Negative Ads

WASHINGTON -- The last time George W. Bush lost a primary to John McCain, in New Hampshire, he said he learned a lesson. What he learned, he told crowds repeatedly afterward, was that he let the opposition define him instead of defining himself. So, having seen Mr. McCain's success campaigning as a reformer, Mr. Bush simply stole the label. At South Carolina rallies, up went large blue-and-white banners proclaiming "A Reformer With Results." In speech after speech he talked about the reforms he had achieved as governor of Texas in education, welfare and taxes.

THIS IS THE YEAR that politics is following the rules of grammar: The ad makers are betting that two negatives make a positive. A positive image.Back in 1988, the attack ad made soulmates out of Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton. Now the counterattack ad is the big gun of the current season.Across the televised landscape, candidates are charging each other with the most heinous crime of politics: ''going negative.'' Indeed, some of the most negative ads on the home screen hinge on the accusation that the opponent is a sleazy, mud-slinging, dirt-wrestling no-good name-caller.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Sen. Bob Dole, speaking to the Iowa Pork Producers Association yesterday, took note of its television advertisements during the Super Bowl. "That's pretty expensive time," he said. "I'm not even sure Malcolm Forbes could have bought into that."The audience laughed, but the point of Mr. Dole's wisecrack was no laughing matter for his presidential campaign.As Malcolm "Steve" Forbes, the multimillionaire publisher, pounds him with a barrage of negative radio and television ads, the attacks appear to be cutting into Mr. Dole's lead approaching Iowa's Feb. 12 presidential caucuses and New Hampshire's primary eight days later.

When asked about political "attack ads," American voters overwhelmingly express their disapproval of them. Yet negative ads persist because they work. As Nov. 2 approaches, the airwaves are filled with such ads accusing rival candidates of all sorts of dastardly deeds, of possessing questionable character and of being stooges of powerful special interests. I read an interesting comment by political science professor Ken Warren of St. Louis University that people often have the misconception that negative ads must be true in order to be aired.

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. -- For a man who has crusaded for campaign-finance reform, for running on positive themes and for avoiding expensive negative ads, Sen. Russell D. Feingold sure sounds like he's having second thoughts.In a last-minute rush and in fear of losing his seat, Feingold, who refused to take money for negative ads from outside groups, is going negative on the stump. But he sounds almost apologetic for his attacks against Republican Rep. Mark W. Neumann."I realize it puts me in danger that I don't get up and say all these negative things on TV," he sheepishly tells a polite crowd at the Sheboygan Senior Center that just heard him go after Neumann on everything from proposed cuts in Medicare to ending aid for the poor.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening, Ellen R. Sauerbrey and their barrage of attack ads have done what not even a ringing phone can -- disrupt Jim Carter's nightly ritual of watching the weather report."

LANSING, Mich. -- To regain control of the House of Representatives, the Democrats need a pickup of at least six seats, assuming they can hold onto the one here in Michigan's 8th Congressional District, being surrendered by Democratic Rep. Debbie Stabenow, the party's Senate nominee. Although the Democrats have held the seat for eight of the past 10 years, it's no sure thing, in part because demographic changes may be making the district more suburban and Republican. Two experienced and well-respected state legislators, Democratic state Sen. Dianne Byrum and Republican Senate floor leader Mike Rogers, are competing for the open seat, and both -- so far, anyway -- are employing a strategy uncommon in politics these days: civility.

Given that the country is facing huge problems and still digging out from the worst financial crisis since the Depression, some might expect that the seemingly endless debates and breathless saturation of media coverage of it all would converge into a real discussion of our major problems. But only if they haven't been paying attention. Though the country is sorely in need of solutions, and the public hungry for real debate, that's not what was served up in Iowa or New Hampshire -- either by the candidates or the vast pack of media covering their every word.

NEW LONDON, N.H. -- Before the first presidential primary has even taken place, Republican candidate Steve Forbes appears to have lived an entire political life.Soaring in the polls and on the cover of news magazines only weeks ago, the millionaire publisher looked as if he could be the upset victor in Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire.Now, after a disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses brought on by a backlash to his storm of negative ads, he is struggling to stay in the race and hoping for, at best, a third-place finish.

Aberdeen residents may be tired of checking their mailboxes these days. In the month leading up to Tuesday's election, residents have received cartoon caricatures of a politician stringing several City Council candidates as marionettes, a fake petition to remove nonresidents from the city's voter registration, and fliers criticizing a candidate of trying to "steal the election." Hundreds of campaign signs line the streets and several pickup trucks roll through the city with giant signs deriding Mayor S. Fred Simmons.