Attack ads? Hardly
These are attack ads? The Conservative Party's paid television commercials challenge Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion on his party's environmental record, on being part of a scandal-plagued party and on (allegedly) being a poor leader. There is no distortion and barely a touch of innuendo. Yet some voices have criticized these as attack ads. Is the suggestion that Canadians are too namby-pamby to tolerate political leaders who point out the weaknesses, real or otherwise, of their opponents?
Compare the Tory ads with those run by the Liberals in the last federal election. One Liberal ad, unsupported by facts, suggested that Mr. Harper might have accepted campaign funds from right-wing forces in the United States. Another said Mr. Harper had admitted (when he didn't) that he would have to raise taxes or run a deficit to pay for his campaign promises. Another cited a quote from The Washington Times that Mr. Harper would be "the most pro-American leader in the Western world." Still another, pulled before it ran, implied that he would send the army into Canadian streets and create a kind of police state. Those ads sought to stoke fear that Mr. Harper was a dangerous radical, an accusation that would have been fair game if the ads had supplied enough facts to make a credible case, even at a stretch. They didn't.
Negative the Tory commercials are, and it's an open question whether they will work. Consider the one that says "Stéphane Dion is not a leader." That assertion follows a testy, somewhat comical exchange between Michael Ignatieff and Mr. Dion during the Liberal leadership debates. Those debates are now old news. Flinging at Mr. Dion a quote from a now-meaningless exchange (this was hardly "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy") is to take aim with a pea-shooter. As a leader, Mr. Dion is untested. The ad is not convincing.
The one questioning the Liberal record on the environment is on firmer ground. The environment is the country's number-one issue, and Mr. Dion, who speaks passionately about the fight against global warming (is there a better-known dog name in Canada than his Kyoto?), has oodles of public credibility. Why wouldn't the Tories, whose minority government has a limited lifespan, try to attack the Liberals' strongest point on the main issue of the day? Anyway, it's reasonable to question whether the Liberal governments in which Mr. Dion served deserve any credit. As the ad points out, greenhouse-gas emissions rose sharply under the Liberals.
Canadians aren't stupid. They know that an ad is trying to sell them on something. That's politics. The ads are part of a spirited political discourse.
