American government

It may be easier to deplore the devil of negative advertising regarding politics on TV specially the one who has been shown in the South Carolina last week. The right and skillful use of remote control would have shown few ads during the morning and evening programs showing negative political ads one after and other.
People could have watched Ron Paul’s attack on Gingrich for taking millions from Freddie Mac or for that matter another assault on Gingrich from Pro-Romney camp. Viewers could also have seen the ad campaign of Rick Santorum on highlighting some of the similarities between Mit Romney and Barack Obama on certain issues or even Ron Paul denouncing Santorum as a big movement conservative.
All these ads were by the candidates running for the election and all three were coming from Iowa and North Hampshire. All candidates with the exception of few are sure to win the nominations and even the elections for the next President of US.
It has been unanimously agreed by the intellectuals that negative advertising may not be the good thing as it tend to pollute the environment. It is not only unfair but also creates cynicism about politics and therefore may not be the right thing for the society to experience. However, it may not be always the case; negative advertising can result into better things.
Since elections are zero sum game where one candidate wins over all others therefore expecting candidates to be positive about each other can be a highly unexpected thing.
Every candidate has the weaknesses and it is always expected that opposition candidates would find those weak points to attack the candidates and engage into sort of any negative campaigning against each other.
One criticism of negative ads is that they can be fairy inaccurate but positive ads can be inaccurate too. An unfair ad always meets with the opposition from other candidates and in order to sustain, an inaccurate ad need to sustain the onslaught from the other members. Sometimes, public even respond negatively to the ads and those engaging into negative campaigning can end up at the receiving ends and other candidates can take advantage of the negative ad campaign.
Advertising cannot always be decisive in nature and other important things also matter too in the elections. Debate is one of the things which can actually help candidates to actually prevail over each other even in the presence of negative ad campaigns.
One of the criticisms by the high minded people about the negative ads is that they can actually erode the confidence of Americans in the institutions which America once held as one of its finest achievements. However, data indicates that last time Americans actually showed some sort of confidence in institutions were way back in 1950s. Since then overall confidence is shrinking.
Historically, Americans have also talked negatively about the government and politics and negative campaigning on TV is going to persist and those who are willing to avoid them can actually skip the channels.