Note: Before reading the following arguments, please understand that they are not what I believe. On Wednesdays, I deliberately argue for wrong ideas, challenging my listeners to call and defend the obvious right answer, which is usually far harder than one would expect. This is a summary of what Wacky Andrew will be arguing, not a representation of what real Andrew believes.~This is how things have always been.
~In sports, you do whatever it takes to win
~In politics, if you won’t do whatever it takes to win, you don’t belong in the office in the first place.
~Politics is proxy war, so nothing is unacceptable.
~Those who can’t stomach politics, don’t have the stomach to wage war and to do what is necessary even in more ordinary political scenarios.
~If you don’t like them, what about political cartoons which are so regularly satirical and negative?
~Pie-in-the-sky idealism is the alternative.
~If a candidate can’t handle attack ads, maybe he shouldn’t be elected.
~If you are well-known, you can only adjust the perceptions of your opponent.
~They’re more memorable because we have better negative emotion memory and emotion memory at all.
~They allow the candidate to use the news to his advantage by generating coverage of the ad and the controversy. Nice ads don’t impact the news cycle.
~They’re more reliable because they must be more specific and documented to have any merit.
~Didn’t Jesus run negative ads against the Pharisees?
Links:
Attack ad by Wikipedia
Negative campaigning by Wikipedia
Effectiveness of negative ads by OSU Mass Comm Journal
Do negative campaign ads work? By ThisNation.com
Going negative by Stanford
In praise of negative campaigning by Don Feder
1 comment:
Nearly every TV ad Republican John McCain ran last week was negative
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