An attack unanswered is an attack believed

No one likes attack ads. Or at least no one, short of Karl Rove or Jim Carville, will admit to liking attack ads. The unfortunate fact is that they work. Campaigns wouldn't spend huge sums of money on them if they didn't.

It's not surprising why. When there are only two choices (or two self-imposed choices), an ad promoting yourself and an ad attacking your competitor have essentially the same effect. If a scale only has two sides, adding a weight to your side and removing one from the other side amounts to the same thing.

This is partly why we need effective multipartyism in this country. In a multiperson race, there are two equations, rather than one. Why your opponents are the wrong choices and why you are the right choice. Even if you successfully discredit one of your opponents, voters still have at least one option other than you.

This won't totally eliminate negative campaigning; candidates might well choose to attack all of their opponents. But they might find running more positive ads are more effective use of their resources.

The reason negative ads work is because an attack unanswered is an attack believed. For example, Roadrunner is running ads touting how much better its high-speed internet service is compared to the allegedly deathly slow DSL from Verizon. Those two of the main high-speed internet services in my city.

Verizon, on the other hand, is promoting its DSL service by touting how much faster it is than... dial-up internet. They didn't address a single one of the allegations of deathly slowness contained in Roadrunner ads.

So I assume that the Roadrunner ads must be true. I do this because I assume if Verizon had any advantage over Roadrunner, they'd mention it in their own ads or otherwise debunk the Roadrunner charges. But they don't.

The attack unanswered is the attack believed.