The American Spectator

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MARK EVEN OFFERS the novel argument that country was founded with a negative ad. The Declaration of Independence, he explains, "is largely an itemization of 'injuries and usurpations' by the ruling British crown, and an often-stinging explanation about why King George III of England was 'unfit to be the ruler of a free people.'"

So is this election any worse, what with its claims of secret amnesty plans and troop withdrawals and not-so-covert Mormon bashing? Mark says, nah.

"I don't think it has been extraordinarily negative this time. There have been some hot spots. I think Romney has been the main perpetrator of the negative ads, especially over the immigration issue," Mark told me. "But it has been relatively civil."

Even if you disagree with his assessment you have to agree that voters have certainly had a chance to hear about the things Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain don't highlight in their own press releases.

"Otherwise you would never get anything even remotely resembling the truth. You'd think Romney was a hardline conservative his entire career," Mark told me. "You'd think John Edwards was a crusading populist when in the Senate he voted for things like the bankruptcy reform bill...You'd never hear about the more sordid episodes of the Clinton presidency."

ALSO, HOW WELL a candidate stands up to an attack is a good indicator of how they may deal with high-pressure situations in office. It proves just how tough and resourceful the candidate is, Mark says.

I must confess I'm not quite as sanguine about negative campaigning as Mark is. Some attack ads are outright lies or twist the truth so violently that they are tantamount to lies. And while the process may indeed cancel itself out sometimes as Mark describes, it doesn't always.

How many seniors, for example, have voted in elections because they honestly feared their Social Security checks were on the line? I don't see how voting based on false information is good for the country or Democracy.

But I agree with Mark that there is no way to "fix" this and that the attempts to do so are usually failures (as John "Let's get the special interest money out of politics" McCain has learned, one hopes). The answer to speech is always more free speech, including negative attack ads.

topics:
John McCain, Business, Social Security, Immigration