The answer to this open-ended question was "someone other than Bush." They should have framed the question to leave only their answer, rather than suggesting we were "one unknown dictator away from the next major crisis." "Arkansas 2" gave us nothing to identify with except vague, generalized fear. This "differential reinforcement" (Althouse, Nardulli and Shaw 2001, p. 4) failed.

If these were the only campaign outreach, this would bear out the theory that negative or depressing / violent ads, even when they are supposed to support the incumbent rather than deride the opponent, mostly reinforce voters' existing attitudes (Althouse, Nardulli and Shaw 2001, p. 1-2), and drain resources away from where they could actually generate. If these types of commercials demoralize the American voter toward elections and government in general, we would think the politicians running for office would want to generate positive, rather than negative participation effects. Unless of...
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