Also, if you look at the whole archive of ad's you'll notice that as election day approaches, that ads become less centered around what the candidate wants to do, and more centered around how bad the opposing candidate's policies are. This is the type of dirty politics that I hate to see.
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Dirty politics or not, it has been shown that attack tactics work. As the election gets closer, don't be too suprised to see that the level of attacks by both candidates increase heavily.
I was looking through McCain's archive for ads, and almost 3/4 of them are attacks on Obama. I was a bit surprised that McCain only has a few ads that specifically focused on his qualities and stances on issues.
i know what you mean peter. that topic is exactly what my first paper was on. Candidates no that voters are really paying attention to their characters and are fighting to make sure the other candidate looks as bad as possible.
The fact is that John McCain's policies are somewhat similar to George Bush's. The string of "we can't afford more of the same" ads do offer truth in place of general attacks. Another thing that helps the Democrats is that Obama can stand up to questions about the economy and answer them knowledgeably and specifically. Meanwhile McCain seems to only stick to lower taxes for businesses. In order for this ad to be more effective, it should make people fully understand the consequences of McCain's policies.
I agree with estricker. McCain is desperate to get more voters. Instead of trying to get new people to support his campaign, McCain is trying to get those on-the-fence voters to vote in his favor. Since Obama is ahead, it's normal for McCain to try and attack Obama as a way to force voters to find him unappealing.
Attack politics are a high risk/high reward tactic. They can smear your opponent, but they can also provoke public backlash. At this point, McCain needs to throw anything and everything he has left at Obama. He might as well, he has nothing to lose. He has to either radically reverse his fortunes or he will lose. Obama, on the other hand, is holding his host of negative ads in his back pocket. He is waiting to unleash them only if he needs to.
I thought Obama's attack on John McCain wasn't as much a smear tactic as a recap of the debate. While the music and narrator do contribute to the tone of the ad, it mainly consists of a clip of McCain from the debate and a clip of Obama's response. Not as dirty was many other ads have been/could be.
Peter has made a very interesting observation regarding the pattern of an increase in attack ads as election day nears. This pattern does seem to exist and although you appear to dislike such behavior, I feel that it all plays a vital part in politics and is thus inevitable.
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