I Vote Against Negative Ads

Negative Campaign Ads- A Sickness on the Body Politic

Many of us are appalled by the number, ferocity and ugly tone of the negative political campaign ads being aired on TV and incorporated into political literature that clogs our mailboxes. Equally annoying are the ‘robocalls’ that interrupt us at dinnertime, many of which have also adopted a distinctly negative tone.

The consequences of these tactics are that our feelings about government, politicians and politics are diminished. Perhaps as important, we are robbed of the opportunity to gather useful information from the candidates about themselves, their ideas, their capabilities and their strategies to deal with the problems that they will have to address if elected.  Instead, we are treated to a barrage of exaggerations, aberrations, half-truths and downright nasty aspersions about their opponent.

If you believe, as I do, that citizen participation in the democratic process is at the heart of democracy, then the negative political ads are also anti-democratic because they depress voter turnout. This has been shown by the Political Scientists Ansolabehere et al (APSR, December 1994) in experiments which showed that negative campaign ads reduced the intention to vote compared to neutral or positive ads and, most importantly, that the reduction was greater among the supporters of the target than among the supporters of the sponsor of the ad.

Of course, politicians and their handlers have known for a long time that political ads work. They have been used in this country from the first elections after George Washington left office. Nor are the ads more vicious now than in the 19th or 20^th centuries; they are just more ubiquitous and intrusive.

Politicians have also learned that attempting to counteract a negative ad by refuting the allegations rarely works, and that the only thing that does work is to counter with negative ads of their own. This leads into a spiral that further reduces voter turnout and makes the process even more anti-democratic.

If negative ads are debasing, obscuring and anti-democratic, what can we do to reduce their prevalence? The legal remedy of “I’m John Doe and I approve this message” has perhaps made candidates take explicit responsibility for their negative ads but has certainly not resulted in a reduction of negative ads.

Where the media have taken on the responsibility of truth squads that comment on the veracity of statements made in campaign ads, the public is served but the truth thus presented rarely undoes the damage created by the original negative ad.

Having laws that prohibit or constrain negative ads is both unworkable and unconstitutional. Just like our approach to drug addiction, trying to interdict the supply is doomed to failure. The real (and only) antidote will be if we recognize who is at fault. If we are honest, it is not the politicians or their handlers that are at fault; it is not the media, and it is not the election campaign laws.

The culprit is us- the voters! We are gullible, impatient and prone to intimidation. “I was going to support Jane Jones, but maybe these negative allegations are true so, I won’t vote at all.”

Let us give aspiring candidates and their handlers the credit they deserve.  If negative advertising works to their advantage, they will use it. If, on the other hand, we make negative ads have negative outcomes for those who use them, the candidates will conclude that it is counterproductive and pause before employing them.

I, for one, am willing to invest the next several years in skewing my vote away from candidates who go negative and vote for their opponents.  I am going to cast my vote for the candidate who refrains the most from the use of negative ads.  If enough of us do it, it might become contagious and force campaigns to concentrate on what, after all, is the purpose of campaigns: to inform voters about who can best represent them. The diminution of negative advertising will counter the turnout reduction it engenders and will make our elections represent more of our citizens and thereby make our system more democratic.

October 16, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

A Still, Small Voice

By DAVID BROOKS

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Deborah Pryce, the Republican congresswoman, in her Washington office. There was a doll propped up against a windowsill, and I wanted to ask her if it had belonged to her daughter, who died of cancer at age 9 in 1999. But that question seemed to trespass on something out of bounds, so I asked about her re-election campaign in 2006.

Her Ohio House race had been one of the toughest in the entire country. And when I brought it up, I expected her to talk about the vicious ads that had been run against her.

Instead, she talked about the ads that she had put on the air against her opponent.

“I was appalled by what I had to do,” she said. In close races, the national parties send teams of professionals to take over campaigns, and the candidates who resist their efforts generally lose.

When Pryce spoke about the direct-mail letters that went out under her name, she did so with a look of disgust. She said that her friends kept coming to her to complain about the TV ads she was running against her opponent. Finally, her own mother told her she was ashamed of the ads.

The truth is, Pryce’s opponents did worse. But it was her own ads that she kept dwelling on, and as she spoke, I could see that she’d been fighting the war that the best politicians fight — the war within herself to preserve her own humanity.

Politics, as you know, is a tainted profession. Professional politicians cannot serve their country if they do not win their races, and to do that they must grapple with a vast array of forces that try to remold and destroy who they are.

There are consultants who try to turn them into prepackaged clones. There are party whips demanding total loyalty. There is a culture of workaholism that strangles private life and private thinking. There are journalists who define them based on a few ideological labels.

And then there is the soul-destroying act of campaigning itself. Active campaigners are compelled to embrace the ideology of Meism.

They spend their days talking endlessly about Me. When they meet donors, they want to know if they are giving to Me or against Me. When they meet advisers and fellow pols, they want to know, do they support Me or not Me. When they think about strategy, it’s about better ways to present Me. When they craft positions, they want to know, what does this say about Me?

No normal person can withstand the onslaught of egotism and come out unscathed.

And so there are two kinds of politicians: those who become creatures of the process, and those who, like Pryce, resist and retain the capacity to be appalled by what they must do.

An amazing number gladly surrender. “Public people almost eagerly dehumanize themselves,” Meg Greenfield wrote in “Washington,” her memoir. “They allow the markings of region, family, class, individual character and, generally, personhood that they once possessed to be leached away. At the same time, they construct a new public self that often does terrible damage to what remains of the genuine person.”

These politicians become denatured pantomimes. They have no thoughts in private that are different from the bromides they utter in public. They confuse public image with real self. They talk to you as an individual the same way they would address a large crowd.

These simulated creatures end up successful, Greenfield emphasized, but also sad and lonely. They become the victims of the tawdry scandals that blow up from time to time (like Larry Craig).

But the other politicians — the more interesting and impressive ones — struggle to preserve their personal integrity. Many of those who struggle hardest have suffered a personal trauma, like the death of a child or time in a P.O.W. camp, which has created a private space that they refuse to sacrifice to politics.

Politicians of this sort do what they need to do to win, but they labor to preserve that inner voice. You see it in every conversation — an effort to ground politics in regular relationships, a capacity to carry on a candid inner monologue.

When I asked Deborah Pryce, for example, to reflect on her time in the House, it wasn’t the political issues that she remembered most. It was the people she admired (like Dennis Hastert) and the personal moments of compassion and bravery: for instance, the time Sonny Bono tried to rally the troops with an inspirational description of his own setbacks and recoveries; the time Chris Shays, the Republican moderate, was booed by his own caucus.

Pryce has retained that honest, inner voice, and she has decided to retire after this term. It’s not as rewarding being in the minority, she says, and with the new, longer workweek, it’s harder to get home to her adopted daughter.