Negativity

I normally like Eugene Robinson, but I just don't think he gets it here.

First off, there's the total fallacy that negative campaigning is somehow new or growing. Excuse me, but Lyndon Johnson basically suggested Barry Goldwater would blow up the world, and JQ Adams supporters ran "news" stories in their papers claiming Andrew Jackson was the bastard son of a negro slave. And, of course, there's Adams vs. Jefferson in 1800, which makes Allen vs. Webb 2006 look like a tea party (a tiny tidbit: this site quotes a Federalist newspaper as saying Jefferson was in favor of the "teaching of murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest." Nice.) Elections have been around for a long time--isn't it a bit absurd on its face to think no one figured out until recently that they should trash the other guy?

Secondly, Dems are the opposition party. Challengers' campaigns are negative by definition. I suppose if Martin Luther King or Jesus Christ rose from the dead and challenged a solid incumbent, they would have a good shot at winning. Other than that, elections featuring an incumbent are always about that incumbent. Always. You can't beat an incumbent that doesn't have something wrong with him or her. That's why only a comparative handful of seats are actually up for grabs in any given Congressional election. Voters don't start anew each election asking "which one of these two guys is the best for the job?" They first ask, "how's the current guy doing?" If the answer is "good," they don't ask any more questions. The race is over before it starts.

People misremember the Contract With America as an example of positive ideas successfully offered by challengers, but that's largely fictional. The document wasn't even released until pretty close to the '94 election, when the Republican wave had already formed. And it had formed due to Dem corruption, a Dem president's failed health care legislation, and Dem-supported gun control measures. It's the incumbents, stupid.

Of course, as Robinson also points out, the incumbents are getting hugely negative this time around, too. This is also pretty common throughout history, especially when the challengers have the momentum as they do now. Republicans aren't in a position of strength, so why would they want to showcase themselves? Their hope at this point is that they can scare people away from the other guys. Of course, some frontrunning incumbents will resort to negativity too, because being on the defensive is a weak campaign position in most cases. The incumbents that get away with an all-feel-good campaign are usually totally safe, like Clinton in '96.

My bottom line here is that Robinson is too smart and too good to be wasting his time on yet another "Oh, the wretched state of our politics, so horrendously partisan" piece. It's not just a cliche, it's an irrelevant cliche. There is no beautiful past to return to where candidates run 100% positive, substantive campaigns. This is democracy, and the people who built our democracy would be the first ones to tell you they never said it would be pretty.