Political bungling in modern elections involves attacking opponents on a personal level rather than expounding on principles and platforms. Negative ads have become commonplace, but voters prefer candidates who focus on important issues rather than rumors and gossip.
If you don’t understand what political bungling is, all you need to do is compare various candidates’ TV ads during an election cycle, at least in the United States. In modern elections, candidates seem to spend more time telling voters how bad the other is, and instead of expounding their own principles and platforms, they just try to convince voters that they aren’t as bad as their opponent. Many candidates attack not only each other’s problems, but also attack each other on a very personal level.
Worse, sometimes the political mess can include members of a candidate’s family as well. Open charges are rarely needed to achieve the goal of creating scandal. One can simply use innuendo or hyperbole as forms of political confusion. In other words, the other candidate must not be shown to be corrupt or dishonest; he or she just needs to plant that seed.
Enough political bungling can cause a candidate to drop out of the race, especially if his or her family is viciously attacked. The political mess can get so bad that a potential candidate falls out of favor with his political party. The prospective candidate may then have no choice but to withdraw, as the party distances itself from the candidate.
Unfortunately, political bungling seems to be the rule rather than the exception in today’s electoral climate. Attack ads are commonplace, and indeed, spreading them could backfire when voters tire of these tactics. If one candidate attacks another, he can make the attacker look much worse than the opponent. Also, the fact that political bungling has become so common has made it lose some of its impact. Negative ads don’t tend to have as much shock value as they used to.
Many voters prefer candidates who run on important issues instead of using the political mess to attack their rivals. For the most part, voters would rather know what their favorite candidate intends to do about the issues that concern them instead of being subjected to rumors and gossip about an opponent. Political bungling may have been successful in the past in some cases, but it’s hardly an effective way to sway today’s savvy voters, many of whom are quite concerned about the direction this country is heading. In today’s political climate, candidates would do well to run on their own record rather than attempt to run on their opponent’s misdeeds, or allegations thereof.
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