Does anyone other than the backroom geniuses who come up with them actually enjoy negative political ads? Because there is not a lot to like about them.
They can be unfair, snarky and reductive. They often trade in information that is deliberately taken out of context or interpreted in the worst possible light. Their distortions are an insult to the intelligence of voters. If a negative political ad was a guest who came to dinner, you’d never invite them back.
Try as you might, though, you will have a hard time keeping them out of your life between now and the federal fixed-date election in October of next year.
The Liberals, the NDP and the Conservatives already keep a steady drip of negative ads on their social-media feeds. The Conservatives, who have raised more than twice as much money in the past year-and-a-half as the other parties combined, are well positioned to buy millions of dollars worth of television and radio time for their relentless attacks on Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and his nine years in office, as they did last year.
And we have no problem with it, as long as the ads focus on substantive issues and don’t take cheap personal shots.
Negative ads can serve a purpose in a democracy. It is the job of politicians to point out their opponents’ flaws, contradictions and missteps because their opponents aren’t going to do it. Negative ads are a counterweight to positive ads in which candidates and parties sell their virtues, often using (see negative ads above) partial information that is deliberately taken out of context or interpreted in the best possible light.
There is a perpetual debate about whether they actually work and whether their downsides turn people off of the electoral process and reduce voter turnout. Some studies say yes, others say no. But one very important feature of them is that they can backfire if they make false accusations or become too personal.
The Conservatives crossed the line with a negative ad released in late July that mocks NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s lifestyle and education, and suggests that the only reason he continues to support the minority Trudeau government, thereby preventing an early election, is so he can hit six years in office next year and become eligible for an MP’s pension.
Going after an opponent’s personal tastes and childhood education and imputing motives to them that don’t bear scrutiny is more apt to turn off a voter than put them in the Conservatives’ corner.
That happened in 1993, when a public outcry forced the Progressive Conservative party to pull a TV ad that seemed to make fun of Liberal leader Jean Chrétien’s facial paralysis and manner of speaking.
In 2006, it was the Liberals’ turn to eat crow when the party produced an outrageous negative ad suggesting Stephen Harper planned to use the Canadian military against the country’s citizens. The Liberals had to pull the ad from their website.
Those kinds of personal or false attacks make no sense to voters because there is never a shortage of valid targets for criticism during an election campaign (which these days are permanent): things such as a candidate’s past comments and voting record, the special interest groups they are close to, the governing party’s policy failures, the state of the economy …
The parties should limit their attacks to issues voters care about. And voters should remember that negative ads are exactly what they say they are: advertisements. They are no more trustworthy than a TV commercial that suggests that drinking a particular beer will draw unusually attractive people to your backyard, where they will dance enthusiastically.
Unpleasant as they can be, negative ads aren’t in and of themselves a bad thing. The real problem comes when they reflect the coarsening of public discourse in the age of social media and Donald Trump – something Canada is not immune to.
The Conservatives and Liberals have spent an awful lot of time online lately accusing each other of being “wacko” and “weird” – insults imported directly from the two rival campaigns for president in the United States. It’s embarrassing to watch and a further breakdown in civility. A poor advertisement for Canada’s politicians, in other words.