Slinging mud just gets everyone dirty

During this 2008 campaign, the candidates have waged a relatively clean campaign opting to focus more on the issues (or dodging the issues) rather than focusing on the faults of the other candidate. To be fair, each side has brought character issues forward and tried to pin the other as questionable in character, judgement, and experience.



But recently, the McCain campaign has ramped up their efforts to attack the Obama Campaign. In the past few days, McCain's Vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin has announced in rallies that Obama "pals around with terrorists", a jab at Obama's relationship with Mr. William Akers. This reference is in relation to Akers' founding of Weather Undeground during the late 60s and early 70s.

Weather Underground was a group dedicated to the use of violence to communicate their belief that the Vietnam War was an illegal military action. To do this they bombed the US Capitol and the Pentagon. They did not inflict any casualties in these attacks other than on their own members.

The problem with these, and other similar attacks, is that they tend to have the opposite effect. The McCain camp would love to get the discussion off of the economy and onto anything else. But unless any of these negative ads begin to stick onto the opponent, then the public will begin to resent the negative message from the campaign.

During the second Presidential debate, everytime EITHER of the candidates went negative, the opinion polls went down. It did not matter what the issue was, all that mattered was that the message was negative and it did not resonate with the voters.

The only way that negative ads work is when you are able to "make the mud stick." Perhaps it means that you have to repeat the message long enough until people begin to ask for the answers themselves. Perhaps it comes when you find something with a grain of truth and are able to raise enough questions of credibility.

And Obama is not immune to this impulse. In response to the Ayers attacks, Obama released a commercial highlighting McCain's involvement in the "Keating Five" during the Savings and Loan failures during the late 1980s. These ads have been unsuccessful so far in swaying public opinion either way.

During the 1992 election, George, H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid to a newcomer, William Jefferson Clinton. In the end, Bush chose to run a character campain with ads that attacked the character of Clinton while Clinton chose to run a campaign based on the economic needs of the American people. The effects of these two different campaign styles became apparent during the 1992 Presidential town hall debate. In this debate, the Ponytail Man chastized President Bush for running a character campaign when the real issue for many people was the state of the economy.

Slinging mud seems to be a tried and true campaign tactic, but just remember that everyone gets dirty in the process.