COMM 150: Wednesday's class discussion - long-term effect of political ads?

Hi everybody -

Be forewarned: We're taking this out of order. John Vivian's discussion of the effects of mass media won't come till the end of the semester, but by that time the Nov. 2 election will be over. And nobody will remember all the activity that led up to it. So ... here's the second of our three discussion questions for this week.

What effect does negative political advertising - negative politics in general - have on a growing "sense that our political system is broken" and on our trust in government in general?

Post your answers as comments to this post. Take into account the analytical story and campaign commercials I have linked below.

ANCHORAGE - This sense that the political system is broken, coupled with a lot of anti-incumbent feeling as we head into the election, turned up in a Yahoo!-ABC News poll on the Yahoo! website this morning. They include:

When those who are pessimistic or uncertain were asked whether they believe the
problem is the system itself or the people who are running it, a 3-to-1 majority
said the people in charge. Some 74 percent said the people running the
government are at fault, versus just 24 percent who placed blame on the system
itself.

One commonly cited reason: Professional politicians spend too
much time looking out for their own interests; they no longer work for the
interests of those who sent them to Washington.

OK, as far as it goes, but I think it leaves out a reason.

That reason is the candidates themselves.

I've been seeing a lot of it this week in Alaska. There's a hotly contested U.S. Senate race here, with a lot of outside money behind the two Republican candidates. Here are two of Republican nominee Joe Miller's ads. One is positive, in the parlance of political advertising. That means, in this case, that it mostly talks issues instead of attacking other candidates:

But look at what Miller does with the disclaimer - the tag at the end of a political ad that says the campaign approved the message. Miller looks right at the camera, and says, "I'm Joe Miller, and I approved this message because to change D.C., you've got to change the people who are there." I think it's brilliant. But I also wonder if ads like this contribute to the sour mood recorded in the Yahoo!-CBS poll ... and especially to the sense that the system's OK but "the people running the government are at fault."

The other spot is unabashadly negative. It takes down U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who lost to Miller in the primary and is now running as an independent in the general election. (You can't do that in Illinois, but you can in Alaska.) Here it is:



Murkowski's ads have to focus on how to cast a write-in vote, and her attacks on the other candidates have mostly been indirect. Here's one that shows how to fill out a ballot for Murkowski, and it takes a sly dig at media analysts who point out how difficult it is for write-in candidates to win an election:



And here's one that focuses on the out-of-state money that's poured into Miller's campaign from "Tea Party" and other conservative sources in the Lower 48 states.



There's a third major candiate in the race. He's Scott McAdams, and he's running behind Miller and Murkowski. (He's a Democrat, and Alaska is a Republican state.) Here's one of his ads, another "positive" spot - it plays up his roots as a small-town mayor ("a long way from D.C.") who's worked in the fishing industry - but notice the digs he gets in at "Joe" and "Lisa."



It's a cute ad. I think I'd like it even if I weren't Norwegian-American (a lot of fishermen in McAdams' part of Alaska are, so it's kind of an inside joke and a little dig at Miller, who moved here from "outside"). But are McAdams' little digs part of the problem, too? Does stuff like that contribute to the sense politicians are just out for themselves? It's all over the Yahoo! poll.

Read it, watch the TV spots (they're only 30 seconds each), and decide for yourself: Do the candidates themselves and the messages they put on the air about each other before elections contribute to a growing sense of pessimism about politics and government. Post your answers as comments to this post. This will count in lieu of F2F class attendance for tomorrow Wednesday, Oct. 27.

Here, in case the story is taken down before you can comment on it in class, is the Yahoo! story on the Yahoo!-CBS poll:

Poll: What's wrong with Washington? It's the people in charge, not the system

Mon Oct 25, 6:25 pm ET
By JANE SASSEEN
Yahoo! News

As if incumbents didn't already have enough to worry about, add one more thing to the list.

