Nasty, brutish and short

THERE ARE few pieces of conventional wisdom more deeply held than the idea that negative political advertising is a danger to our society. David Broder, the dean of Washington's political journalists, claims that "trivial is too kind a word" for the content of today's campaigns. And the public apparently agrees. In February 2004, for instance, 80% of Americans claimed in a Pew Research Center poll that negative campaigns bothered them either "somewhat" or "very much." A USA Today headline captured the general sentiment well: "Orgy of Negativity Has Many Voters Disgusted."

The argument against attack ads is straightforward: They take our minds off the real issues by distracting us with meaningless personal attacks; they encourage deception and incivility, and they disillusion voters. In her book, "Dirty Politics," Kathleen Hall Jamieson claimed that a Republican ad in the 1988 presidential campaign "suffers from the weakness that pervades contemporary campaigning: It tells us what Dukakis is against, but not what Bush is for."

But is that really a weakness? The commercial in question was the now-famous "tank ad" in which Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was shown driving a tank wearing a helmet that his advisors had hoped would convey a pro-military image. But Dukakis looked foolish, and the Republicans appropriated the footage for their spot, superimposing a list of all the defense programs Dukakis had opposed.

What's so bad about that? Shouldn't the public have known that Dukakis had a record of opposing various defense programs, especially with the Cold War still raging? Given that Dukakis was claiming to be strong on defense, wasn't it fair that George H.W. Bush's campaign comment on the accuracy of that claim?

The reality is that politics is a rough-and-tumble game, and campaigns are pitched battles for control of the government. The stakes are often high, and the competition is usually fierce. Attack ads may be uncivil, but what's so important about civility when the future of the country is at stake? They may constitute "scare tactics," but fear also may be appropriate. The real issue should not be the tone of an ad but whether the information presented is useful to voters.