POLITICO Magazine
The 2016 race is about to turn rough—very rough. Now that almost every conceivable member of the human race has entered the race for the GOP presidential nomination, millions of dollars from superPACs are flooding into the primary elections and the GOP is beginning the process of
vilifying likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, this next phase of the election is about to see lots of what campaigns like to euphemistically call “contrast” ads.
In fact, I’ve ordered a shiny new set of cutlery to better slice and devour the 2016 presidential campaign’s negative ads. By this time next year, I should be fat as a pastry chef—presidential campaigns have been getting more negative every cycle. The campaign ads from 2012 were more negative than the ads in 2008, 2008’s were more negative than 2004’s and, you guessed it, 2004’s more negative than 2000’s. But far from disparaging the form—or my thickening waistline—I celebrate it. Negative campaigning is a genuine positive for democracy.
I come to my understanding both intuitively and from paging through a new book, The Positive Case for Negative Campaigning, by political scientists Kyle Mattes and David P. Redlawsk. The popular abhorrence for negative campaigning seems to stem from the word “negative,” for how could anything good come from something whose essence seems so retrograde? The press encourage this sort of thinking by declaiming each election the most negative or nasty or mudslinging without pausing to explain what constitutes a negative ad. A negative ad is not necessarily a false ad. As Mattes and Redlawsk explain, the standard political science definition for negativity in campaigns is “talking about the opponent.” The scholars at the Wesleyan Media Project who track, among other things, campaign negativity, likewise embrace this definition, stating that ads are negative if “they mentioned an opponent.”
Keep this soft definition in mind the next time you hear a politician or columnist bemoaning the rise of negativity in campaign. Is it even possible to run a campaign without mentioning your opponent? Amazingly, only
10 percent of presidential campaign ads were negative in 1960, which means the candidates used their ads to talk mostly about themselves and their stands on the issues, and almost never mentioned their opponents. By 2008, that rose to about 60 percent.
The overly broad definition ends up overstating the octane of negative ads, lumping together as it does personal slams and attacks on opponent’s stands. But the rising numbers do reflect a change in campaigning styles over the decades: Contemporary presidential candidates have made their opponents their focus, doing less grandstanding about their own wonderfulness or explaining their stands in their ads. And many of these ads are barbed and cutting. But in general, Mattes and Redlawsk applaud this switch, as do I, as long as the ads don’t engage in “scurrilous, nonrelevant attacks” or lie.
Overly positive campaigns, the authors hold, deprive voters the “full range of information that allows voters to make up their minds.” Imagine making a decision about what car to buy, what job to take, where to vacation or what restaurant meal to consume if the only information you were exposed to was the positive information provided by carmakers, employers, vacation spots or restaurants. Useful decisions are rarely made by comparing the positives of what’s on offer. One must also judge the negatives, which reveal failings and weaknesses. But sellers of cars or candidates never volunteer their own negatives or flaws. For that information we must rely on the competition—opposing candidates—or third parties (like journalists).
Relentlessly positive campaigns stink of “puffery” and self-aggrandizement, they write. By deterring candidates from going negative we deny voters the contrasting information they need to challenge the positive campaigners. By testing the assertions of positive campaigners, negative campaigners keep their foes honest. Or, if not a trifle more honest or more accountable, at least on notice. According to research
findings, ads that name a presidential candidate’s opponent are, on average, more truthful and contain more information than self-advocacy ads.
Any ban or discouragement of negative ads would also benefit incumbents, who enjoy in most cases greater name recognition and access to campaign donations. How can a candidate possibly persuade voters to replace the incumbent, or to fund his own campaign, unless he goes negative by pointing out the mistakes made by the incumbent, the shortcomings of his voting record and his general poor performance? You can’t beat an incumbent by merely yodeling your own positives. “Is it really worse to have a candidate attack an opponent on issues, when the attacks are accurate, than it is to have that same candidate make false statements about his or her own record in presumably positive ads?” Mattes and Redlawsk write. “Banning negativity does not ban falsehoods.” Both positive and negative ads can be false.
Negative campaigning signifies competitive elections, they continue, and more competitive elections in turn attract more funding, which leads to more competition—and often to more negativity. But voters are not fragile little beings, endangered by excessive campaign negativity, they assert. Quite the opposite, they’re able to interpret the “rough and tumble of politics” and make independent choices about candidates. As for the assertion that negative campaigns turn voters off, routinely expressed by the press, the authors produce research that shows that voters “are not as negative about negativity” as is commonly believed. Besides, if negative campaigning really peeved voters, wouldn’t candidates strive to charm them by producing more and more positive advertisements instead of more and more negative ads?
Luckily for the republic, both parties love negative campaigns. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, in 2012 Barack Obama ran the
most negative campaign in recent presidential history, with 58.5 percent of his broadcast and cable ads being judged negative. That eclipsed the previous leader, George W. Bush, who scored 55.4 percent negative. Academics and the occasional journalist may squeal in horror over the demise of campaign civility, but as Frank Rich
wrote for
New York magazine in 2012, negativity is in the great American political tradition.
So toss the worry beads and relax. The more negative the campaign the better. The only fear I have is that the campaign ads of 2016 will turn inexplicably positive. If that happens, call me!
If the subject is negative ads, you gotta include a link to John Geer . Who else deserves a shout-out? Send your thoughts via email to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com . My email alerts are on drugs, my Twitter feed raised your taxes, and my RSS feed is a cannibal.
Jack Shafer is POLITICO's senior media writer. Previously, Jack wrote a column about the press and politics for Reuters and before that worked at Slate as a columnist and as the site's deputy editor. He also edited two alternative weeklies, SF Weekly and Washington City Paper. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, BookForum and the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal.
No comments:
Post a Comment