Negative Campaigning Done Right
I’m writing this because I expect to be doing Internet video and at least a few broadcast TV ads for selected candidates in the 2008 elections. I dabbled in online video campaigning this year, mostly as an exercise in selecting effective, low-cost video equipment and software for use in “citizen journalism” and ad production for small businesses, but by the time the next election rolls around I will be 100% ready to produce strong Internet, cable, and broadcast TV appeals to voters. And since I’m sure some — probably most — of the candidates for whom I’ll work will want to make anti-opponent spots, I am not only thinking about how to script and shoot “Why you should vote for me” appeals, but also about rules and methods for making negative campaign spots that enlighten voters instead of angering them.
Tell the Truth
This is without question the most important rule I’ll implement when making negative campaign video. I learned long ago that there’s no need to make anything up when writing non-fiction. There is plenty of true stuff out there if you look for it. And exaggerating is just as bad as making things up. Maybe the opponent voted to raise taxes 10 years ago. Fine. Say so. But don’t claim that opponent “is always in favor of soaking taxpayers” or something similar on the basis of that one vote. Stick to provable facts and you will not only get your point across about your opponent but you will come across as fair and intelligent instead of as an idiotic yow-yower.
I can write at least a dozen 30 second scripts that would highlight an opponent’s flaws and boost my candidate’s image right now. I can’t give you specifics, of course, since the exact scripts will depend on the specific candidates and their strengths and weaknesses. But I assure you that while it may seem harder to come up with true statements instead of making up cartoonish nonsenss, it’s really not. Once you get in the habit of using only real facts to make your electoral argument, you’ll see plenty of possibilities. Truth really is stranger than fiction — and usually makes for more interesting TV, too, if presented correctly.
Hate the Sin, not the Sinner
Here in Southwest Florida Congressional candidates Vern Buchanan and Christine Jennings both told us, at length, what a despicable person the other one was. But for a number of years before the election banker Jennings and car dealer Buchanan happily did business together. They served on more than a few charity boards together. I don’t know if they were cozy personally, but you’d think that if either one was as nasty as the other one said during the campaign, they shouldn’t have trusted each other enough to have so many common interests for so many years.
If everything bad Jennings said about Buchanan during the campaign was true, she was a shlemiel for providing banking services to his car dealerships. And if everything Buchanan said about Jennings was true, he displayed awfully poor judgement when he chose to do business with her bank.
I believe that in the 2006 campaign, Buchanan came across as more negative than Jennings primarily because he had more money, which allowed him to spread his filth more widely than she was able to spread hers.
Now, what if — just speculating here — Buchanan had stuck to attacking Jennings on issues, and had stuck to true statements? Instead of coming across as a thug attacking a nice lady he’d known for many years, he would have come across as a straight-shooter and hard campaigner. Win or lose, we’d all respect him. As it is now, even without the voting machine problems that may have been instrumental in giving him a “victory” measured in hundreds of votes, not thousands, if he is declared the winner of the 2006 election he is more likely to draw a strong challenger in 2008 than if he had conducted himself as a gentleman this time around. And on the other side, Jennings’s negative ads both against Buchanan in the general election and against Jan Schneider in the Democratic primary have left her political future in doubt. Even if, after a painful recount, she ends up in Congress instead of Buchanan, she will have the same “lightning rod” effect in 2008 and will draw stronger challengers than if she had conducted herself in a more pleasant manner.
There are always factual and issue-related negatives you can use against an opponent. There is no need ever to stoop to personal attacks. The world does not end after the current campaign. Sooner or later even the most ardent Democrat will need to work with Republicans, and even the most ardent Republican will need support from Democrats on a critical issue at some point in his or her political career. As long as a campaign sticks to beliefs instead of personal slime, the campaigners can shake hands and make up afterwards, and have a chance to work together later not only in politics but in business and other parts of their lives.
Case in point: Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez ran an appalling, attack-based campaign against Democrat Betty Castor in 2004. He won. But four years from now he’ll need to run again, without Republican dominance to help him. And Betty Castor’s daughter, Kathy, is now in Congress from a gerrymandered “safe for Democrats” district that will require little re-election effort from her, thereby leaving her and her political allies plenty of time and energy to campaign against Sen. Martinez in 2010.
Even if you never need today’s opponents to be your friends, you will not want them to be your sworn enemies in the future. Attack their actions and they will forgive you. But get personal with them, and you will regret it one day.
Don’t Assume Voters are Stupid — or Come in “Masses”
Some of my friends have PhDs, and some are high school droputs. Some are math whizzes and some take a long time to read even the simplest newspaper article. My personal experience and lots of studies tell us that the smarter and better-educated a person is, the more likely he or she is to vote. And there are different kinds of smarts. I know a couple of guys who are only marginally literate but are brilliant when it comes to getting plants to grow. They vote, too.
You’ve heard that you can fool some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. This is true. And people talk to each other, whether on the Internet, at lunch after church, at softball games, and in bars.
So when you talk down to voters, you alienate them. It’s okay to come across as an expert in politics or government. You’re supposed to be an expert in these matters if you’re running for office, right? At the same time, you need to remember that some of your consituents know more than you do about almost any subject you can name, from religion to horticulture to physics. This means you need to respect your constituents’ knowledge and treat them as equals who may have different interests and abilities from yours, not as “the masses.”
You have never met a person who considers himself or herself a mass. Every single person who hears you speak, whether in person, on the radio or on TV or over the Internet, is listening to you as an individual, not as part of an audience.
“Hello, Bradenton!” may be an okay introduction for a musician, but even then there’s an unspoken assumption that the entertainer isn’t talking to individuals but to the whole town at once. Hardly anyone “out there” thinks of himself or herself as “Bradenton.” It is better to just say “Hello” or to introduce yourself, as in “Hi, I’m (your name here)” and try to make at least some eye connection with the people listening to you — unless you’re on the radio, in which case you must speak to them extra warmly because they can’t see you.
One thing to note when you’re on camera: The audience is inside the lens. It is easy, almost instinctive, to speak to the person operating the camera instead of to the camera itself, but when you do this you come across as shifty-eyed.
TV reporters tell you to talk to them and ignore the camera, but notice that they speak directly into the lens whenever they want to make a point. It takes a little will power (and the ability to ignore a reporter’s instructions) to speak to the camera instead of to the reporter, but the reporter is not your audience. The audience, from your point of view when you’re on camera, is inside the lens.
Video, whether delivered via traditional broadcast/cable TV or over the Internet, gives a candidate a vital opportunity to look each voter in the eye and deliver a message directly to that voter in a personal manner no other medium can match. Learning how to use this connection — and to treat it as a meeting between equals instead of as a “one to many” speech where the candidate is up here on a podium and the masses are down there in the audience — is necessaory for any 21st Century politician who wants to consistently win elections, especially against better-financed opponents.
I will want to spend at least a few hours drilling all candidates with whom I work in the future in the art of using video as a “cool” medium. I might even ask them to spend some time looking at old tape of Ronald Reagan. He was possibly the best TV politician I’ve ever seen. Even when he attacked his opponents, he did it in a “more in sorrow than in anger” manner that kept him from being considered a mean or obnoxious person.
Whether we agreed with his politics doesn’t matter. He was suberb at using TV as both a positive and a negative political communications tool.
We all can — and should — learn from Ronald Reagan. I know I have.