THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040699
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: DECISION '96
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 124 lines
It may not last, but candidates in the 1996 political campaigns so far are not diving into the mud as readily as in past years.
In the presidential contest between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, as well as the U.S. Senate race in Virginia between John Warner and Mark Warner, the candidates are mostly respectful of each other, they concentrate on the issues, and their television ads generally reflect that tone.
Dole's standard campaign speech includes the line: ``As I look at our opponents - and they are our opponents, they're not our enemies - I don't dislike them. But they're our opponents. They have different philosophies. They have different ideas.''
Sen. John Warner called Mark Warner a ``Connecticut Yankee.'' That's about as rough as it's been in Virginia.
Could it be a sign of permanent change?
Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, thinks it might be.
``The romance with rudeness is over,'' Martin said. ``So far, at least on the national level, there has not been the kind of snideness and implication that the opponent is not a person of good will that characterized the campaigns of 1994.''
The 1996 campaign for president looks different in several ways:
Clinton and Dole, for various reasons, are restraining their attacks on each other. Campaign ads mostly have stuck to policy differences, and the handful of truly harsh ads have surfaced only briefly.
Part of it is no doubt the personalities of the two principal candidates. By nature, the incumbent is a policy wonk who would rather discuss issues, a gregarious candidate with a need to be liked; his opponent, while perhaps less gregarious, is a longtime legislator with an equally intense emphasis on policy.
Each has pragmatic reasons, too, to avoid a dirty campaign: Clinton knows there are at least questions that could be raised about his character; Dole has a reputation for a bad temper that he'd rather not see resurrected right now.
This could change, of course. If Dole stays behind and begins to feel desperate in the last weeks of the campaign, he might feel he has nothing to lose by taking the gloves off.
The notion of free air time for candidates is gathering steam, with the Fox network voluntarily giving Clinton and Dole one-minute segments during prime time to address issues generated from voters. Two nationwide chains of television stations propose to do the same.
Other networks may follow suit soon, although the originators of this idea this year, including retired network anchor Walter Cronkite, Sen. Bill Bradley, and former Washington Post writer Paul Taylor, think they're not going far enough.
Last week their coalition took out an ad in the New York Times urging the major television networks to put the candidates on the air in 2 1/2-minute segments during prime time.
``If you go into prime time you get a bigger audience and you get a segment of the audience that may not have been following the campaign as much,'' Taylor said. He acknowledged, however, that with the voluntary offers so far, ``Something is beginning to happen here.''
Citizen-based forums on the campaigns, which tend to focus on issues and force candidates to do the same, have proliferated. PBS led the way nationwide with ``The Democracy Project,'' and other, more regional efforts have popped up around the country.
The Minnesota Compact, for instance, combines an effort to bring citizens into the process with a standard of responsibility for politicians to follow in advertising. Janna Haug, one of the compact's organizers, said candidates are discussing how well their ads live up to the compact, among themselves and with the public.
``One Democratic candidate called and said, `What do you think?' about one ad,'' Haug said. ``But we answered, `Well, what do you think?' Because we don't want to absolve them of their responsibility by being a watchdog. We want to make them think about it.''
It's possible that politicians finally figured out the public is fed up with vicious, petty campaigning. A U.S. News & World Report poll of 1,005 adults nationwide recently found that 88 percent thought a lack of civility was a serious problem in America, and many considered political campaigns a prime culprit. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 points.
``There is an abundant base of polling data to suggest the public is fed up with attack-dog politics,'' said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. ``I think the politicians understand the people are looking for something else.''
Then, too, both the campaigns for president and the Senate involve incumbents with a comfortable lead. That gives them the luxury of looking dignified and avoiding personal attacks.
Sen. John Warner has recently aired the best kind of television ad, one rarely used by candidates, in which he personally faces the camera and talks about his campaign.
One group of researchers is attempting to professionally examine the 1996 presidential campaign's ``level of discourse.'' Under Jamieson's leadership, a team at the Annenberg School is examining every available form of campaign material and issuing weekly reports on their findings.
Jamieson's team points out that not all ads that attack an opponent are necessarily ``negative'' or ``dirty'' in the conventional sense. An ad which compares the candidates' records and criticizes the opponent is not necessarily bad: As long as it does not distort the facts, it is providing the voter with information.
Jamieson notes that the presidential ads so far have not done two things associated with the worst ads in the past.
First, they have not resorted to frightening images to shock the voter, such as the mug shot of Willie Horton used in a 1988 ad against Michael Dukakis or the little girl/nuclear explosion ad used against Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Second, they have not tried to distance the ads from the candidate sponsoring them, a tactic designed to keep the candidate from getting smeared with the mud he's throwing.
Clinton's and Dole's ads have addressed numerous real issues, including immigration, taxes, health care, and drugs, Jamieson said. (Virginians haven't seen many of these ads because the candidates aren't spending much money here.)
But her team criticizes candidates when they do step over the line. In early September, a Democratic National Committee ad on Clinton's behalf mocked Dole for quitting the Senate. The ad was universally booed and quickly withdrawn. Jamieson said it ``reduced argument to name-calling.''
None of this means that campaign ads have reached a perfect pitch of honesty and civility. Jamieson's team routinely points out misleading claims in ads and a few that are flat-out wrong. MEMO: The New York Times News Service contributed to this report.
KEYWORDS: CAMPAIGN ADVERTISING PRESIDENTIAL RACE 1996 by CNB