In Defence of Attack Ads
May Samali dispels the myths about negative political advertising in the United States and Australia.
Hillary Clinton’s recent campaign in the Democrat presidential primaries in the United States included an infamous ‘3am phone call’ advertisement, designed to alarm voters about Barack Obama’s political inexperience. Likewise, the Australian Liberal Party’s 2004 federal election campaign capitalised on the alliterated slogan ‘Latham the Learner’, to attack Mark Latham’s alleged failings as Liverpool mayor.
Political advertisements in both the U.S. and Australia increasingly include negative undertones. A negative political advertisement is an advertisement in which a political party or candidate attacks an opponent’s past, present or future performance, policy or personality, rather than focusing on the advertiser’s own merits. Drawing on the experiences of the U.S. and Australia, this article seeks to establish that negative political advertising is not incompatible with democratic theory. It also endeavours to dispel the myth that ‘Americanisation’ is responsible for the increase in attack ads in Australia.
Negativity: A Central Component of Democracy
A central question in the political advertising debate is whether negative political advertising poses a threat to democracy. This article argues that negative political ads encourage healthy competition and democratic debate.
(i) Democratic Theory: Competition, Opposition and Debate
A key tenet of democratic theory is that elections should promote political competition, opposition and debate. Conceptions of democratic government rely on the existence of an opposition to scrutinise, question, and critique the government. As a result, opposition is one of the defining characteristics of democracy.
This view is based on a conceptualisation of elections as contests, where the primary aim of political advertising is to persuade voters in order to win votes. Campaigns are not feel-good exercises; they are pitched battles for control of the government. The stakes are high and competition is fierce. Thus, political advertising should act as a platform for political discourse and dissent.
According to British liberal thinker John Stuart Mill, an opinion gains legitimacy and credibility if it stands up to criticism. Progress is the offspring of criticism, attacks and negativity. Therefore, rather than being harmful to democracy, negativity is essential for genuine debate and to ensuring that policy promises and candidates’ reputations are scrutinised.
“Rather than being harmful to democracy, negativity is essential for genuine debate.”
Negative advertising is also a robust exercise in free speech. The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment states that: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” In Monitor Patriot Co v Roy (1971), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this Amendment has its “fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigning for political office”. In Australia, ACTV v Commonwealth (1992) similarly established the existence of an implied constitutional right to the freedom of political communication.
(ii) Attack Ads Stimulate Reply Ads
Attack ads place a higher evidentiary burden on parties and individual candidates than self-promotional advertisements. For negative appeals to be effective, more evidence must be marshalled than for positive appeals. Criticism also encourages direct debate between opponents, which can increase the quality of information available to voters during election campaigns. A good example is the Liberal Party’s attack ad in the 2007 federal election, which criticised the Labor Party’s policy to ‘abolish WorkChoices’. This ad provoked a response ad from the Labor Party, in which Kevin Rudd defended his party’s policy and highlighted his ‘conservative’ stance on economic issues.
Likewise, in the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement accused Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry of lying about his Vietnam War record. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spent US$450,000 on the 30-second advertisement, which was initially broadcast only in Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia. However, the controversy over its content played out for weeks in media across the U.S. and around the world. The advertisement sparked discussion and debate, and compelled John Kerry to respond to the allegations. Kerry’s veteran allies even produced a 12-page letter, with a 42-page attachment of military records, which disputed several of the accusations of the Swift Boat group.
(iii) The Disputed Impact of Negative Political Advertising
Many commentators are concerned about the rise in negative political advertising in the U.S. and Australia. However, the effect of negative advertising on the quality of political judgment and election turnout is disputed.
Some argue that negative political advertising in the U.S. promotes political involvement because it engages otherwise disinterested citizens and stimulates voter turnout. According to this argument, exposure to negative advertising increases the probability that citizens will vote on election day. Others claim that negative political advertising is damaging to political participation, deterring the non-aligned from voting.
In Australia, where there is a system of compulsory voting, negative advertising is more likely to impact how citizens vote, rather than whether or not they vote. Most modern studies support a ‘modest impact’ thesis, which states that negative political advertising has some ability to affect public perceptions about the policies and personalities of the candidates. However, even the critics concede that negative advertisements are more potent than positive appeals and that they may be useful in attracting swinging voters.
