Negative Campaigning

The practice of negative campaigning is not new. Candidates took the low road before the American two-party system was born. Even George Washington was not immune from personal attacks. During the Revolutionary War, the British circulated a phony letter from him “confessing” an affair with a washerwoman's daughter. Ben Franklin's grandson and namesake, Benjamin F. Bache, wrote that “the American nation has been debauched by Washington.”

Other presidents, including recent ones, such as Bill Clinton, have been the targets of character attacks, as have candidates at all levels. Political scandal is an American tradition—and the grist for editorial cartoonists, comedians, and political consultants, as well as opposing candidates.

But if negative campaigning is not new, it has flourished in the age of television and the attack ad. Political advertising on television, much of it negative, has [Page p298]become the largest single expense of presidential campaigns and a sizable cost for other campaigns of any consequence. In recent years, the impact of negative campaigning has been magnified by political Web sites that can churn out highly inflammatory attacks for far less money than the cost of buying a thirty-second television spot.

Political use of television began in the 1950s during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administrations, and the first negative TV spots are attributed to Adlai E. Stevenson II, Eisenhower's Democratic opponent in 1952 and 1956. In his second run against the popular “Ike,” Stevenson used footage from a 1952 commercial in which Eisenhower pledged a fight against political corruption. Because the White House had experienced some corruption problems during Eisenhower's first term, the Stevenson ads sought to highlight the contrast between promise and reality.

As political television became more commonplace, so did negative ads. A well-known one is the “daisy” commercial that President Lyndon B. Johnson used against Barry Goldwater in 1964. It showed a little girl plucking petals from a daisy, cutting to an atomic explosion in the final scene. The scare sequence, implying Goldwater would be reckless with nuclear warfare, was too controversial. The Johnson camp withdrew it after one showing. Television news programs, however, showed the commercial several times afterward.

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