Negative Political Leadership Ads

Almost every commercial break on television today has a political commercial for one of the two presidential candidates.  Almost every ad either mentions or speaks “between the copy” of the leadership of the other candidate. 

The interesting aspect of the ads is the negative nature of the advertisements about the failings of the other candidate.  President Obama recently made a speech mistake in which he stated “The private sector is doing fine.”  Such speech gaffes are political fodder for the other political party.  Many millions of dollars of ads bring these mistakes to the forefront of the American voters for each candidate.

Leadership that focuses on the negative aspect of each candidate actually brings Americans to talk about the negatives of his or her leadership instead of the positives.  As human nature dictates, we love negative stories more than positive.  One half hour of the nightly news demonstrates that too well.

It will never happen, but the choice between spending money on negative vs. positive ads will always bring a huge majority on the “failings’ of the other candidate.  It would be interesting to see a candidate focus on the positives instead of negatives.  Pigs will fly before that happens……