The Blue Banner

Many political ads from the 2008 election were utterly ineffectual.

There was Mike Gravel's three-minute-long ad in which he tossed a rock into a lake and looked longingly into the camera without saying a word. Gravel struggled to reach half a percent in the primaries, and if you're asking who Mike Gravel is, you're not alone.

Democrat Diane Benson, running for an Alaska House seat, ran an ad in which she scooped up dog feces in her backyard (she lost.)

The Republicans, however, ran the worst ads of the campaigns with negativity.

Unlike in past elections, the American flock did not allow slick, high-paid political operatives to pull the wool over their eyes.

Voters rewarded these ads by giving Democrats the presidency and an increased majority in both the House and Senate.

While the age of negative political ads may not be over, its heyday has certainly come to an end.

Ads produced by or run on behalf of Sen. John McCain's campaign tied President-elect Barack Obama to shady characters ranging from former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers to his inflammatory former preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Both McCain and running mate Gov. Sarah Palin supported these ads by stirring up fears on the campaign trail that Obama was "palling around with terrorists" and the Illinois senator was a socialist.

These attack ads ran as fabled companies collapsed and the stock market shed thousands of points.

With their retirement savings being flushed down the drain, did Americans care about who Obama ate dinner with 12 years ago?

Did they honestly believe the charismatic senator to be a Marxist?

Considering Obama defeated McCain by 8 million votes, you be the judge.

"By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten," Obama said while campaigning in North Carolina days before the election.

McCain based his entire campaign on raising the electorate's fears about the "unknown" and "risky" Barack Hussein Obama. He knew he couldn't win with failed Republican policies.

When Palin visited Asheville in late October, supporters chanted "Vote McCain, not Hussein," and held signs associating Obama with Osama bin Laden.

As a result of both his attacks and his supporters' vile chants and violent rally cries, McCain turned off both independents and moderate Republicans and Democrats and lost the election.

While Obama certainly ran negative ads as well, they focused mainly on McCain's policies, such as his abysmal health care plan, rather than on personal attacks.

And when confronted by extreme negativity and slime flying in his direction from Sen. Hillary Clinton at first, and then the McCain-Palin sludge factory, Obama at one point mimicked rap star Jay-Z and brushed dirt off his shoulders with a smile.

Obama's refusal to engage in mutually destructive political warfare and to instead focus on substantial policy proposals and dismiss the negativity with humor paid off.

If American politics ever reached a low point, it came in the weeks leading up to the election.

North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, trailing in the polls, ran an ad tying rival state Sen. Kay Hagan to a group of atheists and playing a woman's voice at the end of the ad saying "There is no God."

Dole was obviously trying to leave the impression in the minds of voters that the voice at the end of the ad was that of Hagan, a Sunday school teacher.

It seems more appropriate that Dole, far behind in the polls, ranked the 93rd most effective senator and married to a man hawking the little blue pill would be the one saying "There is no God."

Apparently Dole's attack ad failed and her fervent prayers to defeat Hagan the Pagan fell slightly short of heaven. She lost by 357,360 votes.

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