Nattering Negativity

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 3, 2006 7:48 AM

I have nothing against negative ads. Politics is a contact sport, and negative commercials can convey valuable information about an opponent's record.

I have plenty against distorted, inaccurate and unfair negative ads, which means that every couple of years, I spend way too much time watching and critiquing them.

I believe I can say, without fear of contradiction, that this year is the worst I've seen in terms of smarmy and sleazy spots that take some little kernel of a fact and twist and pound it out of shape until the opponent is rendered as a sex-crazed, tax-raising, criminal-coddling, terrorist-hugging loon.

Some of these are so bad they seem like "SNL" parodies. They insult the intelligence.

Over the years, both parties have dished out their share of the negative stuff, but this year, most of the truly awful and factually challenged commercials have been on the Republican side. That may reflect their tactics, the fact that they're defending far more seats, or simply a level of desperation. And party strategists haven't made any bones about it, acknowledging to reporters that 90 percent of their ads are negative.

The Democratic attack ads tend to accuse Republicans of being rubber stamps for Bush, in bed with Big Oil and Big Pharma, or diehard backers of the Iraq war. Some question their opponents' business records. Others are of the stop-lying-about-my-record variety. But few are harshly personal in the style of the worst Republican spots.

Slate's liberal editor, Jake Weisberg , is revolted by some of what was on the tube during a trip to Phoenix:

"The first commercial I saw, for Rick Renzi, a vulnerable Republican congressman, was an effusion of pure political poison. In a voice rancid with contempt, the announcer declared:

'Over 100 Democratic elected officials are opposing Democrat trial lawyer Ellen Simon. Liberal Ellen Simon served as the president of the ACLU, a radical organization that defends hard-core criminals at the man/boy love association, a national group that preys on our children. One Democratic mayor called Simon's actions 'utterly disgusting.' He's right. Ellen Simon: radical, liberal and wrong for Arizona.'

"While hearing this, the viewer sees just key terms superimposed on the Democrat's face: 'LIBERAL' ... 'Served as the President of the ACLU' ... 'Radical Organization defends hard core criminals Man/Boy Love Association' ... 'ACLU Defends Child Molester Group' ... 'Preys on our children' ... 'utterly disgusting' ... 'radical, liberal.'

"Dutifully performing the fact-checking function expected of responsible newspapers, the Arizona Daily Sun analyzed the content of the ad. It could not 'independently verify' that 100 elected officials had endorsed Renzi, though 55 are apparently members of a Navajo tribal council whose gambling interests Renzi has championed. Ellen Simon was not the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, but a volunteer lawyer in Cleveland who represented the group in precisely one case. That case had nothing to do with NAMBLA or child molesters. The 'Democratic mayor' who called Simon 'utterly disgusting' is effectively a Republican. Simon, who supports school choice and cracking down on illegal immigrants, is by no means a 'radical liberal.' In other words, not a single claim in the ad is actually true.

"This spot is, however, entirely characteristic of the mud that Republicans are raining on their Democratic opponents in the closing days of the campaign. Buggery is probably the top theme. In California, Republican incumbent John Doolittle has similarly accused his challenger, the unfortunately named Charlie Brown, of being pro-NAMBLA because he's an ACLU member. Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, charges that his opponent opposed a resolution condemning sex between adults and children. Sonny Perdue, the Republican governor of Georgia, accuses his opponent of putting 'the interests of the radical homosexual lobby ahead of our Boy Scouts.' "

Who knew America was in such danger from NAMBLA?

"The other big attack topics this cycle are Democrats and nonpedophilic sex, Democrats and drugs, Democrats and Osama, flag-burning, and illegal immigrants."

But conservative Andrew Ferguson , writing for Bloomberg, sees the press coverage of ads as overheated:

"'Negative Ads Rule the 2006 Elections,' says Congressional Quarterly. This is 'The Year of Playing Dirtier,' announced the Washington Post. 'The Election Campaign Is Talking Trash,' says the Baltimore Sun.

"Even those cold-eyed realists at the New York Times have succumbed to an attack of the election-year vapors. 'Theme of Campaign: Don't Be Nice' was the headline over a recent story about 'the most toxic midterm campaign environment in memory.'

"How toxic? 'It is,' reported the Times, 'a jarring blend of shadowy images, breathless announcers, jagged music and a dizzying array of statistics, counter-statistics and vote citations.'

"Statistics? Vote citations? Call me thick-headed, but I remain un-jarred. And I bet such outrages as 'counter- statistics' don't jar most voters either . . .

