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What's Negative?

Submitted by Chris Martin on Thu, 10/23/2003 - 00:00.

First, an admission: I have yet to see the new TV ads from candidate Dean that are described as "negative". But we should be careful of what we call negative.

Is a Dean ad that draws important distinctions between his positions and those of his Democratic opponents an inherently negative ad? (The New York Times reports that the ads -- now playing in Iowa and New Hampshire -- differentiate Dean's record from his "opponents" on health insurance/prescription drug benefits and in supporting the Iraq War resolution.)

Keep in mind that Dean's opponents have been trying to diminish Dean's record for weeks now (wonder who keeps telling the press that Dean is too far to the left to be electable?) -- they have just been doing it in their speeches and communications with the press, and not in their TV ads. Then, the Kerry and Gephardt campaigns revile Dean for going negative as early as OCTOBER (as if there was a special time rule on this). OK -- the New York Times noted that Gephardt's people did not actually use the word "negative" to characterize Dean's ads, but did respond by criticizing Dean's record on health care nonetheless.

It seems to me that ads that fairly and honestly point out the differences between candidates are not negative. They actually get into the nitty gritty of the candidates' policies.

What IS negative are those ads that do serious distortion to candidate's records, in an attempt to smear the candidate, oftentimes right before the primary or general election so there isn't sufficient time to respond. Remember the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988, officially disavowed by Bush I, but effective in painting candidate Michael Dukakis as a governor who let violent black men out of a revolving jail door to terrorize white America? That's just plain ugly and negative. Or think of the Bush II team (led by Karl Rove) distorting the reputation of Sen. John McCain with a shadowy campaign (e.g., saying that McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock with a prostitute in reference to his adopted Bangladeshi daughter) in order to win the 2000 South Carolina primary.

Now that's the negative stuff! (I'm sure there are truly negative ads from Democrats, too, but these examples just stand out as two of the worst in recent campaigns.)

I'll write more after I see Dean's new ads, but from the reports, it sounds like these don't ad up to something truly negative, but instead they are just a little more meaty that those "I grew up in a small town" biographical sketch spots.

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