By Rob Richie and Steven Hill
It all started so differently. A year ago, negative attacks seemed far
from the minds of Democratic presidential candidates Bill Bradley and
Al Gore and Republicans George Bush and John McCain. As recently as
January, Bush and McCain pledged not to run negative ads against one
another in Republican primaries.
Times change -- and fast. Attacks are escalating on a daily basis in both races, with much finger-pointing about who is to blame. What went wrong?
The answer lies in the winner-take-all dynamic that has been unleashed by modern campaign methods, particularly when the field is reduced to two. The nearly inevitable bitterness associated with two-choice races -- as demonstrated in the presidential primaries and countless other contests in recent years -- presents important challenges to our traditional two-party system.
The Democrats had a two-candidate presidential contest from the start, and, unsurprisingly, were the first to go negative. When Bradley began surging past him in the polls, Gore launched a full-frontal attack, questioning Bradley's commitment to the Democratic party and picking apart his health care plan.
Bradley at first refused to fight back. But after being swamped in the Iowa caucuses, he went after Gore. Their latest debate was described in the Washington Post as "relentlessly negative."
On the Republican side, frontrunner Bush and his sundry opponents for months pursued a generally positive campaign, with Bush even defending McCain as "a good man." But Bush's waltz to the nomination effectively turned into a two-person battle after McCain's landslide win in New Hampshire and the withdrawal of weaker candidates.
The first casualty was comity. In South Carolina, Bush charged McCain with cozying up to special interests and betraying conservative values. McCain responded with ads attacking Bush's integrity, but then unilaterally pulled them. Bush continued to blanket the state with attacks and won the support of most voters making up their minds in the days before the vote. His success made the escalation of attacks by both campaigns in Michigan nearly inescapable.
Will the real Bill Bradley, George Bush, Al Gore and John McCain please stand up? Are you truly duplicitous, Jekyll-and-Hyde characters? Or is something else at work?
There are two complementary answers. First, the candidates are tantalizingly close to the greatest elected office in the world. Like the teams in the NCAA's Final Four, they want to win.
Second, they are now in one-on-one, winner-take-all campaigns that inevitably boil down to a zero-sum choice of "if you lose, I win": if support for their opponent declines, their chances rise.
Winner-take-all elections have always been with us, but now are distorted by opinion polls, focus groups, slick TV ads, "push polling" and high-priced consultants who have mastered the science of mudslinging. Politicians and their consultants know that it is easier to drive the key "swing voters" away from opponents than attract them to yourself. All you need is a good wedge issue or some inflated smear.
Zero-sum, two-candidate choices are not inevitable, however. Reforms like proportional representation in legislative elections, instant runoff voting and fair access to debates hold the potential to increase the number of viable candidates and thus decrease incentives to attack -- just as the Republican campaign was more civil when there was a multi-candidate field.
Certainly the current race to the bottom raises profound questions for two-choice politics. Aggressive campaigns that present clear choices are fine, but we're seeing something more insidious: good people are discouraged from running, issues are simplistically debated and the governing process itself becomes just another part of a permanent, relentlessly negative campaign.
When personal attacks run rampant, nobody wins.
[Rob Richie is executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy and Steven Hill is its western regional director. They are co-authors of "Reflecting All of Us" (Beacon Press 1999).]
Letter to the Washington Post
To the editors,
Jim Cohen is right to point out that Alan Keyes gained significant support from white voters in Iowa's caucuses ("Free for All," February 5). But Cohen is too quick to celebrate racial progress, at least in our winner-take-all elections. Of the 150 most powerful statewide offices in the United States -- the 100 members of the U.S. Senate and the 50 governors in each state -- not a single one is held by a black or Latino. It is no coincidence that none of these states is majority-black or majority-Latino.
Sincerely,
Rob Richie
Executive Director
Center for Voting and Democracy
Times change -- and fast. Attacks are escalating on a daily basis in both races, with much finger-pointing about who is to blame. What went wrong?
The answer lies in the winner-take-all dynamic that has been unleashed by modern campaign methods, particularly when the field is reduced to two. The nearly inevitable bitterness associated with two-choice races -- as demonstrated in the presidential primaries and countless other contests in recent years -- presents important challenges to our traditional two-party system.
The Democrats had a two-candidate presidential contest from the start, and, unsurprisingly, were the first to go negative. When Bradley began surging past him in the polls, Gore launched a full-frontal attack, questioning Bradley's commitment to the Democratic party and picking apart his health care plan.
Bradley at first refused to fight back. But after being swamped in the Iowa caucuses, he went after Gore. Their latest debate was described in the Washington Post as "relentlessly negative."
On the Republican side, frontrunner Bush and his sundry opponents for months pursued a generally positive campaign, with Bush even defending McCain as "a good man." But Bush's waltz to the nomination effectively turned into a two-person battle after McCain's landslide win in New Hampshire and the withdrawal of weaker candidates.
The first casualty was comity. In South Carolina, Bush charged McCain with cozying up to special interests and betraying conservative values. McCain responded with ads attacking Bush's integrity, but then unilaterally pulled them. Bush continued to blanket the state with attacks and won the support of most voters making up their minds in the days before the vote. His success made the escalation of attacks by both campaigns in Michigan nearly inescapable.
Will the real Bill Bradley, George Bush, Al Gore and John McCain please stand up? Are you truly duplicitous, Jekyll-and-Hyde characters? Or is something else at work?
There are two complementary answers. First, the candidates are tantalizingly close to the greatest elected office in the world. Like the teams in the NCAA's Final Four, they want to win.
Second, they are now in one-on-one, winner-take-all campaigns that inevitably boil down to a zero-sum choice of "if you lose, I win": if support for their opponent declines, their chances rise.
Winner-take-all elections have always been with us, but now are distorted by opinion polls, focus groups, slick TV ads, "push polling" and high-priced consultants who have mastered the science of mudslinging. Politicians and their consultants know that it is easier to drive the key "swing voters" away from opponents than attract them to yourself. All you need is a good wedge issue or some inflated smear.
Zero-sum, two-candidate choices are not inevitable, however. Reforms like proportional representation in legislative elections, instant runoff voting and fair access to debates hold the potential to increase the number of viable candidates and thus decrease incentives to attack -- just as the Republican campaign was more civil when there was a multi-candidate field.
Certainly the current race to the bottom raises profound questions for two-choice politics. Aggressive campaigns that present clear choices are fine, but we're seeing something more insidious: good people are discouraged from running, issues are simplistically debated and the governing process itself becomes just another part of a permanent, relentlessly negative campaign.
When personal attacks run rampant, nobody wins.
[Rob Richie is executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy and Steven Hill is its western regional director. They are co-authors of "Reflecting All of Us" (Beacon Press 1999).]
Letter to the Washington Post
To the editors,
Jim Cohen is right to point out that Alan Keyes gained significant support from white voters in Iowa's caucuses ("Free for All," February 5). But Cohen is too quick to celebrate racial progress, at least in our winner-take-all elections. Of the 150 most powerful statewide offices in the United States -- the 100 members of the U.S. Senate and the 50 governors in each state -- not a single one is held by a black or Latino. It is no coincidence that none of these states is majority-black or majority-Latino.
Sincerely,
Rob Richie
Executive Director
Center for Voting and Democracy
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.