Here in the swing state of Florida, you can barely turn on your TV without being told over and over what jerks all the candidates are. No matter who wins which office tomorrow, I’ll be glad to see the nasty campaign ads stop.

My least-favorite campaigns are those being waged by Betty Castor and Mel Martinez for the Senate seat opened up by Bob Graham’s retirement. I can only recall one ad from each candidate that said why I should vote for him or her. All the others I have seen tell me why the opponent is a lousy person who supports terrorists.

A stranger coming to Florida and hearing about Castor and Martinez for the first time from TV ads during this election could easily conclude that both of them are deceitful Al Queda-lovers.

Martinez started this playground fight. In fact, he got so disgusting in his attacks on the affable Castor that more than a few major newspapers withdrew their endorsements, and others cited those ads as the reason the refused to endorse him even though they agreed with his positions on many issues.

And the presidential campaigns: If all I knew about Bush and Kerry was what I heard in TV ads, I’d be scared to have either one as president. The truth is, of course, that both of them are trying to put forth a vision of America that is supported by a large number of citiens, and that we sill survive either one’s presidency because we are a resiliant people. And I don’t know about you, but I will not stop being friends with other Floridians whose political beliefs don’t match mine. I am a liberal in the classic (if not political) sense, which means I am open-minded, tolerant, and generous. Therefore I am supportive of other Americans’ right to disagree with me. (For the dictionary-impaired, this does not necessarily mean I support higher taxes, trial lawyers or communism, any more than being “conservative” necessarily means supporting theocratic dictatorships, holding a “let them eat cake” attitude toward people at the bottom of the economic pile or taking away Americans’ freedoms in the name of freedom.)

I understand that outside of Florida and other “swing states” TV is still advertising cars, household products, razor blades, and other consumer good. People who live beyond the reach of the presidential candidates’ biggest TV buys aren’t getting the full force of negative campaigning.

Imagine if Ford, instead of telling you their trucks were well-built and the best choice for real macho men who love country music, spent their ad budget showing you Nissan and Toyota trucks being used by terrorists, GMC and Chevy trucks overturning in flaming wrecks, and in between those images had groups of Vietnam veterans telling you why Dodge can’t be trusted to supply trucks to the military because the company sympathized with the enemy back in the day.

I suspect that this kind of campaign would backfire; that Ford would see pickup truck sales drop quickly if they ran something like it.

But this is the tenor of modern political advertising, especially at the presidential level.

We expect a higher electoral turnout in 2004 than in the last presidential election, when about half of all eligible voters showed up. This time we may see a whopping sixty percent.

This is still smaller than it should be.

I’ll tell you, if I didn’t believe I need to vote to legitimatize my right to complain about the government, I’d probably be one of the non-voters.

Given the campaign ads I see, the best I can do is vote against the nastiest candidates, not for anyone I believe will truly do any good.

Maybe next time around it will be better. Or maybe not. I have been voting since 1970, and every year the level of vituperation seems to get worse.

There are days when I wonder if the American “experiment in democracy” isn’t coming to an end. This is one of those days. Tomorrow will probably be another one.

I hope I’m more optimistic Wednesday, but I can’t promise I will be.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 1st, 2004 at 4:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.