The Power of Negative Speaking

In a recent survey by the Project on Campaign Conduct, 87 percent of respondents expressed concern about personal attacks in American political campaigns. Vanderbilt political science professor John G. Geer seeks to dispel such fears. He claims that rather than muddying the stream of information, attack ads actually clarify political debate. Apparently, influential political scientists agree: Geer’s book, In Defense of Negativity (University of Chicago Press, 201 pp., $19), was recently honored by Harvard University as the academic book most likely to improve government by examining the intersection of press, politics and public policy.

No one in American politics admits liking attack ads. Pundits blame negativity for lowering the standard of discourse and turning voters away from politics, threatening democracy itself. Still, negative ads remain the go-to tactic in presidential contests. Consider Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s recent “red telephone” spot, which insinuated that opponent Barack Obama wasn’t qualified to pick up an emergency hotline.

According to Geer, democracy needs below-the-belt imagery like that of the Clinton ad, even if such characterizations can be painful to watch, because negative ads often provide more actual information than warmer, fuzzier bids for support. “For a negative appeal to be effective,” he writes, “the sponsor of that appeal must marshal more evidence, on average, than for positive appeals.” As proof, In Defense of Negativity analyzes the content of presidential campaign ads from 1960 to 2004. Geer finds that positive ads tend to focus on less tangible matters, such as the candidate’s personality traits or values, while attack ads are far more likely to be focused on issues.

He concludes that gloves-off campaigning is as American as apple pie. Citing Thomas Jefferson—“In every free and deliberating society, there must from the nature of man be opposite parties, and violent dissentions and discords”—Geer warns that those who would remove attack ads from the airwaves threaten the very freedoms Americans hold dear. Someone should give Hillary Clinton a copy of this book, given recent Democratic calls for her to quit for fear her less-than-positive ads might disrupt party unity.