The ups and downs of running a negative campaign

Remember May? It seems like so long ago doesn't it? Back then the Democratic Primary was on it's way to a photo finish with both candidates duking it out in states like North Carolina and Kentucky, but also giving far off exotic lands like Puerto Rico and Guam, their 15 minutes of fame. Hillary was still in kitchen sink mode with all the punditocracy talking about her "hard working. . .white Americans" gaffe, while the Obama campaign was milking it's mathematical inevitability in what amounted to the political equivelency of running out the clock. Democrats were still red in the face about Florida and Michigan, and John McCain gave speeches no one listened too and Republicans shook their fists at the heavens and said "Why God!?"
Ahh May, it seems like a time of political innocence compared to now. It really was, especially when you think that if anyone could've looked into the future they probably would've just died laughing at how wrong EVERYONE would be.
I remember watching all the news shows and reading my usual political blogs and one thing kept popping out at me in my obsessive grasping for every bit of political news I could.
It was two simple words: honorable campaign.
Both Obama and McCain claimed just 3 and a half months ago that this time it was going to be different. No swiftboating, no questions of patriotism or baseless character assaults, no distorting of positions with negative ads and smear campaigns. This time it was going to be about the facts! About hard questions and fair answers! About the day to day, bread and butter, kitchen table, red white and blue issues Joe and Jane American face every single day.
And you know a lot of people bought it.
And it actually started out that way, the candidates painfully went out of their way to praise the other, they talked tough, but it was about issues! It was objective, it was a conversation. Surrogates were fired or forced to resign for thinking it was a presidential campaign and doing their best to make their candidate look good while making the other look like like a freakish monster who frightens children.
And then one day they realized, "Oh Wait, this is a presidential campaign."
If you traveled back in time to that preciously innocent time in May and told Chuck Todd or Wolf Blitzer that John McCain would release ads mocking his opponent giving an inspiring speech to 200,000 Europeans and release ads with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, they would laugh in your face. "No, no, this time it'll be different," they would say.
People this is politics, it's going to get nasty. There will never, ever be an honorable campaign in this or any country's future.
You know why? Because negative ads work.
Michael Dukakis lost one of the best chances democrats have had at victory within the last 30 years because he was damn near portrayed as a criminal loving commie. Thomas Jefferson allowed his political party to release pamphlets saying that John Adams was a cross dressing transvestite.
This is the way things go. McCain has brought Obama's 10 point lead at the beginning of July down to barely 2 points right before his own party's convention, whether Obama's own negative attacks on his opponent will give him a bump as he goes in to what is his most important week as a presidential candidate, is left to be seen.
Both campaigns know these tactics are effective, and although Obama was clever by letting McCain start the battle first, this will become a full fledged war before anyone knows what hit them; and as much as the American people claim to despise the muckraking and back and forth of politics, they still seem to form their opinions on those same caricatures created by carefully crafted media wars.
If there is a downside to negative campaigning, though, it's that if you're not successful, you could end with a lot of 'splainin' to do. The pundits will hem and haw and will say you went to far, like the joker at a party that has people laughing for hours until he suddenly says one wrong thing and now faces blank stares and choruses of "not cool man."
The RNC sure had egg on their face earlier this year when in each of the special house races in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Illinois they ran brutal attack ads on the democratic candidates trying to tie them to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, claiming the candidates were out of touch, too "liberal" and dangerous for America. Hillary Clinton faced swarms of media and supporter backlash for her "kitchen sink" strategy against Obama late in the primaries and even though her campaign was urging her to go even more negative against Obama, it may have cost her dearly amongst people that genuinely were tired of politics as usual and were drawn to a message of hope and change.
I obviously will make no projections now as to what effect this new ramp up of negativity will have on either candidate, the political winds and opinions of the American people are just to hard to predict sometimes, and Obama has done a good job of framing McCain as just too negative (grumpy?) To be trusted to make good judgment. I can say one thing though, we sure won't see an end to it. From either side.