Who Won Negative Ad War?
by Mark Rhoads
Issue 119 - November 5, 2008

According to polls, most Americans believe that Sen. John McCain was the candidate who ran a more negative campaign this election cycle. The New York Times, a newspaper that has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, reported a summary of all political commercials in the presidential campaign on Oct. 17 on page A-1 of the print edition and on Oct. 18 of the politics online edition. When Sen. Obama accused Sen. McCain in the last debate of running only negative commercials, he was referring to a University of Wisconsin study of McCain commercials for just the week of Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 that found that 100 percent of the McCain commercials running for that week included anti-Obama information and only 34 percent of Obama commercials running that same week were exclusively negative about McCain.  So the Obama charge, for that one week, was correct.  Right?  Well, maybe not.  Read on.

According to the same Wisconsin Advertising Project study, since Obama won enough delegates to win his party nomination in June, "54 percent of Mr. McCain’s advertisements have been completely focused on attacking him (Obama), roughly a quarter have mixed criticism of Mr. Obama with a positive message about Mr. McCain, and 20 percent have been devoted solely to promoting Mr. McCain."

The story also said, "In the same period, the study found that 41 percent of Mr. Obama’s advertisements had been devoted solely to attacking Mr. McCain, one-fifth mixed criticism of Mr. McCain with a positive message about Mr. Obama, and 38 percent were solely devoted to promoting Mr. Obama."  So the bottom line is that 62 percent of Obama commercials attack McCain in some way but a higher percentage of Obama commercials are positive -only for his campaign than the percentage of McCain commercials that are positive -only for his campaign.  But----you saw this coming----there is a big catch.

The catch is that Obama had then passed $188 million in commercial spots (vs. $84 million for the whole fall McCain campaign in public funding), and Obama ran four commercials to every one that McCain could afford to run.  So while percentages indicate more negative McCain ads, there is not partiy in spending.  In absolute numbers of ads, Obama ran almost twice as many exclusively negative ads against McCain than all the McCain ads on the air be they positive, mixed, or negative combined. 

But the polls say people think McCain is the one running the negative campaign in part because the four to one Obama ads tell them McCain is negative.  It ’s a neat trick.

Tina Fey, in character as Gov. Palin on Saturday Night Live on Oct. 18, held a news conference in which she addressed both the "elite liberal media and the regular liberal media."  That particular joke was both funny and true.  Fortunately for America's future, both kinds of media are hemmoraging readers and viewers to other new media for good reasons and by the congressional elections of 2010, we can look forward far fewer self-appointed media who pretend to be "watchdogs" in their fantasies but who almost never watch Democrats.

On the stump, Obama made anti-McCain speeches every single day and so did Sen Joe Biden.  But the media portrayed Gov. Sarah Palin as the "attack dog" for McCain whereas any gaffe made by Sen. Biden is just another mistaken slip of the tongue.

The most amazing thing about the disparity in spending is that liberal and progressive good government groups who for years applauded John McCain for the spending limits of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform bill and believed in public financing were just hunky dory with the idea that Sen. Obama casually broke his promise to abide by spending limits and had raised more than $600 million dollars , about 40 percent of which will never be publicly disclosed as to donor identity.  That is change all right but it is hardly reform or transparency. 

As far as I know, no good government group has publicly challenged Sen. Obama on this cyncical flip flop and therein lies a dramatic example of the institutional hypocrisy and amorality of the American Left.

Mark Q. Rhoads is a former state senator and current blogger in Illinois.