Voters Lose When Nastiness Reigns

By Jill Kuraitis, 10-07-08

The presidential campaign has entered the pants-on-fire portion of the sorry spectacle we call an election.

The perennial claim by political strategists that negative campaigning is unfortunate “but it works” is on full display. The question is how to avoid it if your opponent attacks. Does the attackee sit tight and let lies and damn lies float by without refuting them, in order to take the proverbial high road?  History seems to say they don’t have that luxury. Remember Sen. John Kerry’s lackluster responses to the Swiftboaters who successfully smeared Kerry’s status as a decorated veteran?  We all know what happened then.

Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times has a nicely balanced piece today about what the two campaigns are up to in going negative.

The LA Times also has these two short pieces of interest: “Barack Obama’s connection to William Ayers” and “John McCain’s ties to Charles Keating.”

Monday, McCain showed his willingness to attack Obama with campaign nastiness and got this from the New York Times: “…Mr. McCain made clear on Monday that he wanted to make the final month of the race a referendum on Mr. Obama’s character, background and leadership — a polite way of saying he intends to attack him on all fronts and create or reinforce doubts about him among as many voters as possible. And Mr. Obama’s campaign signaled that it would respond in kind, setting up an end game dominated by an invocation of events and characters from the lives of both candidates.”

The Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank highlighted a Florida rally Monday where Sarah “Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, ‘Sit down, boy.’”

The hideous stuff we’re seeing now is not the same as using an opponent’s record of votes and public statements to make comparisons. Those are fair game - candidates must make it clear how they differ from their opponents.

But politics is rough.  After all, the fight is for control of the government.  Some campaigns toss the let’s-be-civil argument out the window as unimportant because the stakes are so high. Attacks are designed to scare voters away from a candidate, and some strategists argue that fear is sometimes appropriate.  True believers on both teams seem to agree.  But then there are those who are sincerely looking for reliable information.  And that, in the wake of deceitful nastiness, is what’s lost.