Weisberg Gets It Right

Jacob Weisberg's columns have been hit or miss lately, but his latest is a good one. And it's encouraging to see someone in Weisberg's position willing to acknowledge The Great Unmentionable in American politics, i.e., that the exceptionally low quality of our political discourse is almost exclusively the fault of the GOP:

The other familiar excuse for negative advertising is that "everybody does it." Newspaper stories about attack commercials usually include a sampling of harsh Democratic spots in an effort to appear evenhanded. But there's really no comparison between what the two parties and their respective surrogates are doing. According to factcheck.org, a respected site that reviews the accuracy of various ads, "the National Republican Campaign Committee's work stands out this year for the sheer volume of assaults on the personal character of Democratic House challengers." Negative Democratic ads tie Republican candidates to President Bush, and to the Iraq war, or accuse them of being in the tank for the oil or pharmaceutical industries. But Democratic ads do not charge that their opponents "prey on our children"—even though one recently resigned following accusations that he did precisely that. One can only imagine the ads Republicans would have made this year if Mark Foley had happened to be a Democrat.

In fact, the form, style, and content of the contemporary attack ad are a specifically conservative contribution to American politics. Republicans have developed most of the techniques, vocabulary, and symbolism at work in these spots over the last couple of decades. Some of the motifs go back to Nixon and Spiro Agnew, but you can trace most of the elements back to the presidential campaign Lee Atwater ran for George H.W. Bush in 1988, best remembered for the Willie Horton ad and the charge that Michael Dukakis was a "card-carrying member of the ACLU." What's different in this election is simply the ubiquity of the conservative calumny and, in some cases, the aggressiveness of the Democratic response. Spreading hatred and poisonous lies about one's opponent has become an ordinary and almost accepted part of running for office.

My only real quibble is that Weisberg seems to be implying in that last line that, although the Republicans started it, "spreading poisonous lies" has become an accepted part of politics on both sides. I'm not sure if that's what he meant, but either way, I don't think it's true. While I'm sure some Democrat somewhere has resorted to such tactics, I've seen no evidence that it's an accepted practice on the Democratic side. And for that matter, I've seen no evidence that a Democrat would be able to get away with it if he tried. If the Democratic National Committee or some Democratic candidate in a high profile race were to put out a negative ad of the type we've seen lately from Republicans, the right wing media machine would go absolutely crazy, which would in turn prompt the mainstream media to "cover the controversy" (much like the recent Kerry remarks) and the whole episode would dominate several news cycles. The likely blowback alone is enough to keep Democrats from resorting to such tactics.

But Republicans lie so often and so egregiously in their ads, that most of these lies go completely unremarked upon. There are some issues where both sides are equally to blame, but this just isn't one of them. It's nice that some media types are finally starting to acknowledge this.

Note to readers: As you've probably guessed from the light posting lately, I've been insanely busy at work. Such is life, I suppose. A man's gotta earn a living. But if someone out there wants to pay me to write about politics full time, I'm listening.