THE ELECTIONS WE WANT:

If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Run for President (ELISABETH BUMILLER, 3/14/04, NY Times)

[T]he 20th century had its low moments, too, like the 1948 race between Thomas E. Dewey and the incumbent Harry S. Truman. An Oct. 26 headline in The New York Times captures the campaign's tenor: "President Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascists' Tool."

Truman's victory gave credence to successive generations of political consultants who say negative campaigning, as much as voters malign it, works.

"There's generally a very small group of undecided voters, and many of them tend to have murky party loyalties, and they respond to negative advertising," said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist who advised Representative Richard A. Gephardt before he dropped out of this year's presidential race. "A lot of times voters are undecided because they're not paying a lot of attention. They're cynical by nature, and they're more likely to believe negative information than positive information."

Madison Avenue tends to agree. "People want something emotional and dramatic," said Jerry Della Femina, the adman. "You can say, 'I'm a nice person' just so many times. After a while you turn and say, 'The other guy's a louse.' People would like to think that they are thoughtful and not swayed by negative advertising, but the fact is, they are. We're verbally aggressive. It's the American way. If it wasn't this way, we wouldn't have hockey."

While other countries have negative political races, none are remotely as long as those in the United States, the birthplace of Bill Clinton and the permanent campaign. These marathons, along with modern communications, tend to make the campaigns seem even nastier than they are, particularly to masochists willing to subject themselves to the 24-hour invective available on cable television and the Internet.

Hockey? How about Pro Wrestling?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 14, 2004 9:58 AM