. Presidential
campaigns have been increasingly more negative lately; the 2004 presidential election
was the most negative since the 1950s. Still, only about 50% of the ads run by
John Kerry and George W. Bush were negative. Is that an alarming percentage? Not
by historical standards. During the debate over the ratification of the Constitution,
the anti-Federalists, according to political scientist William Riker, attacked
the Federalists 90% of the time in pamphlets and public statements. Our new government
was not even in place and critics were waging a fiercely negative campaign. Not
only did the nation survive, these attacks helped forge the passage of the Bill
of Rights to ensure the protection of key liberties.
There are many other examples in American history of harsh political rhetoric.
In the 1828 presidential race, the opposition claimed Andrew Jackson was a murderer
and a cannibal and that his wife was a prostitute. In 1860, critics called Abraham
Lincoln "stupid" and an "ape." During the 1948 campaign, Harry
Truman drew an analogy between the Republicans and the Nazis. The tones of these
attacks make the 2004 Swift Boat charges against Kerry look like child's play.
It may be satisfying to think of campaigns as events in which contenders sketch
out their positive plans for government, allowing the public to choose between
competing visions of the future. But this ideal fails to acknowledge that an informed
citizen needs to know both the good and the bad of each candidate. Candidates
will happily describe their qualifications — but the truth is that they have
a strong incentive to exaggerate their accomplishments. Indeed, that incentive
is so strong that political consultant Bob Squier once said that "most lies
in politics are told in positive ads."
So how do citizens learn about the weaknesses of their candidates? The answer
is obvious: the opposition. Kerry wanted you to believe that he opposed the
Iraq war. Yet it was Bush's negative ads that highlighted the inconsistency of
Kerry's record. The best known of these was the much-discussed "windsurfer"
spot, which talked about Kerry's shifting positions on a number of issues and
concluded: "John Kerry: whichever way the wind blows."
Of course, we can all identify negative ads that undermined the political debate.
The spots that ran against Georgia Sen. Max Cleland by Saxby Chambliss in 2002
might qualify because they questioned a decorated war hero's patriotism. Perhaps
the "Daisy" spot qualifies — the ad in which President Lyndon Johnson
used the innocence of a young girl to suggest in an utterly inflammatory manner
that Barry Goldwater would bring nuclear war.
But one or two examples can be misleading. We need to take a systematic look at
the content of ads. That is what I have done, examining (nearly) all the ads aired
in presidential campaigns over the last 40 years. This comprehensive look tells
a very different story from conventional wisdom. For one thing, negative ads are
much more likely to discuss issues than positive ads. The general view is that
negative ads are just personal attacks. That is wrong. And even when the attacks
do get personal, more than three-quarters of them deal with the issues of experience
or honesty — pieces of information that are important and relevant when selecting
a president.
Negative ads are also much more likely to be buttressed by evidence than positive
ads. Candidates can talk about supporting a strong national defense. Negative
ads have to go further. It was not credible for Kerry simply to claim that the
president's policies were weakening national defense; he needed to demonstrate
just how Bush's policies undermined our security. Candidates face a burden of
proof when they go on the attack.
It is important that we set the record straight about negative advertising. This
country is about to embark on a national election that will be filled with negative
ads. Citizens face difficult choices when they head to the polls in November.
Negative advertising provides a chance for Democrats to make a case for why Republicans
should be driven out of office, and it gives the Republicans a chance to show
the risks associated with such a change.
This struggle will not be pretty, and at times the rhetoric will even be insulting
to our collective intelligence. Yet we need to appreciate its contributions to
the political process. The simple fact is that if negativity were to disappear
from our electoral battles, so would our claim to being a democratic nation.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
See also:
• Going Dirty : The Art of Negative Campaigning by David Mark
• Why Trust Matters : Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American
Liberalism by Marc J. Hetherington
• Campaigning for Hearts and Minds : How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads
Work by Ted Brader
• Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout by Donald P. Green
• Mudslingers :The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time Countdown
from No. 25 to No.1 by Kerwin C. Swint