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View Full Version : Why is negative campaigning "bad"? - Thomas Sowell



Little-Acorn
10-20-2008, 02:27 PM
Thomas Sowell nails it again. Today's campaigns are actually fairly mild, when compared to campaigns throughout American history. But the media is recently up in arms over it, as though pointing out what candidates have said and done in the past, is somehow "negative" or "not a real issue". Unsurprisingly, they scream the loudest when liberal candidates' past, is brought up.

The dirty little secret is this: Liberal candidates have needed to escape their past and pretend that they are not liberals, because so many voters have had it with liberals. - Thomas Sowell

The left has a double whammy to worry about: That someone might point out what they have doing in the past, and that someone might point out what they are intending to do now and in the future. Leftists recoil from such revelations, like vampires recoil from sunlight. Note the extreme reaction of the leftists, in and out of the media, to Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher's question to Obama about raising taxes... and especially to Obama's possibly inadvertent admission that he wants to take money from wealthier people and give it to the less wealthy. They have concentrated on harassing and destroying Wurlelbacher, digging into his tax records, marriage records, military records, and smearing him on the campaign trail, to an extent they never have about Obama himself... even though Wurzelbacher isn't the one running for President.

Is "negative campaigning" (that is, pointing out what your opponent has done in the past) so bad?

Maybe if you're a liberal, and don't want people to find out.

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http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/10/14/negative_advertising?page=full&comments=true

Negative Advertising

by Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

One of the oldest phenomena of American elections-- criticism of one's opponent-- has in recent times been stigmatized by much of the media as "negative advertising."

Is this because the criticism has gotten more vicious or more personal? You might think so, if you were totally ignorant of history, as so many of the graduates of even our elite universities are.

Although Grover Cleveland was elected President twice, he had to overcome a major scandal that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, which was considered more of a disgrace then than today. Even giants like Lincoln and Jefferson were called names that neither McCain nor Obama has been called.

Why then is "negative advertising" such a big deal these days? The dirty little secret is this: Liberal candidates have needed to escape their past and pretend that they are not liberals, because so many voters have had it with liberals.

In 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts called himself a "technocrat," a pragmatic solver of problems, despite a classic liberal track record of big spending, big taxes, and policies that were anti-business and pro-criminal.

When the truth about what he actually did as governor was brought out during the Presidential election campaign, the media were duly shocked-- not by Dukakis' record, but by the Republicans' exposing his record.

John Kerry, with a very similar ultra-liberal record, topped off by inflammatory and unsubstantiated attacks on American military men in Vietnam, disdained the whole process of labeling as something unworthy. And the mainstream media closed ranks around him as well, deploring those who labeled Kerry a liberal.

Barack Obama is much smoother. Instead of issuing explicit denials, he gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced and so lofty that even some conservative Republicans go for them. How could anyone believe that such a man is the very opposite of what he claims to be-- unless they check out the record of what he has actually done?

In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community organizer" does, creating a sense of grievance, envy and resentment, in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers' money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.

After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he promoted the same polarization in his other roles.

That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of Michael Pfleger.

When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance, envy and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up that message?

How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?

Yet those in the media who deplore "negative advertising" regard it as unseemly to dig up ugly facts instead of sticking to the beautiful rhetoric of an election year. The oft-repeated mantra is that we should trick to the "real issues."

What are called "the real issues" are election-year talking points, while the actual track record of the candidates is treated as a distraction-- and somehow an unworthy distraction.

Does anyone in real life put more faith in what people say than in what they do? A few gullible people do-- and they often get deceived and defrauded big time.

Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide-- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices of political allies.

Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in the land through sheer deception.

Yurt
10-20-2008, 02:47 PM
it is ok for liberals to attack mccain's wife and for obama to send a smear team up to alaska to find dirt on palin....

crin63
10-20-2008, 02:58 PM
Liberals and the MSM can say or do anything and it's okay because its just a means to their end.............Socialism.

theHawk
10-20-2008, 03:02 PM
How is it even "negative" to simply bring up your opponent's voting record, and other actions? The right didn't make Obama do anything during his life, they were all his choices, his beliefs, his actions. He has no one to blame but himself for his own past. Its all quite simply an attempt for the liberal to wash himself clean of any self responsibility for his own actions.

