Our View: Positive campaigning proves ineffective

There is a reason we don't read many stories about successful politicians who don't slam their opponents. It is because they don't exist.

District 2 Representative Rebecca McClanahan (R) was defeated Tuesday by Zachary Wyatt (D). Wyatt won 60.6 percent of District 2 votes (see story, page 1). Although McClanahan is more experienced in Jefferson City, better spoken and held in high regard throughout the district, she was defeated.

McClanahan lost because she refused to play the game. Her 100 percent positive campaign lost her the election.

This isn't surprising. Politicians always say they want to run positive campaigns. That is, until they air a commercial during "Grey's Anatomy." A political campaign isn't going to spend millions of dollars on a 30-second ad that doesn't follow what they've found to be the best way to impact voters - bashing their opponents.  

In Maine, gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler was defeated by Paul LePage by narrow margins. Cutler told WABI Channel 5 that he was proud of the positive campaign he ran - "one he hopes stuck a dagger in the heart of negative campaigning in the state."

We've got news for ya, Cutler. You lost. The only thing you've stuck a dagger into is the heart of the positive campaign theory - you're just another in a line of many who have proven time and time again that positive campaigning does not win elections.

McClanahan said in the Oct. 14 edition of the Index that voters are frustrated and turned off by negative campaigning. And that might partially be true. We've all been annoyed by attacks from one politician to another. But although we are tired of it, voters have proven it works. We may hope negative campaigning will stop altogether, but as long as we show politicians that we don't mind that they rip their competitors to shreds, they will continue to tell the country why we shouldn't vote for the other guy, not necessarily we should vote for them.

McClanahan also told the Index Tuesday night that she "will have no difficulty looking myself in the mirror and knowing that I gave this my best and that we took the high road. I have no regrets in terms of that."

We can appreciate that she wants to look in the mirror with pride each morning - we all do - but we also want to be employed, and we all also want to be winners. The good and the honorable don't get very far in American politics - and that probably is not going to change any time soon.

No American president in our time has ever been liked by everyone. That is the beauty of our democratic process. We have competition. Competition can push its participants to work harder, to be more accountable and to be better leaders. Unfortunately, it also can make politics more corrupt, backdoor and cutthroat.

McClanahan managed to come out of four years in the Missouri House of Representatives (seemingly) unscathed. She made a promise to run a positive campaign, and she seems to have kept that promise. She has come out of Missouri Congress with her morals corruption free. But her goal wasn't to make that exit -at least, not so soon.

It's unfortunate that the political scenery of our country has shown us being nice doesn't win campaigns, but that is the reality. McClanahan was not incompetent. She was not irresponsible. She was a good representative. But she lost because she refused to fight fire with fire. And she still got burned.