In an interesting and rare parallel, both President George W. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry insist that this presidential campaign should be a positive and optimistic look towards the future.  Each repeatedly complain about the so-called negative attacks advertisements that the opposition airs against them.  Unfortunately, these “attack ads” are misnomers.  Labeling them as negatives is a disservice to the American people.  Both candidates label these ads as attack ads because they accentuate and detail something that neither want the American people to see: their voting record.

Neither candidate can afford to have their voting record carefully and intricately detailed for the American people.  Bush faces stark consequences from his base for his support of proposals like the government-expanding prescription drug benefit or the free speech infringement of the campaign finance reform law.  Kerry faces consequences from his base regarding his support for the war in Iraq and innumerable other back-and-forth votes cast in his twenty years in the Senate.

Both candidates insist that the other is viciously attacking them with the airing of these advertisements, but they aren’t.  If a person is running for political office, they need to accept the fact that their record is something that will be, and should be, scrutinized.  Every American should be carefully considering the voting record of their representatives in Washington.  How else is it possible to know whether or not that representative is doing their job?  Contrary to the opinions of Kerry and Bush’s campaigns, pointing out the record of their opponent is not a negative thing.  They are running for president because they are proud of their service and believe they are the best candidate for the job.  Their record is what supports their claim, which means they should either be proud of it or stop whining because their opponent is pointing out various nuances in it.

Every candidate’s record is going to have a few odd votes.  There are thousands of votes cast each year, so it is to be expected that a candidate may change his mind over the course of twenty years or there may be a few votes that seem out of place.  It is the responsibility of the opponent to point out these sudden changes and it is the responsibility of the candidate to be able to explain their rationale.

This is where Kerry gets into trouble more than Bush because he has a substantially longer record in Washington.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any explanation for his changed votes or his sudden turn in direction.  Consistently anti-intelligence and anti-military for much of his twenty years, Kerry suddenly shifted in the past year to be slightly less extreme in his views and make himself more electable.  The American people deserve a reply to their questions of Kerry’s apparent flip-flopping.

The political climate, however, is particularly contentious these days because so few voters will be responsible for the outcome of the election and neither Kerry nor Bush can afford to turn off even a barest percentage of these independents.  Even in the week after the Democratic National Convention, a time when there would ordinarily be a slight bounce in the polls, Kerry is still essentially running even with Bush in match-ups.  Some polls have him running behind even.  The magazines suggest that this is partly due to the even split of the country, but it also has to do with the fact that Kerry has failed to address his reasons for varying votes and instead prefers to highlight his four months in Vietnam over his decades in Washington.

This is fine, but if Kerry is interested in becoming president, the people of this country deserve to know his motivations and why he cast votes the way he did.  Questioning Kerry’s voting record and questioning his ability to stick to his guns is no less negative than accusing Bush of misleading the country into a war “concocted in Texas” – although that wasn’t a campaign ad.

Political advertisements help people to understand the candidates.  The American people have had four years to see Bush in action, but few people in this country have any idea who Kerry is – even those who support him and perhaps even the candidate himself.  They need to be educated, but the inherent bias of the candidate means that their campaign will obviously gloss over the less-than-ideal portions of their record.  It’s to be expected and it is natural, but that is why Bush needs to run ads pointing to Kerry’s record and Kerry needs to run ads pointing to Bush’s.

A negative campaign ad would be to suggest that either candidate is unpatriotic or cowardly, but I have never seen a campaign ad that ever attempted to paint any candidate in that light.  That isn’t the case with the campaign ads this year, which are only really negative if you are overly emotional and overtly sensitive.

| Main Page | Column Archive | Who Is Brian Clardy? | Files and Links | Feedback |

All written material on this website not attributed to another author is © 2001-2004 by Brian Clardy.
No part of this website may be reproduced in any way without the explicit consent of Brian Clardy.
All rights reserved.