"When negative ads go too far, a self-correcting mechanism kicks in, as it often doesn't with misleading positive ads. One ad has been cited in almost every article about this year's toxic environment: Written by the National Republican Congressional Committee, it accused a Democratic candidate in upstate New York of billing taxpayers for a call to a phone-sex service.

"The ad was scurrilous and only minimally accurate (the phone call was made by mistake). Here's the good news: According to the National Journal, it was shown once on a single TV station. Every other station refused to air it -- at the request of the Republican candidate on whose behalf it was made."

Of course, it got plenty of free coverage from the tut-tutting media.

"All the fretting over negative ads -- and the fretting seems to intensify every election year -- betrays a lack of faith in the resiliency of self-government and in the intelligence of the people that self-government relies on: voters."

How rough are things for Bush? Here's a metaphor from Montana:

"If there is one thing the White House can usually count on when President Bush campaigns in small, Republican-dominated cities like this one," says the NYT , "it is friendly wall-to-wall news coverage of his arrival. And his visit here on Thursday did make the front page of the Billings Gazette.

"But news of his impending arrival took second billing in the paper. It ran below the fold and under a package of articles about the return of a local sailor's body from Iraq, accompanied by a large photograph of the flag-draped coffin at Billings Logan International Airport."

President Bush's hardly-surprising announcement that he plans to keep his veep and Pentagon chief really riles Andrew Sullivan , who sees Tuesday's elections as potentially therapeutic:

"George W. Bush just gave the most powerful reason for voting Democratic next Tuesday. He has reiterated unconditional support for the two architects of the chaos in Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld. He intends to keep Rumsfeld in his job until 2008! Why not a medal of freedom while he's at it?

"Let me put this kindly: anyone who believes that Donald Rumsfeld has done a 'fantastic job' in Iraq is out of his mind. The fact that such a person is president of the United States is beyond disturbing. But then this is the man who told Michael Brown he was doing a 'heckuva job.' And, yes, our Iraq policy begins to look uncannily like the Katrina response.

"The president, in other words, has just proved that he is utterly unhinged from reality, in a state of denial truly dangerous for the world. He needs an intervention. Think of this election as an intervention against a government in complete denial and capable of driving the West off a cliff."

You've probably noticed by now that Bush is visiting red states almost exclusively in the campaign's final stretch. Which, says Dick Polman , means the White House is worried:

"So while the Bush team can talk all it wants about election day optimism, it is not acting optimistic. In the field, it is playing defense. Bush is not spending time invading the opposition's turf, or traveling to traditionally Republican-leaning congressional districts, such as the suburbs of Philadelphia (where the GOP candidates don't want him around anyway). Rather, all his final week actions signal that the Bush team is back on its heels, preoccupied mostly with staving off disaster. In other words, it's likely that their internal polling numbers mirror the latest non-partisan polling stats.

"The respected Washington analyst Charlie Cook, looking at his own latest figures, stated flatly yesterday that, in the House, 'it would take a miracle for the GOP to hold onto their majority.' He also says, with regards to the Senate, 'the best case scenario' is that the Republicans will barely hold onto the chamber."

If you're an embattled Pennsylvania congressman, this is probably not what you want coming out in the campaign's final week:

"Republican congressman accused of abusing his ex-mistress agreed to pay her about $500,000 in a settlement last year that contained a powerful incentive for her to keep quiet until after Election Day, a person familiar with the terms of the deal told the Associated Press .

"Rep. Don Sherwood is locked in a tight reelection race against a Democratic opponent who has seized on the four-term congressman's relationship with the woman. While Sherwood acknowledged the woman was his mistress, he denied abusing her and said that he had settled her $5.5 million lawsuit on confidential terms."

Well, John Kerry has apologized, but the chattering classes are still chattering about him. In National Review, Thomas Sowell argues that the press has given JFK an easy time:

"Maybe Senator Kerry has a bad memory -- or maybe he is counting on the rest of us having a bad memory. He criticized more than 140,000 troops serving in Vietnam, making sweeping and unsubstantiated accusations against them of widespread atrocities back in the 1970s. He criticized them at home and abroad, giving aid and comfort to our enemies in wartime . . .

"How is this story played in the media? The front-page headline on the San Francisco Chronicle read: 'Bush, GOP seize on Kerry's Gibe to Turn Focus from War in Iraq.' The Chronicle has learned well the New York Times's technique of imputing motives instead of reporting facts.

