Negative Ads

Hot on the heels for my somewhat humorous attempt at a Kerry Commercial, Salon has a story on Alex Castellanos, master of the negative ad who is now working for our very own President Bush. Actually, since their story came out first thing this morning, and my "ad" came out this afternoon, they beat me to the punch.

For those of you who don't know Alex Castellanos (like me before I read this story), here's a little taste of what he'll bring to the Bush Campaign.

"It was during that 1994 Florida campaign, working for Jeb Bush's first but failed bid for election, that Castellanos showed why he's considered one of the fathers of the modern attack ad.

Castellanos launched a classic October surprise. Less than two weeks before the election, with his candidate ahead in the polls, Castellanos produced a raw, emotionally charged spot featuring a Florida mother whose 10-year-old daughter had been murdered in 1980. On camera, she complained that Chiles had refused to sign the killer's death warrant, "because he's too liberal on crime." Addressing the people of Florida, the mother said, "I know Jeb Bush. He'll make criminals serve their sentences and enforce the death penalty. Lawton Chiles won't."

The accusation produced panic inside the Chiles campaign. "We had done all the research [on relevant death sentence cases] and we couldn't figure out how we missed this guy," says Krog. Aides quickly unearthed the answer: Florida courts were still hearing the killer's appeal, making it impossible for Chiles to act.

The Palm Beach Post condemned the attack ad as a "despicable lie that proves again why Jeb [Bush] is unfit to be governor." The Orlando Sun-Sentinel accused Bush of demagoguery, protesting the spot was "shamelessly false, irresponsible and tasteless," while the Miami Herald complained it had "sunk to new depths."

The ads backfired on Bush, allowing Chiles to win one of the closest gubernatorial races in Florida history."

The article is great, although it does suffer from a little too much of the horse race. The tone of the article is essentially that its ok to go negative and deceptive in your ads if they are effective. Effectiveness is the only criteria for judging political ads; and therefore the only reason to be honest is that over dishonesty might hurt the campaign (if the people catch on). I understand the view point, but still think honesty is good in and of itself.

One other thing. If Kerry wins, we are going to see the end of Campaign Finance Reform for a while. President Bush has an enormous amount of money, and if he can't parley that into an electoral win, than the argument that money buys elections will disappear.