New at Reason

David Weigel | October 13, 2006

Fresh from his Daily Show appearance, David Mark stands up for negative political campaigning as a force for truth, justice, and the American way. In a sidebar, he counts down the 10 most negative races of all time.

Comments

Patrick S|10.13.06 @ 10:55AM|#

Anyone find the Youtube of David Mark on the Daily Show?

|10.13.06 @ 10:59AM|#

Seems the perfect ad for Demos in Pennsylvania would be a direct quote from Santorum regarding the residency of his first opponent vice his current living conditions (preferable on tape if at at all possible).

Overall, negative issue ads are all the criticism most people ever here about the candidates they are expected to decide between. The office-holders control this by denying access to any individuals or media outlets that criticize them publically. Even this democracy-threatening set of practices is seldom covered in the main press. Without a vigorous press, only negative ads come anywhere near revealing the truth about candidates actions as opposed to their words.

If we can't trust our office-holders to be open, then the only alternative is to reduce their power over our lives. Libertarianism becomes the only safe position for those who genuinely believe in democracy.

|10.13.06 @ 11:03AM|#

Seems the perfect ad for Demos in Pennsylvania would be a direct quote from Santorum regarding the residency of his first opponent vice his current living conditions (preferable on tape if at at all possible).

Overall, negative issue ads are all the criticism most people ever here about the candidates they are expected to decide between. The office-holders control this by denying access to any individuals or media outlets that criticize them publically. Even this democracy-threatening set of practices is seldom covered in the main press. Without a vigorous press, only negative ads come anywhere near revealing the truth about candidates actions as opposed to their words.

If we can't trust our office-holders to be open, then the only alternative is to reduce their power over our lives. Libertarianism becomes the only safe position for those who genuinely believe in democracy.

|10.13.06 @ 12:37PM|#

Sorry I'm not a big fan of the negative campaign. I also don't think responses to this type of ad reflect anything about how a candidate may perform if elected.

I also think it is a little bit of a stretch to say that negative ads are held to a higher standard because they have to be factual in order to have an impact. On the contrary, it is the message that matters most; its veracity comes in a slow second.

Even for those few who are able to make the time to parse through all of this nonsense and gobbledeegook, at the end of the day I suspect you end up with More information, which is not necessarily Better information. In my field, which is natural language processing, that kind of information generally ends up being more hassle than help.

I also suspect that this article somewhat overestimates the interest/motivation/(feelings of civic responsibility) of the average voter.

http://elections.gmu.edu/turnout_rates_graph.htm

Out of the %50-%60 of elligible voters, who actually vote, how many do suppose vote regularly, and regularly make a point of keeping up with allt he relevant literature?

I'm not in favor of any legislation to regulate this, I'm just unable to convince myself that this childish rhetoric is the most effective means of informing the voting public. I think publicly televised, ad-free debates, without overly strict exclusion policies would be a far better way to prove candidates. I Would be in favor of legislation mandating candidate participation and network support a couple times a year for such things.

But maybe that's not an answer either.

Oh yeah, one last thing - as the short on the worst negative campaigns points out, this is Not a new development. Neither are the culture wars. Neither is corruption in politics. Neither is much of anything in the social sphere, when one takes a long view of human history. It seems like most people are aware of this, so why do we still get heated up about these issues, when they are so obviously endemic to the human condition? There may be very minute statistical changes in the short-term regarding indecency, or crime or what have you, but as Francis Galton pointed out with his sweetpeas, regression to the mean is a very powerful force. For both good reasons and bad, levels of dissatisfaction also seem to follow this pseudo-law.

I'm just rambling now...

|10.13.06 @ 2:13PM|#

If memory serves me accurately, there were at least two other incumbent losers in the 2002 US Houae races who had an R (for Republican, rhinoceros, whatever) after their names: Connie Morella and
George
W.

Gekas