"Has any Democrat ever been accused by the mainstream media of 'seizing on' some statement by a Republican, much less have bad motives imputed? This is not the first time the media have circled the wagons around Senator Kerry. Despite the fact that Kerry has shamelessly tried to exploit his military service in Vietnam decades later, Tim Russert is the only major media commentator who has ever asked him why he will not open his military records, as President Bush has done."

How anyone who can look at the last two days of Kerry coverage -- including strong suggestions that he's washed up for '08 -- and say he's gotten a pass is beyond me. And pointing out that the White House has exploited Kerry's blunder isn't tantamount to letting him off the hook.

Apparently Democratic politicians aren't supposed to say anything that might challenge anyone on their side, according to blogger Jane Hamsher :

"I can see we're going to have to set up some sort of 'Democratic PR school' soon. They've become so accustomed to being George Bush's whipping posts they no longer recognize it when they have the advantage, and as the John Kerry incident demostrates they are in sore need of a few remedial lessons on how to press it when they do.

"First of all -- I don't care if John Kerry was eating live babies on TV, one week out from an election you do not repeat GOP talking points. Ever. It makes you look like a big wuss who can't stand up to the Republicans, even when they're playing from an exceptionally weak hand on an issue you own. For all those anxious to be seen as the tough defenders of national security, huddling in a crouch position while they pummel you about the head and bleating 'yes, yes, we deserve this' does not have the best optics.

"Secondly -- did I mention that the Democrats own the issue of Iraq? Even the WSJ acknowledges it is the #1 factor influencing people's votes this election. If the Republicans want to bring it up, that's a perfect opportunity to pivot and attack ."

Of course, candidates like Hillary and Harold Ford may have been thinking of their own self-interest in criticizing Kerry.

Is the whole mess overblown? Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum says so, but he's still ticked at Kerry:

"I'm sort of loathe to even blog about the whole John Kerry flap. It's not that I'm flatly unwilling to write about idiotic and transparently manufactured political issues, but a man's got to have his limits. This 'controversy,' along with the almost insane amount of play it's gotten in the mainstream press, is surely a sign of the end times . . .

"But Kerry has been active in politics for more than three decades. He's been a U.S. senator for more than 20 years. He spent two years running for president. In his career, he's probably given -- what do you figure? 5,000 speeches? 10,000? 20,000?

"So how could he possibly have screwed up a simple little piece of snark like that? After all these years, does he still get so flustered in front of a camera that he can't even get a simple three-line joke straight? Sheesh."

Was Kerry right about the troops? No, says Robert VerBruggen in the Weekly Standard:

"There's nothing to be offended about, because Kerry's words were simply incorrect. In fact, members of the armed forces are more often high school graduates, and more often of above-average intelligence, than average Americans.

"Last year, the Heritage Foundation took the time to study soldier demographics. The resulting report, 'Who Bears the Burden?' disproves many of the stereotypes members of the military face. Pertinent to Kerry's comments, the study found that soldiers actually tend to have more education than the general public.

"'If one single statistic could settle this issue, it is this: 98 percent of all enlisted recruits who enter the military have an education level of high school or greater, compared to the national average of 75 percent,' according to the report.

"Of course, because military service often starts right after high school, a lower proportion of recruits have college experience."

Is Karl Rove's secret weapon . . . absentee ballots?

"Down in the polls and with their majorities in Congress at risk, Republicans say they have some good news in early-voting statistics that suggest their voter-turnout machine is providing an edge in some tight races," the Wall Street Journal reports.

"If the trend holds, it could mean that early voting is growing -- and continuing to benefit Republicans, who exploited the practice in the 1990s. Experts say early voters could be a bigger factor this year when overall voter turnout could be lower than in 2004, a presidential-election year.

"This year, though, Democrats contend that Republicans are exaggerating their successes so far, by highlighting a few races, while ignoring problems they are having in motivating their troops around the country."

I thought I'd heard every possible anti-Bush argument, but no. Shelley Lewis has a new one:

"If you have one chance to convince an undecided Independent or a Republican to vote Democratic this year, I'd like to suggest the following:

" The Bush administration would like to spend your taxpayer dollars on convincing unmarried men and women not to have sex before age 30 .

"Yes, Abstinence Only--if it's good for the 'tweens, it's great for the twenty-somethings. The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the 50 million dollar program, has issued new guidelines telling the states that they can get funding to teach abstinence to anybody up to age 29."

And at 30 it's okay to do more than lust in your heart?