A perspective from Vanderbilt University professor John Greer: When a candidate goes on the offensive to show the harm in an opponent's preferred policies or an inconsistency between an opponent's words and their actions, it helps set an important comparison point for voters.
When those attacks are false or play on the opponent's race, gender, ethnicity, or religion, it's under these conditions that attack politics harm democracy. Of course, it's important that attack politics, no matter how substantive, do not occur in a vacuum. The news media has to play an important role as "fact checker" and referee, something journalists failed to do in 2004 but have done a notable job so far in 2008, especially in the Obama v. Hillary race.
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What a shallow argument -- confusing negative ads in the sense of attacks personally on candidates, and arguments over policy. What does this add to anyone's understanding about the subject? What does it have to do with anything scientific? It seems to me like a very superficial discussion of a much more complicated subject.
And, when you say the media has done such a good job in 2008 on refereeing these things, I have to disagree. Most of the media simply reports he said / she said, or he said / he said, without going at all deeply into the facts. For example, NPR which used to give us insight, now mostly gives us competing opinions because that's what seems to be popular, perhaps, or because of the intense right-wing pressure to be "neutral". We haven't seen the real attack ads because it's the primary season -- just wait until the gloves come off, and we'll see how responsibly the news media is then in exposing the torrent of lies that have accompanied every general election in the US for many years.
Thank you Mr. Nisbet. Excellent post!
It is refreshing to hear a professional, rational position presented without the use of curse words or personally derogatory slurs.
This post presents a view of rational debate and argument that needs further elaboration on ScienceBlogs.
Reminds me of my earlier days on the undergraduate debate team.