The Coming Tsunami of Slime (thanks to Citizens United and super-PACs)

The man who is schooled in the art of political destruction sits in a mahogany bar called Morton’s in Washington, D.C., a hangout for Republican consultants and lobbyists, and occasionally Congressman John Boehner, who meet to drink cocktails and talk shop under pale lights. A veteran of past presidential campaigns, and an associate of Mitt Romney’s team, he sips a stiff drink and talks about the imperatives of the 2012 presidential election.

“How are we going to punch him every fucking day in the face with the best fucking message that is going to drive voters in our favor?” he asks. The face in question is that of President Barack Obama. “How do we do it nationally? How do we do it in the states? How do we do it over and over and over? We’re not going to win the fight with a knockout punch; we’re going to win it with kidney blows that make your opponent so feeble that he can no longer raise his hands to cover his face.”

It’s going to get ugly—it always does, and this year, it already has. But by almost every measure, the 2012 election is going to be the most negative in the history of American politics. In this, the post-hope election, the promise of Obama’s last campaign has been turned inside out. For all the Republicans’ attempts to emphasize the virtues of austerity, the animating force of their party is hatred of Obama, his “Kenyan” ancestry, his “socialism” and Chicago associates, and the charge that he took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and landed us in an anxious, alien landscape that doesn’t feel anything like what people used to call “America.”

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There’s plenty of ammo on both sides, but the biggest driver of this race is money. There is more money pouring into this election than ever, and it will necessarily mean more negative advertising by volume. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court decision that opened the door to corporate and union money, and eventually unlimited donations, has fathered the new breed of superpowered political-­action committees, super-PACs, on both the left and the right. (Though the Republicans have been more successful at fund-raising thus far than Democrats, partially because Obama so vehemently opposed the Citizens United decision and his strategists are afraid the appearance of cronyism will damage the Obama brand.) Operated by veteran party apparatchiks, super-PACs are effectively mini-campaigns, employing more pollsters, more researchers, and more ad-makers for the purpose of going negative against the opposition—every fucking day. The rise of the super-PACs has completely reinvented the dynamics of negative campaigning, removing the consequences of factual inaccuracy by allowing the candidate a veneer of deniability, while multiplying a campaign’s effective manpower.

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