If the only way you had to learn about political candidates was through TV commercials, you would think Ken Buck was a misogynistic, rape-sympathizing knuckledragger who hates children.
Except, of course, unborn children.
And Michael Bennet? Well, he’s a corporate raider who has looted billions from companies while putting thousands of workers out on the streets. He, too, hates children because he gambled with taxpayer money as superintendent of Denver Public Schools.
You wouldn’t let either one of these ghouls babysit your kids for five minutes, much less put them in charge of their future.
Fortunately, while there are shreds of truth in most political ads, these blistering, over-the-top ads are mostly ridiculous caricatures of two smart men who want to serve the public.
But the alarming negativity in the ads, and their high rotation on on TV — sometimes back to back to back to back during nightly newscasts — are tearing down whatever is left of a healthy political discourse in this state.
However, they’re here to stay.
First, negative ads work.
The one candidate who refuses to run any negative ads, Democrat John Hickenlooper, has seen his once-commanding lead in the race for governor dwindle to single digits. And the one candidate who has personally leveled the most devastating attacks, Democratic Sen. Bennet, has erased Buck’s once-commanding lead.
Plus, the ads are now easier to pay for. A January Supreme Court ruling, which we supported on First Amendment grounds, has allowed even more corporate money to be funneled into special-interest groups with benign-sounding names, such as American Crossroads or Americans for Prosperity, which then blanket the airwaves.
Spending by interest groups in this fall’s Senate races has gone up 91 percent from the same period in 2008, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, as noted by New York Times columnist Timothy Egan. At the same time, Egan writes, spending by political parties has fallen 61 percent.
A separate (and necessary) debate needs to take place in this country about campaign finance reform. Every time the laws are tweaked, it only drives more money underground.
I’ve long thought it would be easier to strip out all of the do-gooder campaign finance laws that have lessened accountability and made campaigns even nastier, and allow people to donate as much as they want as long as it’s instantly transparent. At least we would know who’s donating and why.
But what’s as worrisome to me is the effect the wall-to-wall negative advertising is having on an electorate that’s already seething.
These grossly unfair ads only lead to a deeper distrust of government and politicians.
The ads are so over-the-top creepy and misleading that they begin to strip away a candidate’s humanity, which makes it easier to hate them.
It can’t be good for democracy if, by the time a candidate wins office, half the electorate wants to pop him in the face.
One of our letter-writers, Paul Kaempfer of Aurora, has grown so tired of political ads in the Senate race that he plans to cast a vote for a third-party candidate. “Congratulations to the campaign managers of both Ken Buck and Michael Bennet,” he wrote. “They have mutually convinced me that both candidates are completely unqualified to serve as U.S. senator.”
The entire process has turned him off, and understandably so.
So here we are, another year in which the politics of destruction has torn down two otherwise good men — both of whom are qualified and competent to represent us.
If there aren’t some changes to the process, you have to wonder: Who in their right mind would ever want to run for public office?
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter at .
