A Race to the Bottom?

 

Imagine walking into an interview for your dream job. Your potential employer reviews your resume and begins to ask you questions about your qualifications. Instead of talking about why you should get the job, you immediately start telling the interviewer every negative thing imaginable about the other people who are applying.

Common sense says that this might be the worst way to go about getting yourself hired, but for some reason we throw common sense right out the window when it comes to elections. The sad reality is that too many elections have become a race to the bottom, and for some reason we allow it to happen year after year.

The current model of many political campaigns is simple; let the candidates take turns assassinating each other’s character and hope that your candidate is the one left standing at the end. We let silly little non-issues distract us from the really important characteristics we should be expecting from our leaders, and then we wonder why no one has any faith in politicians. It just doesn’t make much sense.

The sad part about negative campaigning is that it often works, especially when a candidate realizes that the only way to win is to beat up the other guy; if it didn’t, candidates wouldn’t resort to such tactics. 

When one campaign makes a decision to go negative, there is a natural instinct to respond in kind. An animal is the most dangerous when backed into a corner, especially when the sleazy attacks begin to drown out serious discussion on the issues. At that point, we’re off to the races and nobody wins.

Opposition research is a natural part of any political campaign, which is only compounded by people constantly giving you the “inside scoop” on an opponent. There is pressure on all sides to let people know “the truth” about the person running against you, especially if that person has gone negative against you already. Sometimes you really do have little choice but to respond in kind and attack back, just to let the other person know that you aren’t going to be anyone’s punching bag.

Personally, I prefer the somewhat less exciting but ultimately rewarding campaign style of telling the people what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. Any good candidate knows that an election is ultimately about the voters, not the people whose names happen to be on the ballot.

I am faced with that dilemma as we speak; my opponent in the November election has chosen to launch a series of attacks against me. In addition to being factually inaccurate and just plain mean-spirited, these attacks give no reason whatsoever why you should vote for him instead of me.

It’s just a shame, because for every minute a candidate spends attacking his opponent, that’s one less minute that can be spent talking about legitimate differences on policy issues that actually affect the voters. Hopefully the voters will recognize and reject the trash-talk and allow our elections to be a race to the top of the heap, not the bottom.