Among both professional campaign consultants and passionately informed partisans, there is a macho zest for negative campaigning. The art of trashing an opponent's reputation arouses both passionate commentary and lucrative fees.
Among both practicing politicians and average citizens, however, negative campaigning arouses far less enthusiasm. Experience has shown that there is often a sort of karmic justice involved: those who most go negative against their opponents wind up having their opponents and their supporters most go negative on them.
To a surprisingly large degree, the rules politicians make clear they play by strongly influence the rules their opponents play by. This is because the tactics an incumbent, frontrunner, or popular challener follows inherently legitimizes the same tactics for the opposition.
And then there is the ultimate deadly negative on negative campaign: it often does not work. Exhibits A and B are Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, two of the most popular Americans today, and two of the most attacked and hated politicians in American history.
There are endless reasons why negative campaigning fails. The first is that is sometimes creates a new and intense
constituency for the victim of it. For instance, Paul Wellstone's initial opponent, Senator Rudy Boschwitz, blew a considerable lead over Wellstone by attacking him for engaging in religious intermarriage. Suddenly Wellstone was the undisputed champion of the many hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who also had engaged in religious intermarriage.
Other examples include Mayor John Street of Philadelphia--elected when his primary opponent created a new voting bloc of debtors indignant that his personal debts were at issue; Bill and Hillary Clinton, recipients of support from the strained and difficult marriages constituency as well as the anti-draft constituency for Bill; and Chuck Schumer, the beneficiary of strong Jewish support after incumbent Al D'Amato attacked his Jewish authenticity.
A second way negative campaigning can backfire is by drawing attention to the weaknesses of the attacker. Republican James Roddey was elected Allegeny County Executive over well-known Coroner Cyril Wecht by running ads consisting of quotes from Wecht attacking other Democrats he had competed with.
In PA-13,Republican challenger Melissa Brown's attacks on incumbent Republican Congressman Jon Fox, his successor County Commissioner and then Democratic incumbent Congressman Joesph Hoeffel, and his successor State Senator and now Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz served to increasingly strip her of credibility and make her, by her own admission, a widespread object of hatred.
A third way negative campaigning can backfire is by forcing the incumbent to campaign harder. One of my Republican colleagues in the legislature was almost beaten by a low-key Democratic challenger running a positive low-budget campaign that put him to sleep; the following election, he got about 80% of the vote against a well-financed Democratic challenger who ran a sharply negative campaign.
A fourth way negative campaigning can backfire is by improving the performance of the challenger. The negative campaigner can be doing a great favor for his opponent by pointing out vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.
A fifth way negative campaigning can backfire is by alienating the hard to see but always present "fairness constituency," a group of people that like to consider themselves disinterested referees of political battles. Ed Rendell swept this constituency in his 2002 primary victory against an opponent's campaign whose regularly negative take on Rendell's positive achievements cost him much-needed credibility.
When going negative, a candidate should ask what message he or she wants to get across, and whether the negative campaign actually does that. All too often the negative campaign merely gets across the message that the perpetuator is angry, unqualified, unimaginative, etc. When your own supporters start complaining to you about your tactics, that should be taken as a hint that you ought to seriously consider changing them.