Mr. Krohn: You have made a wonderful case for universal healthcare. Someone should pay for your meds.
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And that, he says, is good. Although attack ads such as McCain's charging that Obama wants explicit sex ed for kindergartners get the media attention, in fact McCain's most-aired attack ads, according to Nielsen, went after Obama for failing to support more oil drilling, planning to raise taxes, and intending to spend the country into disaster. Obama's took aim at McCain for being clueless on the economy, supporting the Iraq War, being out to lunch on the housing crisis and "out of touch" with modern times (cue the 1970s-era disco ball) and the struggles of the middle class. Those choices are not an aberration, says Geer: "Negative ads are more likely to be about the important issues of the day than positive ads. They can therefore "actually advance the debate, not undermine it."
Much of the value of negative campaigning comes from the response it provokes. For one thing, attacks send the press into fact-checking mode, which injects even more information in the campaign, at least for engaged voters. For another, they cause the opposing candidate to respond. "Obama says he going to cut taxes for 95 percent of taxpayers, but McCain says Obama's plan will raise taxes for small businesses," Geer points out. "Because Obama is forced to respond to that, we learn more about his tax plan. Likewise, it was through prodding by Obama that we learned McCain's $5,000 health credit would come out of increased taxes." Even the 1988 Dukakis-in-a-tank ad had some factual basis and added to voters' knowledge, since Dukakis supported fewer new weapons programs than Bush did. As Ad Age editorialized last April, "whereas 'positive' political advertising eventually becomes a great deal of noise signifying nothing, negative advertising can teach voters more about the politicians involved … Voters learn about the person making the attacks and they learn about how the target responds to pressure." Hitting back at an attack signals to voters that a would-be president is tough and willing to retaliate when provoked, which plays into voters' desire for a leader who will protect them, stand up to threats and put up a fight on their behalf.
That underlines the value of another kind of information that negative ads, and especially attack ads, contain. Just as important as what they say about their target (and show about their target based on how he responds) is what negative ads—even, or perhaps especially, pure, baseless mudslinging—say about their sponsor. "If an ad attacks an opponent with misinformation, which engaged voters can identify [through media coverage or their own research], what people learn from it is that this candidate is willing to lie to get ahead," says Stanford's Krosnick. "So that's now information about the candidate who approved the ad, not the one it targets." The hand-wringing over negative campaigning is more than misplaced. It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the mind and the emotions of the electorate work.
With Jeneen Interlandi
© 2008
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