(iv) Passion is Crucial to Politics
Critics also claim that negative political advertisements play to the emotions of citizens and thus weaken their ability to act rationally. However, classical democratic theory demands a level of rationality from the ordinary citizen that is unrealistic. Despite the higher emphasis given to reason, evidence and the rule of law, the appeal to emotions is a key part of democratic politics. Feeling is a valid response to politics, and it is impossible, and even undesirable, to take the passion out of politics. ‘
“Dissent, argument, clashes of judgement, and the constant formation of rival and competing factions are inevitable.”
Therefore, far from constituting a threat to political life, passion is crucial to it. Henry Mayer, a pioneer in the field of Australian media studies, famously stated that, in order to make political advertising rational and accurate, “we would have to eliminate politics as we know it”. Political advertising is necessarily full of half-truths, exaggerations and falsities. Nevertheless, negative advertisements can enhance democratic competition, and provide a channel for parties to refute each other’s policies in public.
The ‘Americanisation’ Myth
Sally Young, a leading scholar in the field of political advertising, recently conducted the most extensive study of political advertisements in Australia to date. The results of the study confirm that the level of negativity in election campaign advertisements has increased over time. Since 1993, more than 60 per cent of political advertisements have been negative. Some commentators claim that this increase in negative political advertising in Australia is the result of ‘Americanisation’. In reality, however, the term ‘Americanisation’ in the political advertising field has simply become shorthand for a list of ‘unpleasant’ features, such as the elevation of personality, glamour, and emotional, often negative, appeals over the promulgation of policy.
(i) Negativity is Distinctly Australian
Australian politicians and their advisers are influenced by American trends. Many Australian political professionals move to the U.S. to observe American election campaigns. However, Sally Young asserts that the rate of negative political advertising is higher in Australia than in most comparable Western democracies, including the U.S., Israel, Germany, Britain and Italy. This is no surprise, though.
In Australia, parliamentary democracy is based on a concept of Government and Opposition, which lends itself to the formation of bipolar behaviour. Australian ads demonstrate a high reliance on negativity as part of a fiercely combative two-party parliamentary system. Dissent, argument, clashes of judgement, and the constant formation of rival and competing factions, are inevitable. Consequently, the majority of negative ads in Australia constitute attacks on opponents’ policies, rather than personal attacks. Therefore, negativity is distinctly Australian.
(ii) Increasing Focus on Party Leaders
During the past three decades, political advertising has become more focused on party leaders, rather than parties. This trend is evident in a range of Western democracies, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and New Zealand. For example, in the 2007 Australian election campaign, the spotlight was on ‘KEVIN07’ and the Liberal Party’s ‘leadership battle’ between John Howard and Peter Costello. Some commentators consider this a move to a more ‘presidential’ focus in Australian politics.
However, this argument is problematic for two main reasons.
First, mudslinging is uncommon in Australia. 70 per cent of negative advertisements in Australia that criticise party leaders focus on their policies or performance, and not on their personal characteristics. This is a point of differentiation between the U.S. and Australia. For example, in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, 71 per cent of political advertisements contained a personal attack. By comparison, in the 2001 Australian federal election, only six per cent of political advertisements contained a personal attack.
Second, Australia’s parliamentary system establishes an adversarial relationship between the two major parties and, in particular, the two party leaders. For example, by the time of the 1996 federal election, then Prime Minister Paul Keating had been in Parliament for 26 years, and his opponent, John Howard, had been in Parliament for 22 years. In the course of Parliamentary debate, Keating had called Howard “brain-damaged”, “a dead carcass” and “the greatest job and investment destroyer since the bubonic plague”. The focus on party leaders in Australian advertising simply reflects the significant role of party leaders in the fiercely combative two-party system. This trend is not the result of ‘Americanisation’.
Conclusion
Ultimately, negative political advertising in Australia is neither an entirely new trend, nor the result of ‘Americanisation’. The use of hard-hitting negative discourse has a long history in Australia. Rather than spearheading any collapse of democracy, negative political advertisements are democracy in action. Although they are not always pleasant or highbrow, attack ads play a critical role in facilitating democratic debate, discussion and dialogue.
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