Optimism about the American system of government is at a 36-year low, yet most Americans blame the people in office — not the system itself — for all that's going wrong, according to a new ABC News/Yahoo! News poll.

That means bad news ahead for incumbents on Election Day — particularly those of the Democratic variety. The underlying message of the new poll seems to be that new blood on Capitol Hill is the first step in getting back on track.

"In bad times, people blame those in power: It's got to be your fault — you're in charge," says Larry Sabato, head of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

There's little doubt that Americans, frustrated by the economy's woes, are plenty worried about Washington's seeming inability to successfully tackle that or many of the nation's other problems.

Only 33 percent of Americans today say they are optimistic about "our system of government and how well it works," according to the new poll, produced for ABC and Yahoo! News by Langer Research Associates. That's the smallest number in the nearly dozen times the question has been asked over several decades. Back in the summer of 1974 — not long after President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate — 55 percent of Americans were optimistic that the system was working.

The numbers today suggest levels of unhappiness not seen since the worst of the Watergate crisis, and "a sense that the political system is broken," says Daniel Clifton, head of policy research for Strategas Research Partners. "Independents in particular think the economy is not working and the system is not working, and that has created a very anti-incumbent environment."

Some of that reaction, of course, is cyclical. It reflects how hard many have been hit by the recession and the growing sense that a robust recovery is still very far away.

"This is a bad economic time for all countries," says Richard Thorpe, a 61-year-old retired retail worker from Cleveland, Ohio, who voted for Obama. "It might take the next four years to get things [that are] this bad to what they should be."

Or, as Sabato puts it, it's hard to feel optimistic when pretty much "everything appears to be going to hell in a hand basket."

"When economic or international conditions are unfavorable, Americans naturally reflect that in their view of the system and the future," he adds. "But [those views] will inevitably change once the economy gets better, we get hold of the national debt, and we show we can accomplish some important things."

But the numbers also appear to reflect deeper levels of worry about the position of the country and how well the political system is equipped to handle the challenges America now faces.

According to the poll, it's not just that optimism is declining. A far greater sense of doubt about the system also pervades much of the country. Some 46 percent of Americans say they are uncertain about how well the system is working today, well above the roughly 27 percent who reported feeling uncertain in 1974 and many other years in between.

"We live in an uncertain time, and people are responding to that," says Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant. "As the glory of the World War II era fades, we are becoming a very different country. The economic base is entirely different; we are no longer the food basket or the industrial motor for the world. Instead, we're an overextended debtor nation, and people know that."

None of that should bring any comfort to incumbents this year, especially those in the Democratic camp. Whether Americans are reacting to the short-term economic cycle or to the broader, longer-term problems, they are clear on where fault lies: with the political class running the show.

When those who are pessimistic or uncertain were asked whether they believe the problem is the system itself or the people who are running it, a 3-to-1 majority said the people in charge. Some 74 percent said the people running the government are at fault, versus just 24 percent who placed blame on the system itself.

One commonly cited reason: Professional politicians spend too much time looking out for their own interests; they no longer work for the interests of those who sent them to Washington.

"The underlying system is OK; [the problem] is the people who represent us. They forgot they represent us," says Dale Goodno, a 67-year-old semi-retired truck driver from Beaverton, Oregon, who voted for John McCain in 2008. "I think that if you took maybe 10 people from each state who are not professional politicians and if they ran their government like they run their own business or family budget, then the country might make a comeback and might be the great nation it used to be."

It's also the case that, even when the country's problems are at their worst, many Americans remain idealistic and believe in the efficacy of the system; to question it, argues Sheinkopf, feels almost unpatriotic. So when problems arise, "There needs to be a culpable party ... to find a scapegoat," he says. "That means the politicians."

Most voters also recognize that there's little that can be done short-term to change the system. Moreover, points out Frank Donatelli, who was the deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2008 presidential campaign, the country has rebounded energetically from previous periods, like the early 1980s, when deep economic problems also led to widespread doubts about whether the political system still worked.