Verbal attacks in presidential campaign escalate

Typically vice presidential candidates are more aggressive, MU professor says.

By Sam Butterfield

Published Oct. 17, 2008

With three weeks remaining until America elects a new president, the maelstrom of verbal attacks between the two campaigns has escalated to a new and personal level.

The campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama have intensified their tone in speeches and ads, attacking not only their opponent's issue positions, but aspects of their character as well.

Although some feel the volatility of recent attacks has increased, negative campaigning is nothing new.

"I don't think we're seeing anything new or different than in past campaigns," MU communications professor Mitch McKinney said. "Typically the campaign that finds itself behind in the polls tends to get a bit more motivated."

James Knowles, chairman of the Missouri Federation of Young Republicans, agreed, saying it wasn't any worse than in the 2004 election between George Bush and John Kerry.

"I think this campaign has been pretty par for the course," Knowles said. "I don't think it's been any harder than it was against Bush or against Kerry, for that matter."

MU communications professor Michael Porter, however, said this year's campaign has been especially harsh.

"It seems to me that the McCain camp is trying to say that Obama is not to be trusted," he said.

Others have commented on the intensity with which Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has attacked Obama. She has said the Illinois senator "pals around with terrorists" and "doesn't see America the way you and I do" in recent speeches.

McKinney said this was not out of the ordinary.

"Typically the VP candidate is the more aggressive candidate and allows the presidential candidate to stay above the fray, and I think that's happened this time," he said.

Recent attacks have covered a bevy of subjects, from McCain's sustained emphasis on Obama's association with former Weather Underground member William Ayers to Obama attacks on McCain's health care plan, calling it radical and arguing that it amounts to "an old Washington bait and switch" by giving families a tax credit for insurance while eliminating the current tax break for families who receive insurance through their employer.

McKinney said the McCain campaign is attempting to cast Obama as outside the mainstream, a familiar tactic from past elections, and that the hostility of the attacks helps candidates to clearly explain their positions.

"They're trying to make the other candidate seem outside so-called American values," he said.

During the 2000 Republican presidential primary, McCain was subjected to attacks in a campaign speech that seemed to attempt to alienate him from the mainstream.

The campaign of then-Texas Gov. George Bush used push polls, which are telephone surveys where callers hint at ideologies in the phrasing of their questions.

In the weeks leading up to the South Carolina primary, Bush campaign representatives asked respondents if they would be "more or less likely to vote for John McCain if they knew he had an illegitimate black child."

Another negative ad of recent campaigns was in 1988, when then-Vice President George H. W. Bush's "Willy Horton" ad, which alleged that Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis had granted furloughs and privileges to a convicted rapist who then committed a murder while on leave from prison.

Porter said some of the rhetoric used in this election season has been divisive and incendiary.

"Both sides have developed such negative perspectives toward the opponent that it's going to take a while to bring people back together," Porter said.