It reminds me of how pro-abortion liberals get all pissed off at anti-abortionists protesters carrying signs with pictures of dead fetuses and call them 'disgusting'. No shit Sherlock.

DragonStryk72
10-20-2008, 11:36 PM
Wow, how about that, an anti-liberal guy saying it's okay to smear liberals. My god, my mind is blown.

Here's a thought: Maybe, just maybe, the reason we're getting sick of the negative campaigns is because we are improving as human beings. Would that be so bad?

stephanie
10-20-2008, 11:41 PM
Wow, how about that, an anti-liberal guy saying it's okay to smear liberals. My god, my mind is blown.

Here's a thought: Maybe, just maybe, the reason we're getting sick of the negative campaigns is because we are improving as human beings. Would that be so bad?



I wonder if you were whining about SMEARS when they were saying Sarah Palin's down syndrome child was really her daughters..
or that her husband had sex with his kids..

stephanie
10-20-2008, 11:59 PM
it's funny how things go...........poof in the night..

Little-Acorn
10-21-2008, 11:14 AM
Wow, how about that, an anti-liberal guy saying it's okay to smear liberals.
And even more astonishing, a pro-liberal guy pretending the other had "smeared" liberals, without even trying to back up his statement or presenting even one example of his doing so.

Not so surprising, actually, since no such examples exist.


My god, my mind is blown.

Clearly.

Back to the subject:

Pointing out that Brack Obama spent 20 years in close alliance with a racist, anti-American "minister" is hardly "smearing". It's a fact, and highly relevant to the present campaign for President, since it seriously calls into question Obama's judgement and even his attitude and opinions.

If you'd like an example of a genuine "smear", you have no further to look than the New York Time, which just ran a hit piece on John McCain's wife (not McCain, but his wife), in which they managed to leave out most good things such as her charitable efforts and public works of all kinds, but went into great detail about a past addiction to painkillers. They are facts, in the few places they were presented, but hardly relevant since Cindy McCain isn't running for President and her past problem can have no impact on any advice she gives her husband in the Oval Office.

"Negative" campaigning isn't particularly negative, when it sticks to relevant facts as McCain and Palin have done... except as Harry Truman once pointed out; "I don't 'Give 'em Hell'. I give them the truth, and they think it's Hell."

manu1959
10-21-2008, 12:00 PM
And even more astonishing, a pro-liberal guy pretending the other had "smeared" liberals, without even trying to back up his statement or presenting even one example of his doing so.

Not so surprising, actually, since no such examples exist.


Clearly.

Back to the subject:

Pointing out that Brack Obama spent 20 years in close alliance with a racist, anti-American "minister" is hardly "smearing". It's a fact, and highly relevant to the present campaign for President, since it seriously calls into question Obama's judgement and even his attitude and opinions.

If you'd like an example of a genuine "smear", you have no further to look than the New York Time, which just ran a hit piece on John McCain's wife (not McCain, but his wife), in which they managed to leave out most good things such as her charitable efforts and public works of all kinds, but went into great detail about a past addiction to painkillers. They are facts, in the few places they were presented, but hardly relevant since Cindy McCain isn't running for President and her past problem can have no impact on any advice she gives her husband in the Oval Office.

"Negative" campaigning isn't particularly negative, when it sticks to relevant facts as McCain and Palin have done... except as Harry Truman once pointed out; "I don't 'Give 'em Hell'. I give them the truth, and they think it's Hell."


did you know if obama applied to be a secret service agent he would be rejected because of his association with ayers.......

and if he becomes president he would not be allowed to guard himself but will be entrusted with the security of us all.....

comforting.....

gabosaurus
10-21-2008, 12:02 PM
If your side is the one using the negative campaigning, it is not bad at all.
Used against you, it is reprehensible, of course.

Trigg
10-21-2008, 03:00 PM
If your side is the one using the negative campaigning, it is not bad at all.
Used against you, it is reprehensible, of course.

Negative cam paining and SMEARS are two totally different things.

Examples:Obama voting to let babies who survive abortions die without medical care. That is some thing we need to know and isn't a smear.

YOU and PSYCHO stating that Palin's daughter was the mother of Trig on the very substantial evidence of "she might have put a pillow under her shirt" to fake the pregnancy. That is a smear.

Any questions????????