Letters

From the February 2007 issue

Attack Ads Are Good for You!

I appreciated the historical context provided by David Mark’s article on negative political ads (“Attack Ads Are Good for You!,” November). But I’m afraid the most powerful recent examples of the genre contradict his argument.

Mark cites research by Vanderbilt’s John Geer to the effect that “negative ads tend to be more substantive than positive spots, because to be credible they must be better documented and specific.” He quotes Geer as saying, “For the attacks to work, they have to be based on fact.”

The most dramatic examples that come to mind are the Republicans’ successful attempt to portray triple amputee war hero Max Cleland as weak on terrorism and the set of ads that were so effective in 2004 that they have spawned a new verb, to swift-boat. Neither of those campaigns were factual, any more than the push polls in the 2000 South Carolina primaries that accused John McCain of fathering an illegitimate child and betraying his comrades in arms in Vietnam. The game, as always, is to control the public’s perception of the candidate.

Why are such campaigns so effective even when they are based on lies? What does it take to refute a false assertion?

E. Brad Meyer
Lincoln, MA

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The most famous recent negative campaigns were Karl Rove’s “Swift Boat Veteran” attacks on John Kerry and his smears against John McCain in the primaries. Yet David Mark quotes John Geer as saying, “For attack ads to work, they have to be based on facts.” How were these attacks good for me? And why didn’t the article even mention these recent instances?

There’s a difference between adversarial campaigns and negative ones. Fluff ads showing the candidate with happy wife and kids say nothing. Ads clarifying the issues and diverging from the center are informative and are what campaigns should be about.

Brian E. Nevish
Jacksonville, FL

Welcome to Niche Nation

Chris Anderson and Nick Gillespie seemed to hit a wall when it came to contemplating the impact of the Long Tail on politics (“Welcome to Niche Nation,” November). Anderson says, “We have a scarcity effect in our ability to act on the political system.”

I don’t agree. The Long Tail’s dynamic of choice and individual empowerment is having an indirect but profound effect on politics and the political system.

First, the political system can now no longer control the flow or content of information available on a mass basis, leaving politicians at the mercy of blogs, video cameras, and mass punditry. There are fewer and fewer hiding places.

Second, you can make a case that the free flow of information has been the key ingredient in the breakup of several formerly centralized nation-states. The logic of the Long Tail would lead us to the conclusion that no nation-state is immune from the possibility of being broken into smaller, more flexible, more accommodating jurisdictions, as populations begin to view ubiquitous choice, personalization, and individual empowerment as normal. Today 1,000 channels, tomorrow 1,000 countries.

Randy Hilst
Nantucket, MA