Going negative: pathetic, but it works
THE ARTIFACT pictured here carries a political punch still being felt today. The few dark squiggles represent Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president in 1988. What makes the poster relevant 20 years later is its message, conveyed with extreme brevity: With a simple drawing and three words, it makes the following argument: "Elect George H. W. Bush president because . . . because he's not Dukakis."
This strategy is now common in national campaigns, mainly because it often works on Election Day.
A central goal of both the McCain and Obama campaigns is to make the opponent unelectable. John McCain and his supporters say Barack Obama is too liberal, too untested, too closely tied to radical friends, and not patriotic enough to even deserve consideration. Obama and his supporters say McCain is too old, too temperamental, too quick on the trigger, and too much like President Bush to merit a vote.
Effective as it can be, this strategy exacts a heavy cost. The mud inevitably tarnishes politics generally, increasing public cynicism. And since such attacks are now always answered in kind, whichever candidate wins takes office with deep bruises.
A third cost is less recognized but just as real. The attacker focuses so intently on the opponent that he offers no detailed platform that might make him the focus of campaign debate. So as president he has no mandate to draw on and rarely achieves much.
Bush the elder is a case in point. He offered scant substance to voters in 1988, accomplished little, apart from the Gulf War, and lost reelection to Bill Clinton, who had a fatter agenda.
There were practical reasons for Bush's strategy in 1988. He faced a choice: He could run for Ronald Reagan's third term, but Reagan's popularity sagged deeply at the end of his second term amid Iran-Contra and other scandals. Or Bush could strike a more independent pose, which would be difficult to pull off and would likely cost him Reagan's conservative base. Both choices looked like losers. The answer: make Dukakis unelectable.
Since Dukakis had served eight years in the Massachusetts House and nearly 10 as governor, there were plenty of votes and policies to mine. And with Lee Atwater at the throttle, the Bush campaign poured it on. There were the visits to the flag factory. Promotion of the Willie Horton ad, with darkly threatening images of the black man who jumped furlough in Massachusetts and committed rape in Maryland. The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the New Orleans convention. Many saw racist overtones and a none-too subtle nativist streak - is the guy with the funny name really "one of us?"
Atwater promised at the time to "strip the bark off the little bastard," and to "make Willie Horton his running mate." Dying of brain cancer three years later, Atwater apologized publicly for both comments.
Rough as it was, the 1988 campaign looks tame compared with those now mounted by Atwater's protégés, both real, in the person of Karl Rove, and ideological.
Most of Atwater's gibes had at least some factual basis. But the new negativists, having learned from the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004, know that truth is irrelevant. So a simple vote by Obama in Illinois favoring age-appropriate sex education in grade schools - including how to avoid predators - becomes advocacy of comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners.
Even McCain's longtime theme of "country first" carries an intimation that Obama - another guy with a funny name, not to mention dark skin - is not American enough, a point he tried to cement when he suggested that Obama would choose to lose a war if it won him an election.
In an election that seems every day more momentous, pure negativity is now a pathetic strategy, and an unpatriotic one. It would be good for the country, and maybe even the candidates, if they junked the attacks and put themselves in their ads. By doing this, they would be forced to give America something to vote for.
Robert L. Turner, a fellow at the McCormack Graduate School at UMass-Boston, is director of Commonwealth Compact. 