Friday, November 03, 2006

Is being almost 10% less negative really a positive?

On the nightly news tonight they were talking about negative campaign commericals, quoting that 91% of the Republican ads were negative and 82% of the Democratic ads were negative.

Howard Kurtz touches on this topic in his article entitled, Nattering Negativity:

I have nothing against negative ads. Politics is a contact sport, and negative commercials can convey valuable information about an opponent's record.

I have plenty against distorted, inaccurate and unfair negative ads, which means that every couple of years, I spend way too much time watching and critiquing them

I believe I can say, without fear of contradiction, that this year is the worst I've seen in terms of smarmy and sleazy spots that take some little kernel of a fact and twist and pound it out of shape until the opponent is rendered as a sex-crazed, tax-raising, criminal-coddling, terrorist-hugging loon.

Some of these are so bad they seem like "SNL" parodies. They insult the intelligence.


I am 100% positive that I agree with him on that. Yet I don't think those who say the Republicans are more negative really can congratulate the Democrats for their close to 10% difference...

For me, candidates who have decided to stay positive, which is a small handful, thankfully here in this area we have a few of them - get an automatic head to the top of the list recommendation from me. Especially the ones who have been the source of an attack ad by an opponent yet didn't retaliate.

3 comments:

Scott G said...

I think being 10% less negative is only good if the other person is at 10%. Although I do think there are valid ads that point out a negative of your opponent being elected and other negative ads that have no point but to attack the person and not the ideas

Unknown said...

True, but if both are over 50% negative I think that's not a positive...

:-)

Mark said...

I'm limited to radio, so I've missed most of the really smarmy ads, but I've found all the ads to be distortions. Not a single one is true, whatever nuggets of truth they use. That's what bothers me most about politics. It's not about electing the best candidate any more -- if it ever was -- it's about who has the best sales pitch. It's all very icky, no matter who's ad it is.