Good Negative Campaigning And Bad Negative Campaigning

Good Negative Campaigning And Bad Negative Campaigning
By Bruce Walker (08/20/2004)

The battle of negative political campaign ads has begun again - thank goodness! - and criticism of pols, instead of back-scratching peace treaties on ethical flaws, has returned to its proper place as a weapon by citizens against cronyism in the centers of power.

What seems to irk Leftists is that anti-Leftist negative ads are unfair and untrue. This very accusation is unfair and untrue, but who is to blame for the situation which allowed this charge to even get traction? The Left!

Recall that when Clinton lied and lied and lied and lied, it was not important because "everyone lies"? Recall the pop psycho-babble that lying is actually good, that it saves people hurt feelings, that it releases tensions, that is cures acne and slims waistlines? Who said all this nonsense? The Left!

The Leftist love affair with lying, however, stretches back longer and deeper than just Clinton, the poster child for theraputic fibbing. The imperial and thoroughly corrupt New York Times and the equally imperial and equally corrupt CBS News made lying chic in the 1960s.

The right to lie was enshrined in the Supreme Court's odious and moronic decision New York Times v. Sullivan, which held that a series of outright false statements, all of which titled toward defaming Sullivan, was protected under the First Amendment unless actual malice was shown. This required something like asking an editor of that rich rag "So, did you intend to maliciously destroy Mr. Sullivan's reputation?"

What CBS News and its "documentaries" was even more ghastly. In The Selling of the Pentagon, the noble editors at CBS News thought it cute and clever to take the answer which an Assistant Secretary of Defense gave to one question and place it as an answer to an entirely unrelated question.

No one, by the way, questioned that CBS News did precisely that. But it was an eight hundred pound gorilla, like the New York Times, that few people had the guts to challenge. Soon other Leftist establish media, whose product to the consumer was information - why, I wonder, did Ralph Nader never challenge the outrages of these vast corporations? - were doing the same.

ABC News, a few weeks before the 1972 Presidential Election, had a "documentary" on national defense. Almost the first words were either deliberate lies or pure invention: The federal government spent six out of every ten tax dollars on national defense. Wow! That is a lot - except that the figure was less than four dollars out of every ten tax dollars.

The B-52 was a "supersonic bomber" so that plans for the B-1 Bomber were unnecessary. The "fact" that the B-52 was a "supersonic bomber" was certainly news to the engineers who designed it, the crews who flew it, or to Soviet interceptor pilots, but ABC News had spoken, so it must be true.

The problem is not, and never has been, with "negative ads" - attacks on the character of those who would seek power from the American people by their political opponents. The problem is negative political ads which are lies. This points out the crucial difference between negative ads about President Bush and the negative ads about Senator Kerry. The former are generally lies and the latter, if not always absolutely provable, ring true.

John Kerry was not Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee; that is a clear fact and Kerry has lied about that or, at a minimum, been grossly negligent in researching his own career. John Kerry was not in Cambodia at Christmas in 1968; indeed, he no longer even pretends that he was. John Kerry did not throw away his medals, as he said he did three decades ago.

Worse, if John Kerry was a war criminal, as he once alleged, then he is Albert Speer asking to be elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany without spending a day at Spandau Prison. If he countenanced atrocities then "I vass just following orders" in the finest tradition of the Schutzstaffell.

If he lied about his silent observation, as a decorated officer at the scene, of crimes against humanity, then he is content to slander men who did not have the luxury Kerry had of serving a quick stint, coming home to fawning Leftist elitists, and constructing a successful political career upon this vile slander.

President Bush, by contrast, volunteered that he had a drinking problem and he has never pretended otherwise. He has never pawned himself off as the war hero that his father was, but rather noted that he took the honorable course that many young American men did and served in the National Guard (Kerry's hippie friends insulted and assaulted these good servicemen too.)

Leftists love to manufacture moral symmetry where none exists. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and America were both equally to blame. During our ongoing war on street crime, the police and the perpetrators are both equally to blame. Now, lies about Bush and honest statements about Kerry are equally wrong because both are "negative."

Truth and lies, however, are not the same thing, whatever Leftists may say. Churchill telling the truth about Hitler was not the same thing as Hitler telling lies about Churchill. Al Capone telling lies about Elliott Ness was not the same thing as Elliott Ness telling the truth about Al Capone. Truth is not the negation of anything but lies, and lies are wrong.