Election '82: Slinging Mud and Money

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However, the line between negative advertising so blatant that it infuriates voters and slightly less ham-handed ads that impress them is elusive. In Texas, Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen won re-election with the aid of a TV ad that pictured a frail old woman walking to her mailbox, finding it empty and staring at the camera in despair, while a voice accused Bentsen's opponent James Collins of plotting to wreck Social Security. Though Collins once advocated making Social Security voluntary, he now insists that he is avid to preserve the system. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Peter Kostmayer ran ads showing a picture of Republican James Coyne on a cookie that was being crushed by a pair of giant hands, while the voice-over charged Coyne with selling out to "special interests." The ad concluded: "That's the way the Coyne cookie crumbles." Kostmayer recaptured the House seat he had lost to Coyne in 1980.

Some admen are talking of drawing up a voluntary code to define limits beyond which agencies should not go in creating political commercials. But politicians with money to spend will always be able to find agencies that will craft noxious ads, and they will be tempted to buy such ads as long as they think nastiness may succeed. Says California's Hart: "Depending on your view of human nature, you aim for a voter's baser instincts or his hopes and aspirations. These days, you find that fewer and fewer people respond to positive messages." Coelho voices hope that the failure of some of the most flagrant ads will cause negative campaigning to decline. Well, maybe, but as Coelho quickly adds, perhaps the message of the 1982 results is merely that voters demand "more sophisticated" defamation. —By George J. Church. Reported by Evan Thomas/Washington and John E. Yang/Boston