Find me a credible candidate UNwilling to take advantage of such tactics, and you might just sway my vote. However, apart from local and possibly state-level elections, I’m afraid you won’t. All candidiates pander to that low mark.
It used to… when I was sixteen.
Now I understand that this is the way it is. An election cannot be won by the man who focuses on rational attempts to explain his position, because the majority of the electorate is impatient with what they don’t understand. I saw this when Carter ran against Ford in 1976 - Carter ran ads portraying himself as a hard-working peanut farmer, a man in touch with the people, as opposed to Ford’ Washington insider. What possible relevance was peanut farming skill? None. He just wanted to distinguuish himself from Ford and the scandal-plagued Nixon White House. Why didn’t he spend time talking about how he would address inflation instead of offering interviews with his brother and mother?
He won. But that folksy touch turned against him in the 1980 debates. Carter had good, solid answers to problems with the economy and the disastrous turns in foreign policy - the hostages in Iran, the support for the Shah. But all Reagan had to do was chuckle and say, “There you go again.” There he goes again what?!? Answering a legitimately complicated question with a legitimately complicated answer? Well, the people didn’t like that. That Reagan sure put smart-ass Carter in his place.
Reagan’s victory against Mondale was cut from the same cloth. Mondale’s ads tried to point out that there was a potential dark side to the Reagan “morning in America” prosperity - that deficit spending without a clear and compellig reason would have an unacceptable price. Reagan’s ads dismissed that as nonsense. It wasn’t nonsense – it was a legitimate policy point that needed to be aired. But jobs were plentiful and Reagan was friendly and trustworthy. That’s all it took.
In 1988, Bush slaughtered Dukakis with the “revolving door” furlough ads, a characterization of Dukakis’ policy so simplistic it bordered on outright dishonesty. Willie Horton was coming to your house to rape your daughters, the ads seemed to suggest, if Dukakis got in. This is not to say that Dukakis had a well-organizaed message to disrupt – admittedly, he did not – but that’s not what slayed him. He was killed because the Bush campaign found a simple theme and played it to the country, and they bought it… never mind that the truth was more complex. Complicated is bad.
In 1992, Clinton used talk shows, cable TV, his formidable ability playing the sax, and a genuuine ability to connect with people to his advantage. He accused Bush of breaking his no-new-tax pledge, while not admitting that he, too, planned to raise marginal income taxes. This was dishonesty by ommission, if nothing else, and while it’s true that Bush’s campaign was primarily defensive in tone and relied on attacks on Clinton rather than substance, Clinton’s ads relied on oversimplified claims of the budget and tax process that bordered on dissembling. Bush always trailed in the polls, it’s true, but Clinton hardly approached the process with a commitment to fully air complex issues.
In 1996, Clinton’s ads attacked Newt Gingrich more than they did Bole Dole, and left the listener to conclude that Dole was evil by association. A picture of Dole standing next to Gingrich was combined with commentary on the Gingrich-led federal government shutdown. This was a dishonest and short-sighted comment as well, never mentioning the reasons for the shutdown had as much to do with the White House as with the GOP. For Dole’s part, he tried raise the spectre of drugs as a huge national problem and imply that Clinton was to blame, without citing any evidence to back the claims up. He blatered on about his proposed 15% tax cut without ever explaining how he would fund it.
In 2000… well, I know you remember 2000.
The point is simply this: appeal to simplistic positionsm, regardless of their actual truth, is a sine qua non for any candidate. Don’t complain that one guy is doing it. They are ALL doing it. That weight appears on both sides of the balance scales. It cancels out.
