Watching the first attack ads of election season usually inspires just as much excitement in me as offended ideological outrage. Attack ads are the first sign that its time to gear up for the fun to be had debating the merits of party platforms and dissecting the subtle (or blatant) political ploys on offer by the latest batch of Prime Ministerial hopefuls with other people who enjoy that sort of debate.
The most recent ones inspire something more akin to weariness.
The jist of one of the ads is that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is an outsider who didn’t come back to Canada for the good of the county, but rather to collude with the Bloc Quebecois and the ‘high-tax NDP’ to form a ‘reckless coalition’(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urPwfuOWRSE&feature=relmfu ). Others focus on Prime Minister Harper in hard-at-work poses. All of them, with tired out, predicable messages and personal attacks, fail to do much but beg the question; does anyone actually buy into this stuff?
Obviously, Canadian political parties think that Canadians do, or they wouldn’t bother to run them. I, on the other hand, have trouble seeing attack ads as a constructive tool for an election. They more or less pander to ideological extremists, and have a high potential to backfire if deemed to offensive by the publics, like when the Conservatives questioned whether Jean Chretien had the ‘face of a Prime Minister’ in 1993.
But perhaps Harper isn’t looking for early advantage in a Spring election, hoping to get the jump start on badmouthing the opponent. Maybe Harper is only looking to remind the opposition that an election would be a hard fought battle, one that, if recent elections are anything to judge by, will likely yield indifferent results from the increasingly disinterested public.
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