THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 6, 1996 TAG: 9604060002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Patrick Lackey
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Four local community groups recently established campaign guidelines for city-council and school-board candidates.
``It's time for us to say to candidates, `No more negative ads!' '' declared Donna Berg, first vice president of the Virginia Beach Council of PTAs, one of the groups behind the guidelines.
The three other groups are the League of Women Voters of South Hampton Roads, the Virginia Beach Council of Civic Organizations and the Virginia Beach division of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce.
Their guidelines, purely voluntary, are all well-meaning and good, except they're vague. One says, for example:
Candidates should assume personal responsibility for the conduct of their campaigns.
That's not specific enough. The guideline should say:
Each candidate must personally utter every negative comment from his or her camp against any opponent, in commercials or ads.
Thus only Candidate Joe could say nasty things about his opponent, Candidate Jane, and only Candidate Jane could say nasty things about Candidate Joe.
For an attack television commercial, Candidate Joe could not hire an actor to say of Candidate Jane, ``She sucks rotten eggs!'' He would have to look straight into the camera himself and say, ``My opponent, Candidate Jane, sucks rotten eggs.''
It would be apparent to viewers that Candidate Joe is the kind of guy who makes horrible accusations against others.
If Candidate Jane ran a newspaper or magazine ad claiming Candidate Joe sucked rotten eggs, it would have to contain a photograph of her. In the ad, a little cloud would hover over her head, like the ones above comic-strip characters, and her accusation that Candidate Joe sucks rotten eggs would run inside the cloud.
It would be clear to readers that Candidate Jane was the kind of person who said slimy things about others. Presumably she would pay a price for playing the snake, and that price would be voter disgust, followed by defeat at the polls.
Here's another honorable-but-vague guideline that the four groups propose:
Every candidate for public office has an obligation to observe and uphold basic principles of decency, honesty and fair play.
Again, more specificity is needed. This guideline would contribute to fair play:
Each candidate may pick the videotape or photograph of him- or herself to be shown in opponents' commercials and ads.
As things stand, Candidate Joe's commercials may show grainy, out-of-focus, jerky footage of Candidate Jane looking every inch the furtive crook.
Needless to say, candidates will never voluntarily embrace specific guidelines. The candidates want room to wiggle, as it were. Imposing specific guidelines on candidates would violate their First Amendment rights.
All voters can do, then, is punish a candidate whose camp denigrates opponents and runs insulting photographs or videotape of them. The proper punishment, of course, is a vote for the candidate's opponents.
When you hear a menacing voice say that Candidate Jane sucks rotten eggs, you must remind yourself that the voice belongs to a hired actor but that the words come from her opponent, Candidate Joe. As you listen to the actor's voice, picture Candidate Joe and make a mental note that he is the kind of guy who hires someone to accuse others of sucking rotten eggs. Then vote against him.
If two candidates accuse each other of sucking rotten eggs, hope for a third candidate. Or finding none, consider running for office yourself, next time. MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB