by Daniel Barker

Created on: March 04, 2008   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

"If I were two faced, would I be wearing this one?" Abraham Lincoln

It happens during every political race. Usually it starts out as a veiled attempt to undermine a competitor. As the race goes on, the candidates resort to more open, aggressive, and at times, personal attacks. It is a question that I have been pondering lately. My whole life I have been taught to have a positive outlook on life; to respect others and to avoid negativity. So naturally upon seeing the negativity in political races, I have to question does negative campaigning work? If it does, why?

First we should ask ourselves; is negative campaigning new? Or has it existed for a long time now?

A quick look at some of the negative campaigning done in the early years of this great nation show that the attacks that these men made make today's candidates look like saints. For example, when Thomas Jefferson was running for president, his opponents said that if he became president ""murder, robbery, rape and incest will be openly taught and practiced." Andrew Jackson was the victim of more negative campaigning when his opponent accused him of murder, gambling and treason and said his wife was a prostitute. Abraham Lincoln's opponent accused him of being two faced, to which Lincoln in true "Huckabee form" replied "If I had two faces, do you think I'd wear this one?" So from these short examples we can conclude that negative campaigning has long been practiced.

Second, we should define what a negative ad is. The dictionary has many definitions of the word negative. My favorites are the 3 listed below.
1. Expressing or containing negation or denial.
2. Refusing consent, as to a proposal.
And my favorite for contextual purposes is
3. Lacking in constructiveness, helpfulness, optimism, cooperativeness, or the like.

In politics, I have noticed that any ad that mentions another candidate in a way that doesn't help them is construed as negative. So for the sake of being consistent with the media's definition we will accept that anything portraying an opponent, or his record, in an unfavorable light is part of "negative" campaigning. That being said, I would like to divide negative campaigning into two different categories. The first we will label "Comparison ads", and the second we will label "personal attacks". We all have seen both types of ads in this, and years past. Now we will define these ads.

Comparison Ads
An ad in which a candidate shows his and his opponents stances on issues is one of the most common

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