Moderation is an asset in good government, but it’s a real disadvantage in politics. Nowhere is that more apparent than in political campaign advertising – specifically recently in the angry reaction to a television ad produced by the abortion-rights group formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League.
NARAL Pro-Choice America withdrew the attack ad after a few days. The spot opposed the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, and it did so in no uncertain terms.
Basically, it was exaggerated and unfair – a routine political ad, in other words.
An ad sponsored by Roberts’ supporters, counterattacking the NARAL attack, continued to run after NARAL’s ad was taken off the air.
It, too, was dark, menacing and simplistic.
The original spot, the one attacking Judge Roberts, focused on an argument he made to the U.S. Supreme Court in the early 1990s, in which he opposed using federal injunctions against protesters at abortion clinics.
The ad said, “America can’t afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.” It featured pictures of a bombed abortion clinic and a bloodied victim, a worker at the clinic, in a wheelchair.
The ad wasn’t seen in Colorado, except for snippets in news stories. It ran in Rhode Island and Maine, places with centrist, pro-choice Republican senators who might be pressured to vote against Roberts’ confirmation.
It was what we’ve come to expect in politics: totally one-sided and conceding nothing to any other point of view.
Of course, the answering ad was no better. Instead of concentrating on Roberts’ impressive credentials, it spent much of its 30 seconds attacking the stereotypical liberals who would stoop to such distortions of his character.
This is the reeking bog where most of today’s political battles are fought, a low and muddy place that sucks under even the best-intentioned. Each side is compelled to demonize the other. The opposition can’t merely be wrong, it has to be evil. The other side doesn’t make mistakes; it secretly plots to destroy civilization.
It’s difficult to fight zealotry with moderation. Zealots are fierce and single-minded. Zealots love to fight. Moderates would rather find mutually acceptable solutions.
Clearly, zealots are much more exciting than moderates. And they make more attention-grabbing ads.
To its credit, NARAL stopped running the ad. The Swift Boat Veterans, who ran a similarly flawed ad against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, never had any such second thoughts.
Condemnation of the NARAL ad had been widespread and bipartisan. The New York Times suggested the controversy reflected Democrats’ uncertainty about concentrating on abortion to the exclusion of other issues in the Roberts confirmation.
Lately there have been faint signs that there might be a middle ground on abortion. Democrats are hesitant to make it a make-or-break issue; there might be a place where they can find a policy that appeals to popular sentiment more than the Republicans’ strict anti-abortion stance.
There are few, if any, pro-abortion zealots. The zealotry is on the other side. Few people are avidly pro-war, either. But the weight of public opinion would hold that neither abortion nor war should be eliminated as a last resort.
It was a shrewd nomination; Judge Roberts may look a little wild around the eyes, but he doesn’t display a vulnerable zealotry. Around here, we also know him as the fellow who helped prep gay-rights attorneys in their successful Supreme Court challenge to Colorado’s anti-gay-rights Amendment 2 of 1992.
Like most attorneys, he knows how to argue any side of a case. His record suggests a mostly conservative philosophical frame of mind, but he’s unpredictable.
Roberts seems like an affable, intelligent fellow. It’s hard to work up a good hate against a guy like that, and it’s hard to sustain a hateful attack-ad campaign. Somehow, someday, both sides need to find better ways to get their points across.
Fred Brown, retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
