Tracy Rehberg

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

On the day of the midterm elections, it poured rain. Hoards of grumbling voters parked illegally, then huddled under umbrellas and snaked to avoid puddles on the path to polling places all over town. It felt fitting since nothing short of a torrent could wash away the layers of political filth deposited by this year’s campaigning. This, of course, is no revelation. Every campaign period tends to achieve new, repugnant heights and leave voters more disheartened than the last.

If Campaign 2006 seemed more aggressive, outlandish and grotesque, it was partly because political communications are quick to evolve that way, and partly because this year was markedly different. For starters, political strategists have perfected the funding formula since campaign finance reform, and their progress is frightening.

When stricter campaign law hit in 2002, it banned unrestricted and “soft money” donations to candidates and their parties. Many analysts felt the reform would dramatically stifle both parties. To compensate, campaign law upped individual campaign contribution limits from $1,000 to $2,000. By this midterm election, candidates had found a means to capitalize on the higher individual donation limit and tap more small donors. In fact, a staggering 38 percent of the near-$2 billion sent to the Republican and Democratic coffers in 2006 came from contributions of $200 or less.

Meanwhile, businesses and organizations, barred from funneling campaign cash, used political action committees (PACs) in new, uncharted ways to support candidates through “independent expenditures” in the name of their special interests. PACs made unprecedented advertising, direct mail and phone bank spends that total a record $1 billion. To abide by campaign laws, these efforts are made without candidate contribution or coordination, and (not that it is of great consolation) without a candidate’s ethical parameters. The result: a decidedly muddier campaign field.

If political phone calls, campaign mail and negative advertising buzz seemed thicker, your recall is correct. In all, congressional campaign spends this midterm reached $2.5 billion, which shattered pre-campaign law reform max spending by about $1 billion. The result had me sorting mail above the trashcan and deleting my answering machine messages.

The reality of campaign billions seems maddening when mere millions would still be a flagrant waste. This year, overall negative vs. positive campaign messaging registered a disgraceful 10-to-1 ratio. The chief reason is that negativity works. Sure nobody likes it, not even the candidates, but political science has proven that campaigning limited to the positive is rarely enough to win, while the exploitation of opponent weakness is a critical component. The truth is, as much as voters need reasons to support a candidate, they need reasons not to support the other.

While outlandish attacks feel unsettling, they tend to get our attention. Research has shown that negative campaign messaging triggers a feeling of disdain that, in turn, creates an impression in the brain that is outside our control. This attributes subliminal contempt toward candidates we think we shouldn’t support and attributes subliminal apathy or indifference toward candidates we think we should. More often than swaying our vote, these tactics succeed at getting pools of sensible voters to withdraw from participation, which for many strategists, is precisely the goal. It is presumably easier to get a voter to stay home out of disdain than it is to win his vote. What’s more, attack ads create buzz. They’re a media story in a can. An ad that’s too off-color to air nets exponentially more media coverage and subsequent voter recall than paid advertising. In this regard, extreme negativity can be a more economical political gain strategy.

Unfortunately, in the realm of nasty, there’s no end in sight. The old proverb “desperate times call for desperate measures” applies. According to strategists, negative campaigning is relied on most heavily when parties are desperate and races are close. Moving toward 2008, experts tell us to anticipate the ugliest of them all. Neither party has a lot to run on. As political ebb and flow go, it is the Democrats’ time. Only twice since 1850 has a party failed to reclaim the throne after an eight-year hiatus. Many strategists agree, however, that the Dems’ deck of candidates won’t present the easiest betting hand, and there will be telltale signs of pressure to maintain newfound congressional control and reclaim the presidency. Republicans will fight relentlessly to avoid it all, but under a cloud of stale leadership and tiresome terrorism-based scare tactics. In such a charged political environment, malice is inevitable.

This November brought a few pleasant instances of voter backlash. Americans decided that several deplorable accusations either weren’t true or weren’t relevant. In Nebraska, voters agreed that Sen. Ben Nelson’s decision to exit a $143 million contract for low-level waste disposal wasn’t exactly akin to taking $83 from every man, woman and child although the image of a cute little boy forking over his hard-earned allowance was piteous. North Carolina voters demonstrated a clear lack of appreciation for Vernon Robinson’s pairing of sexual imagery with a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a fallen marine in one of his many attacks against an incumbent House opponent. The simple lesson is that it is tough to warp the truth and unseat an incumbent.

Distortion tends to stick better when used against challengers. The Republican National Committee ad that alleged Ohio House candidate John Cranley liked to zap seven-year-olds with Taser guns (referring to a Cincinnati police policy that authorized stun gun use on people ages 7 to 80) was enough to discredit him. He wasn’t alone, but the mass majority of this year’s political attacks are too perverse and tasteless for the pages CALF News.

I admit they got the best of me. As was probably intended, I was too annoyed by the barrage of phone calls, mass mailings and news coverage of jaw-dropping attack ads to hone in and head to the polls. I subscribe to the theory that we shouldn’t sit idly by; that it’s our duty to be informed about the issues and track records of candidates. But these days it feels like any vote is an endorsement of the extreme absurd.

The end of a mid-term election brings little relief to Americans weary of campaign antics. The closing of the polls instantly ignites chatter about the next presidential election. Washington Post columnist Ed Rogers titled a recent article, “The Election Is Over. Let the Election Begin.” Well said.