John Geer on the Web

While Americans say they don’t like negative campaign advertising — in a 2000 Gallup poll, 60 percent said “negative” ads had no place in a political campaign — observers like Chuck Todd, political director of NBC News, insist that “the negative ad is a necessary reality that actually does our democracy some good.”  Many political scientists, like John Geer of Vanderbilt University, agree. “Many pundits view negative ads as counterproductive, but nothing could be further from the truth,” Geer says. “Attack ads contain more substantive information than positive ads.”... more