Although Senator Barack Obama began his campaign for president touting himself as the candidate of hope and a new kind of politics, in recent weeks Senator Obama has resorted to some of the same old negative campaigning tricks that are little more than “politics as usual” in Washington.
Senator Obama is currently running a series of negative ads against his opponent, Senator McCain, in several key battleground states. In all fairness however, it must be pointed out that Senator McCain began the negative “politics as usual” advertising several months ago, and his campaign has been continually criticized by the media and pundits on both the right and left for blatant mischaracterizations of his opponent.
Wisely, Senator Obama is not running any of the negative ads on a nationwide basis, choosing instead to only respond with negative TV spots in critical markets where McCain’s negative campaigning has had the greatest impact. Still, some Obama supporters feel that the senator is abandoning his campaign pledge to transcend negative and fear based politics, and run on a platform of hope, respect and optimism.
But the real problem with negative campaign ads is this: they work! Senator McCain’s poll numbers have increased sharply since he began his series of negative television ads, and started condemning his opponent at every speaking engagement. And although political fact checkers and media pundits have roundly criticized McCain’s negative strategy — and even questioned the senator’s honesty in many of the accusations made against his opponent — the poll numbers suggest that the strategy has been very effective in deed, even if many consider it to be unethical.
With recent polls showing a virtual dead heat between McCain and Obama, Senator Obama’s campaign has finally begun responding to all the negativity in kind. In a series of new television ads, Obama questions McCain’s economic policy (or lack there of), and successfully ties the senator to George W. Bush.
With the race for president tightening, it would appear that Obama has finally recognized the need to “fight fire with fire.” However, the real villains in this sad saga are not the politicians themselves, but the American public. An enormous amount of research shows that negative campaigning works. In other words, Americans respond favorably to it. This means that the US public has no one but themselves to blame when presidential campaigns degenerate into blatant name-calling and juvenile scare tactics. If these tactics didn’t work, you can bet your bottom dollar the candidates would not use them.
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the mud slinging is the fun part…waiting to hear what they are going to say…What would a campaign be without it…carol stanley author of For Kids 59.99 and Over
Comment by carol stanley — August 31, 2008 @ 11:09 am