Something different about this election campaign…

is that the negative ads have been running wall to wall right up to Election Day. The big ad for Kerry seems to be the lying black and white ad I mentioned last Wednesday. Sorry, but part of that ad is a flat-out lie, and the rest of it isn’t much better. (By the way, I think the Bush campaign may have made a mistake in not taking Kerry to task for that.) And the big ad for Bush seems to be the wolves. As someone who’s done political advertising, I think that’s a masterful ad by the way.

Usually, when you get to the end of a campaign, the ads switch to warm fuzzy ads saying Candidate X is a wonderful patriotic man who hugs children, etc. The closest I’ve seen to that is the Bush ad which excerpts his Republican convention speech. But I’m still seeing the wolves ad more often.

Common political wisdom used to be that running negative ads right up to Election Day risks turning off voters. And I’ve personally seen a negative ad that’s run too much backfire. (Cobey-Andrews 1982 congressional campaign)

My roomie isn’t turned off by the ads, though. He finds them amusing. He’s even made up his own campaign ad line. He screams in alarm, “He’ll turn babies into gold!”

. . . which I’m sure you find about as credible as some of the ads out there.