CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Aug. 19, 2008 – 10:22 p.m.
Campaign Ads: Why Be Positive?
By Madison Powers, CQ Guest Columnist
The summer political season has been dominated by three things: speculation on the two candidates’ vice-presidential picks, the Obama trip to Europe, and the roll-out of Senator McCain’s series of negative television ads.
The long national nightmare of “Veepstakes” speculation will soon be over. So too is any mention of Obama’s trip, which after all was outside the country, and the media know quite well that the American appetite for stuff like that (anything foreign) is limited at best.
But the lingering effects of a summer of negative ads on Obama’s presidential prospects will be debated for a very long time. The striking thing is what political operatives from both sides of the aisle have to say about the impact of the ads, especially when compared to commentators less directly identified with actual campaigns.
The talking heads under contract are near-universal in their judgments. Negative ads work.
But the political operatives offer more coy responses. When Republicans are asked whether the negative ads might backfire and cause some tarnishing of McCain’s more positive circa 2000 public persona, the answer is almost always the same. McCain can only hope to be elected by giving the voters a reason to vote for him, not just a reason to vote against Obama.
When Democrats are asked whether they think the ads are hurting Obama, or whether he might be doing better in the polls at this stage but for the onslaught of negative ads, they demure in similar fashion. The standard reply is that McCain has to give voters a positive reason to vote for him, not just a reason to vote against Obama.
When partisans of both sides downplay the impact of negative campaigning on either candidate, while talking heads from both the left and the right are in emphatic agreement that they work, one has to ask a different kind of question. Is it really true that McCain has to give voters a reason to vote for him? Why go positive when the risks of doing so may well exceed the risks of just going negative? What is the penalty McCain can expect to pay? Thus far, the answer is, not so much.
Compare McCain’s summer strategy with McCain’s own assessment rendered back in January 2008. In a story in the Manchester Union Leader, McCain is reported to have said that “he drew two lessons from the Iowa caucuses: that negative ads don’t work, and that, “If you’re a person who is trustworthy, you can do well.”
So much for the strategy of banking on his own character and steering clear of trying to diminish the stature of the opponent. It is a major change of course for the campaign.
One might think that prior inconsistent statements of this magnitude would be hung around McCain’s neck, but it seems that he – or someone in his camp - has learned an essential truth of modern campaigning. If you play your cards right, inconsistent statements don’t have to work against you.
In fact, inconsistent statements made almost in the same breath don’t seem to matter. For example, McCain continues to charge Obama with wanting to win the presidency more than he wants to win the war. And yet, when asked directly about the meaning of these statements, McCain denies questioning his opponent’s patriotism, only his judgment.
When McCain brings up his disagreement with Obama over the decision of whether to support the surge that is a genuine dispute about judgment. However, as a few observers have noted, it is difficult to imagine how much more a person’s patriotism could be put in question than by alleging a calculated desire to put personal political ambition ahead of national interest on such a massive scale.
The doublespeak largely goes unchallenged, perhaps because it’s just too tedious to keep asking McCain to explain the obvious discrepancy between stump speech and post-spin. There’s just so many times a question will get asked when the same nonsensical reply is all that can be expected. Pure blather, delivered in earnest-sounding, slightly-offended-for-even-asking tones, is enough to make the appearance of incoherence go away.
Campaign Ads: Why Be Positive?
The risks of going negative thus seem to be diminishing. But consider a less often asked question. Why take the risk of mounting a positive campaign?
George W. Bush faced just such a choice in 2004. The principal strategy was to turn a decorated war hero, John Kerry , into a cowering wimp, and in the process, they even managed to convince many that a small constituency sport like wind surfing is an icon of upper class life.
The closest the Bush re-election campaign came to presenting a positive case for re-election was the refrain that he kept us safe after 9/11. But even here, that story only gets traction against the backdrop of a steady drumbeat of suggestions that Kerry would not. Whatever part of the campaign was devoted to making the case for why voters ought to re-elect Bush was so thoroughly encased in, and parasitic upon, the success of the negative campaign storyline that the positive aspect of the campaign was largely lost.
Bush could have focused at least somewhat more on the accomplishments of his first term. Risky, to be sure in his case, but making lemonade out of lemons is an ancient political art. But there is a larger point here. Running on a record is increasingly seen as bad political strategy. In fact, as many Clinton supporters will argue, one of Obama’s greatest assets, at least at the outset, was his comparative lack of a record that could be subjected to scrutiny.
What has long been true for potential Supreme Court justices has now emerged as a serious way of thinking about elective offices generally. The future belongs to those who have left no footprints, or at least to those whose footprints are blurred beyond recognition.
It is not only the case that negative campaigns work. It has become less clear that positive ones are a good investment or even remotely necessary. Maybe the McCain campaign is smart not to try to accentuate the positive. So many lemons, so little lemonade.
Madison Powers is Senior Research Scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. His column appears weekly in CQ Politics on Wednesday.
Comments
You pose a compelling question, professor. I notice that much of your analysis is focused on the media's treatment of the candidates and their advertisements. I think that until the traditional media begin actively fact-checking and debunking dubious or misleading negative ads, there will not be any significant reason for politicians to stop producing them. You correctly point out that the election "game" is set up to offer more incentive for negative advertising; I think that's a sign that the basic rules need to be changed.
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