This form of campaigning manipulated the public into believing false information and also skewed election results, which are now based more on a politician’s reputation than his actual political policies.

Since the dirty presidential race between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams in 1828 — Jackson’s wife is said to have died from remorse after being labeled a prostitute — mudslinging has become the norm in political campaigning. Falsely portraying the lives and values of opponents is all too common.

"Mudslinging has become the norm in political campaigning."

The recent November election was littered with personal attacks. The Republican congressional committee ran an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael Arcuri of using taxpayers’ money to pay for his use of a phone sex fantasy line, according to a Nov.1 article in The San Francisco Chronicle. In another manipulative ad, a white woman flirtatiously claims she met Harold Ford, an African-American Democrat running for the House in Tennessee, at a Playboy party. However, Republicans weren’t the only ones running petty, offensive ads in November. Democrats used President Bush’s low approval ratings to form their main line of attack.

Many of their ads accused Republican candidates of being too close to Bush or of advancing Bush’s personal agenda, according to a Nov. 2 article by Annenberg Political Fact Check, a non-partisan non-profit which aims to educate voters about U.S. politics (factcheck.org).

Negative attacks are often acts of desperation. During the November election campaign, Republicans attacked Democrats running for seats in the House to prevent Nancy Pelosi from becoming House Majority Leader. The conservative FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in the editorial pages of Georgia’ s Augusta Chronicle that Pelosi would emphasize "gay marriage, cutting and running from Iraq, coddling terrorists, raising taxes, (and) amnesty for illegals" as House agenda items.

In the past fifty years, about one-third of political advertising has been negative campaigning, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communication's Web site (www.museum.tv). The Constitutional freedom of speech allows organizations to support and contribute to the promotion or defamation of a candidate or certain propositions. However one restriction does exist: The Federal Communications Act of 1934, containing the Equal Time Provision, obligates television and radio stations to give or sell equal advertising time to all candidates legally qualified for federal office. There is also a line drawn if facts or statements run too amok. When a campaign of a public figure knows a claim or statement is untrue and would potentially hurt their opposition, and produces it anyway, they are in line to have libel filed against them.

But, in general, there are no government-placed restrictions on the content or validity of political advertisements. If voters continue to be exposed to inaccurate information and petty mud slinging, a substantial amount of political thought could disappear from the spectrum entirely.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any motion for change in candidates’ campaigning. Therefore, voters should pay close attention to the information they receive and not fall prey to politicians’ ploys and lies. Politicians don’t seem to realize that it is their moral responsibility to plainly state the truth. And since they know that a fair amount of voters depend on their commercials as a voting guide, then they, as our potential represents, should embody truth and honesty. People should carefully research every proposition and candidate on the ballot instead of depending on sound bites — both by the candidate and his opponents — as their sole source of information.