Negative ads make a mess

If you have watched a TV commercial in the last two months I would be shocked if you have not seen the commercials featuring senatorial candidates Gordon Smith and Jeff Merkley slinging mud at each other.

Based on their commercials you should be terrified to vote for either of the two candidates in the upcoming election. These commercials are an atrocity that should be outlawed. I don’t mean illegal and we might fine you, I mean hey, if you air them you will be tied to a pole and beaten until you are a bloody pulp. Or at least taken off the air, with disapproval by the network and the community.

The problem with these ads is that voters are more likely to respond to an ad that attacks another candidate, as opposed to an ad that highlights the positive aspects of the candidate.

Unfortunately there has been ample research done by nonpartisan pollsters and academic media researchers that shows this to be true. The result has culminated into something hideous with Gordon Smith and Jeff Merkley’s campaigns.

I would like to highlight though that both candidates do not endorse some of these ads. Some of the ads are created by a campaign committee that has some vested interest in a certain candidate, instead of being created by their respective party’s fund.

I could tell you that something needs to be done. That a law needs to be passed banning these types of slanderous commercials, but at the end of the day the slanderous jibes politicians throw at each other are still going to be there. Freedom of speech will still exist even when it is negative and doesn’t contribute to the overall marketplace of ideas. I hate that, and I don’t think that’s how it should be.

But I digress, and I understand that the world isn’t as it should be. I can’t control it, you can’t control it, but at the same time we should do something. And really when I say we, I mean us as individuals, not us collectively as individuals.

We need to look past these ads and do our own research. Because as slanderous as these ads are, some parts of them are true and it is up to us to decipher the true from the fallacious. And because, after all is said and done, at the end of the day, one of these two men is going to be elected as a senator.