PACKET EDITORIAL, Nov. 7
By: Packet Editorial
We have no idea at this point who the winners will be when all the votes are counted tonight but we do know who the losers have been from the very start of this campaign season.
The voters.
Never before have we witnessed the kind of unruly children-in-the-sandbox behavior to which we have been subjected, virtually nonstop, by both political parties and their candidates since September. It’s as if the hired guns who map out Republican and Democratic strategy, offended that they’ve been accused in the past of aiming their sights at the lowest common denominator, set out to prove this year that there was plenty of lower ground they hadn’t even touched yet.
Here in New Jersey, the "he’s a clone of Bush" vs. "he’s corrupt" campaign culminating in a barrage of unseemly TV commercials featuring unflattering black-and-white photos and horror-movie soundtracks demonizing the opposition was almost tame compared to what went on in the rest of the country. (Maybe those high-priced campaign operatives decided New Jerseyans have at least a fifth- or sixth-grade mentality, and would therefore not be a receptive audience to their most banal and insulting offerings.)
In Tennessee, for example, the particularly close and nasty race between Republican Robert Corker, the former mayor of Chattanooga, and Democrat Harold Ford Jr., a five-term congressman, to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Majority Leader Bill Frist descended into uncharted contaminated waters as the campaign slogged to a conclusion.
In a commercial that goes far beyond "Daisy" or "Willie Horton" in setting a new standard of bad taste, a blonde seductress looks into the camera and sighs, breathlessly, "Harold. Call me." Pause. Wink. The blonde is a white woman. Rep. Ford is a black man. In a state where miscegenation laws were still on the books as recently as 30 years ago, the racist message is unmistakable.
Put that one up against the sophomoric pseudo-"Sopranos" ad that so offended New Jersey’s Italian-American community and the Mafia innuendo seems almost innocuous by comparison.
In North Carolina, a radio ad accuses Democratic U.S. Rep. Brad Miller of seeking an America that is "one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals" as a cheerful mariachi band plays in the background. In Pennsylvania, an ad supporting U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum says electing his opponent, Bob Casey, would risk nuclear annihilation.
It used to be that one candidate accusing another of not telling the truth made headlines. Now, it isn’t even a footnote. Calling one’s opponent a liar has become a throwaway line in virtually every candidate’s generic stump speech and the epithets go downhill from there.
As we remarked earlier in the fall, the net effect of all this is that whoever wins tonight will go to Washington with heavy baggage. Here in New Jersey, it’s already clear that neither Robert Menendez nor Tom Kean Jr. has become a beloved public figure. To the contrary, the scorched-earth strategy both employed in their campaigns succeeded in impugning the integrity, undermining the character and severely damaging the reputation of both candidates making it that much more difficult for whichever one of them emerges victorious to serve effectively in the Senate.
The conventional wisdom among people who run campaigns for a living is that negative campaigning works and since virtually everyone engages in it these days, there’s no way to disprove this assertion. But if the price of winning an election is losing the confidence of the electorate, one has to wonder if it’s worth it. Getting elected used to be a means to an end: governing. Now it’s become the end in itself. And that, on this Election Day, can only leave a very unpleasant taste in the mouths of voters.

