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Hitting Close To Home

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The Washington Post

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 27, 2008

WASHINGTON - They raise money through text messages and release videos directly to the Internet, but Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are relying on the old-fashioned U.S. Postal Service to deliver that staple of a presidential campaign's final weeks: the attack ad.

During the past month, the two presidential campaigns and their allies have bombarded voters in swing states with one contemptuous brochure after the next.

A review of two dozen direct-mail advertisements sent on behalf of Obama or McCain documents a below-the-radar battle in which the public message of the candidates becomes something more spiteful, more exaggerated and often more ominous.

McCain and Obama disparage the opposing side's attacks as unfair even as they approve more mailings of their own because direct mail has a 30-year history of swaying voters late in elections.

Such ads can be more negative. They can be more alarmist.

"It's really a matter of 'the more emotional you are, the more rabid you are; the more extreme you are, the better it will work,'" said Richard Armstrong, a political-advertising expert who wrote a book about direct mail.

In the past 20 years, experts said, direct-mail campaigning has become predominantly negative because candidates find it less damaging to their image to make attacks through the mail than on TV.

The Republican National Committee designed a series of mailers that essentially ignore McCain and his policies. Instead, each flier takes a standard attack against Obama - that he's a vapid celebrity; that he's weak on terrorism - and escalates it.

Democrats have traveled a similar path. According to Democratic mailings, McCain is a "disaster for health care" and an opponent of equal working rights for women. The Virginia State Democratic Party sent out one flier asserting that McCain's campaign is run by "seven Washington lobbyists."

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