In Defense of the Indefensible: The Value of Truthful Negative Ads

While Americans seem bitterly divided over political issues, there’s one that seems to unite most of us:  We all hate negative political TV ads.

So for this week’s Huffington Post column, I try to defend the indefensible:  I argue that truthful negative ads can be quite valuable to voters and can help strengthen our democracy.

Call me crazy, but read on:

Recently, a close friend and early political supporter of
mine confided that she would no longer contribute to political campaigns that engaged in negative advertising.

And really, who could blame her?

Every election season, the television airwaves are barraged by a seemingly endless succession of 30-second jeremiads that manipulate the facts and embitter the public. Worse yet, many of the most vicious advertisements are paid for by shady, vanilla-named cartels who’ve maneuvered through loopholes in the Swiss-cheese-like election finance law to poison our politics without ever revealing the sources of their funding.

But all negative ads aren’t equally offensive.  Indeed, some are critical to preserving public confidence in our political system.

Sound counterintuitive? A political campaign featuring only positive advertisements that focus on “the issues” might seem to be ideal.

But sometimes, the gauziest, most emotion-laded, goose-bump-inspiring advertisements can be the most deceptive, and can do the greatest disservice to the public dialogue. As with marketing for any product, positive political ads tend to exaggerate a candidate’s merits while ignoring his flaws.  And the worst of them can paint a thoroughly misleading — or sometimes even completely inaccurate — picture of an official’s character, virtues and record on issues of import.

While the press can serve a mitigating role — calling out false claims and exposing whitewashes — a large and continually growing proportion of voters no longer follows the mainstream media, and many that do no longer trust what they see. Further, on the local level, decimated budgets have crippled the ability of many daily newspapers to engage in the necessary level of scrutiny of candidates and campaigns.

Accordingly, it’s often up to truthful negative ads to expose corruption and hypocrisy and to properly educate the public on the worth and merits of particular candidates.

Click here to read the entire article which offers an example of a prototypical valuable negative ad.