A Race to the Bottom : How Consultants and the History of Negative Advertising Constrained Obama's Use of Advertising Tactics in the 2008 Election

A lay analyst may have concluded that the Obama team ran a relatively positive campaign in their 2008 race for the White House. In terms of television advertising - still, the bread and butter of campaign politics - that conclusion would be wrong. This paper explores the conditions that ultimately limited Obama's ability to run a positive advertising campaign. Using a rational actor framework, with an express focus on historical influence, I examine why the Obama campaign ultimately ran a very negative campaign. I argue that political consultants are the ultimate arbiters of campaign strategy and are likely to advocate negative tactics because this style of politicking works. Consultants and their experiences thus constrain the decision making of political candidates. Turning to the empirics, using three time series models, I show that the amount of negativity in a campaign is governed, in part, by the amount of negativity in previous campaigns, which supports the advanced theoretical claims