A campaign of fear and loathing? Nah, the facts matter more

Should we be worried about the election campaign going negative? Or is the greater worry party leaders who can't get their facts straight?By Tim WatkinWatch the video version of the episode hereAnalysis - It's been all about the fear and loathing in campaign land this week, with every party accusing another of negativity, lies and the inability to run even the Venezuelan economy.The oft-forgotten subtitle of Hunter S Thompson's famous book, Fear and Loathing in Law Vegas, is "a savage journey to the heart of the American dream", and if you were to believe National's campaign chair Chris Bishop this week, New Zealand had embarked on its own savage journey into democratic chaos."The most negative election campaign in New Zealand history," he declared on day three of the official campaign period, after a Council of Trade Union (CTU) ad that claimed National's Christopher Luxon was "out of touch" and "too much risk".The Caucus team calls hyperbole on that in this week's podcast. Most campaigns - if not all - go negative at times, and others have been more negative. Lisa Owen points to the 'Dirty Politics' campaign of 2014, Guyon Espiner and Julian Wilcox plump for 2005 when Helen Clark and Don Brash had a clear dislike of each other, while I throw back to 1975 and National's famous 'dancing Cossacks' ad, claiming that Labour's national superannuation scheme was the start on a slippery slope to communism. Espiner and Wilcox did warn that the negativity Labour, in particular, is engaging in reeks of desperation, and looks like the tactic of a party that knows it's running a distant second. And does it even work to win over voters? They think not. The risk of all this talk of fear and negativity is that we convince ourselves that our campaign is toxic, turning off voters, undermining public engagement and debate, and talking ourselves into a political funk. That's bad for democracy on every level. Let's take a breath and remember our political debate is a long way from the violence and polarisation we see in so many countries. If the worst we have to endure is a guy hanging over a fence to interrupt a press conference and some mean photos of a party leader, we're not in too bad a shape. Let's not catastrophise…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details