New Yorker magazine's Hendrick Hertzberg said negative campaigning has been part of American elections for as long as there have been elections, but the recent trend has become more disturbing in many ways.
Left to right, panelists Shannon O'Brien, Hendrick Hertzberg, Dan K. Thomasson and Douglas Brinkley talk back stage at the TopTrend Politics 2012 panel discussion at Westfield State University on Wednesday evening.
WESTFIELD — If voters are turned off by the negative climate in today's political campaigns, then the voters have only themselves to blame, said panelists during a Westfield State University discussion of politics Wednesday night.
"The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves," said Lowell Weicker, former Connecticut governor and U.S. senator. "The reason we have negative advertising is because negative ads work. We are all listening to them and absorbing them."
Before an audience of about 500 people in the Woodward Center, Weicker and fellow panelists – former Massachusetts Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, New Yorker magazine political commentator Hendrick Hertzberg and syndicated columnist Dan K. Thomasson – discussed the state of the modern-day campaigns and the what it means about the modern-day electorate.
With Westfield State President Evan Dobelle serving as moderator, the consensus among the panel was that, for better or worse, honesty among politicians has become among the rarest elements in the universe.
"The thing that scares me in this election," O'Brien said, "is it is almost as if the electorate is not troubled by the lack of integrity and honesty (among the candidates)."
O'Brien, a Democrat who lost the gubernatorial race against Mitt Romney in 2002 ("and I still have the scars to prove it."), said in that campaign she saw the first signs that Romney was acquiring the "shape-shifting" ability he has demonstrated throughout the 2012 presidential run.
"It is very difficult to debate someone when they are not telling the truth," she said.
Hertzberg said negative campaigning has been part of American elections for as long as there have been elections, but the recent trend has become more disturbing in many ways.
Panelists Lowell Weicker Jr., left, and Douglas Brinkley await their turn to go on stage at the TopTrend Politics 2012 panel discussion at Westfield State University on Wednesday evening.
"Negative politics are not something that was invented a couple of years ago," he said.
Other than holding politicians to their positions and the truth, he said, "I don't know what you can do about it."
Brinkley said that the final stretch run of the presidential campaign may well hinge upon one big mistake made by each of the candidates.
For Barack Obama, who inherited a recessed economy when he took office in 2009, it was his pledge to reduce unemployment to 5 percent. While the unemployment rate has gone down to just under 8 percent, it pales in comparison to his 5 percent boast, he said.
For Romney, his mistake was his writing an article that suggested the government should have "let Detroit go bankrupt," he said.
"It is not very smart to infer that any city could go under," he said.