Political campaigns should be short, positive & policy-based

Rick Morain

Last Sunday, at a concert Kathy and I attended, one of the introducers referenced countries where political campaigning lasts only a few months. The audience erupted in applause.

By all indications, that appears to be the consensus around the nation as this Tuesday’s Election Day approaches. Party officials and private partisans pour the millions of dollars into campaigns, through television, radio, the internet, print media, yard signs, billboards, and any other possible method of communication that make campaign avoidance impossible.

It’s the negativity repeated in campaign ads, over and over and over, that underlies voters’ exhaustion. The problem is that negative ads appear to work, despite what voters say about them. If it were not so, campaigning would take a more positive tone. A few political ads inform voters of candidates’ positions and policies, but they’re few and far between.

Several years ago the McCain-Feingold Act tried to govern American campaign contributions. It wasn’t long until the Supreme Court struck down the act, ruling that it restricted freedom of speech, by interpreting campaign donations as a form of speech. Today it appears that the sky’s the limit on private money in politics. Public financing of political campaigns has never gained much traction.

Negative advertising is usually achieved through exaggerations, half-truths, and outright lies about a candidate’s opponent. When I edited and published the Jefferson Bee and Herald years ago, I always felt a little guilty about accepting payment for political messaging of that kind. But I salved my conscience with the knowledge that both sides were doing it, so I could mostly convince myself that misleading ads gave neither candidate an advantage. It’s called “commercial free speech,” thereby clothing such messaging with the First Amendment.

Paid advertising is only part of the problem. Candidates, depressingly often, deprecate their opponents rather than explaining how they would govern if elected. Slash-and-burn techniques, in both paid ads and stump speeches, regularly take an opponent’s comments out of context, or reference his or her minor mistake from years ago, or link the opponent with a recognized evildoer of some kind through a distant connection.

Advertising uses unflattering photos of an opponent, usually in black and white, while showing the ad’s favored candidate in admirable settings, using full color photos and videos. If music is part of the presentation, it’s a depressing melody for the opponent and an upbeat tune for the supported candidate.

Some candidates develop mastery of how to avoid answering an interviewer’s questions. There are tried-and-true deflection responses:

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that . . .”

“Well, in the first place . . .
“Well, what about (my opponent’s position or action) . . .”

A less effective but more truthful response would be “That’s a difficult problem for me, so I’d rather not discuss it with you, but here’s my take on my opponent’s position.” We don’t hear much of that in interviews.

A candidate will sometimes try to inoculate himself or herself from criticism about a fiery speech by interjecting a milder sentence somewhere within it. For example, during Donald Trump’s exhortation calling for his supporters to descend on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he said their protest should be peaceful.

But when they acted aggressively at the Capitol, based on the tone of the rest of the speech, it took him several hours to ask them to stop their invasion, and he did so only after officers had gained the upper hand and the House was able to resume its electoral vote count.

Another tool for campaigning is to insert a “poison pill” into a piece of legislation. The insertion, often unrelated to the bill’s purpose, makes the bill politically difficult for the opposition to vote for (or against), and the bill’s sponsors can then use that insertion in their campaigns down the road.

Years ago, Democrat Leonard Boswell of Davis City and Republican Mike Mahaffey of Montezuma were opponents for the congressional seat of their district. When the campaign began, they agreed not to run negative advertising against each other. The result was a cordial campaign based on policy positions rather a political fistfight.

I admired both men before the campaign began, and did so even more when they made their agreement and lived up to it throughout the campaign. Candidates are not responsible for what the ads of their outside supporting groups do, of course, so it would be impossible for a campaign to be entirely free of negative influences.

But wouldn’t it be a relief if more campaigns were conducted on the candidates’ policy positions and plans, rather than how despicable and dangerous their opponents are reputed to be?