I'VE BEEN ROAMING THE INTERNET lately, in search of "negative ads".
I've been surprised by what I found.
We hear, time and time again, that "both sides" air "negative ads".
We hear comparisons that tell us that while Obama's ads are only about 1/3 "negative" and McCain's are almost 100% negative.
It's time for the press to examine their categories.
As far as I can determine, what they mean by a "negative" ad is just an ad that gives a reason not to vote for the other candidate.
I have two questions about that:
- What's wrong with pointing out a reason not to vote for the other guy?
As a citizen and voter, I want to know what each candidate thinks about the other guy. I especially want to know if there's a good reason not to vote for either candidate, and I don't think they're going to tell me themselves.
So, if all "negative" means is that, then I'm all for negative ads.
But there's another question... - Why is the press using such an unhelpful category?
Why divide ads into "positive" and "negative" when the press could do their jobs, and divide them into "true" and "false", or even just into "relevant" or "nasty"?
The Obama campaign has, from the beginning, taken the high road, and gotten very little credit for it from the press. Early on, when McCain was airing outright lies about Obama, Obama even refused, when asked point-blank, to call him a liar.
Consider the most recent exchange of "negative" ads.
McCain's campaign has taken the fact that Obama had chaired, years ago, a board for Chicago's Annenberg project, which Ayers was connected with, and that they both served on the board of another charity (the Woods fund) as a basis for character assassination.
Never mind that the president of the Annenberg foundation is one of McCain's supporters.
Never mind that Ayers, a radical from the sixties (when Obama was a child), was a well respected educator by the time Obama knew him.
Never mind that Obama has never given the slightest hint of support for Ayers' radical past.
The McCain ad paints the two as comrades in arms, and the Annenberg Project as a "radical education foundation".
McCain knows this isn't true. He knows the Annenberg Project was funded by Walter Annenberg, a friend of Ronald Reagan.
He knows that the fact that Ayers hosted a political coffee in his house for Obama (not, apparently, the first, as McCain's campaign claims) means very little. How many political coffees have been held for McCain? All by bosom buddies?
He knows all of this, and yet he tries to confuse the issue, and tie Obama to events that happened when Obama was six.
And then, the ad tries (ironically) to cover up what it's really doing by claiming the real issue is the cover-up—that all they're really saying is that Obama shouldn't have tried to deny the relationship by saying that Ayers was "just a guy in my neighborhood" and nothing else.
Except, of course, he never said that, either. He didn't use the word "just" at all, and the full quote they're talking about comes from a primary debate, in answer to a specific question from George Stephanopoulos:
George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.
That's hardly the kind of evasion and denial that the McCain campaign would like to put into his mouth.
Obama's campaign responded to McCain's ad by bringing up McCain's involvement with the Keating five.
In the late eighties and early nineties, John McCain was brought up before the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee with four other senators, for his participation in an attempt to get regulators to lay off Charles Keating, the head of Lincoln Savings and Loan, a contributor to McCain's campaigns, and someone who had paid for McCain's family vacations.
The ad explains the situation in detail, with a great deal less nastiness than the McCain ad about Ayers, but still makes a strong case that McCain's approach to the Keating affair was rooted in the same basic instincts that underlie his current attitude toward deregulation, and our present economic crisis.
This ad is "negative" in the sense that it's a criticism of McCain.
But it is also true.
McCain was part of the group that tried to call the regulators off. He did write letters and support a resolution that would have delayed the direct investment rule. And he was censured by the bipartisan Ethics Committee for poor judgment.
There's a great deal of difference between these two ads, not only in their tenor, and not only in their honesty.
McCain knows that Obama isn't "too risky for America". He has said himself that there is no reason at all to fear Obama as president—in spite of what the ad, or Palin, imply.
The point the ad makes, and the point Palin keeps driving home, is simply not relevant to the campaign. The entire Ayres connection is simply a smear attempt, based on guilt by association.
On the other hand, the Obama ad is about McCain. It's about what McCain did, what McCain's attitudes are about deregulation to this day, what the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee had to say about McCain's judgment.
The idea that these two ads should be lumped together, in a single category, and labeled simply "negative" is ridiculous.
They are as different as night and day.
