Voters always say they hate negative campaigning and are turned off by attack ads, but whether they realize it or not, they’re wrong. They hear the attacks, believe the false claims, and vote accordingly. Particularly when voters are otherwise uninformed about basic current events, attacks ads serve as effective voter education. Even when the ads are wrong.
USA Today ran a disconcerting story yesterday about voters in Missouri (swing state, 11 electoral votes) who’ve seen Bush’s deceitful campaign commercials and have come to believe their message.
“I do know [Kerry has] voted to raise gas taxes several times,” says Brian Nikkel, 25, an insurance claims adjuster. “I know that from the Bush commercials.”
Mr. Nikkel is obviously confused. He’s seen a misleading ad and now accepts as fact something that is demonstrably false. The Bush campaign has preyed on Mr. Nikkel’s ignorance and gotten him to believe something that isn’t true. That, of course, is the point of the ad in the first place — to fool people who don’t know better.
As luck would have it, there are plenty of interesting facts available to Bush’s critics that could be used to convince people like Mr. Nikkel that Bush, not Kerry, wants to raise gas taxes. The charges are not particularly fair, but then again, neither are the Bush ads already on the air.
The New York Times reported today, for example, that a certain Vice President once championed an increase in gas prices.
In October 1986, when Dick Cheney was the lone congressman from energy-rich Wyoming, he introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have caused the price of oil, and ultimately the price of gasoline paid by drivers, to soar by billions of dollars per year.
“Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States,” Mr. Cheney, who is now vice president, said shortly after introducing the legislation.
[…]
[T]he cost of Mr. Cheney’s plan ultimately would have been passed on to drivers and other consumers through higher prices on gasoline and other refined petroleum products. In addition, he said in a February 1987 statement, he supported the tax partly because it would “assist us in reducing our budget deficit.”
So, let’s review. John Kerry never voted for a 50-cent gas tax increase as Bush’s ads suggest, but Dick Cheney actually sponsored a measure that would have dramatically increased the price consumers would have had to pay at the pump.
This comes on the heels of the revelation that the chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors advocated a 50-cent increase in gas taxes in 1999.
So here’s the (revised) ad text I’d like to see:
The Bush administration has sat by and watched gas prices reach all-time highs. But they’re not satisfied. Dick Cheney has recommended higher gas taxes and has said high oil prices are “good for the United States.” Worse, the president’s top economic adviser has argued for a 50-cent increase in gas taxes. John Kerry thinks hard-working Americans are paying more than their fair share at the pump and will oppose any Republican plan to increase gas taxes.
Every word of this is technically true. It relies heavily on the word “has,” but there isn’t a single lie in the paragraph.
I wonder how Mr. Nikkel in Missouri would respond to such an ad.
Update: Cheney didn’t only support higher gas prices in Congress in the 1980s, he also backed higher gas prices as CEO of Halliburton in 1999.