Going Negative - NYTimes.com Gail Collins: David, why do you think there's so much negative campaigning? The crazy billionaires who want their own nutty super PAC? The years-long presidential races where the candidates just run out of stuff to talk about? Our fraying national moral fiber? Or is it just because it works? David Brooks: The conventional view is that it works. My view is that it works in some cases. Obama ran plenty of negative ads in 2008, but he won because he rejected the sort of stale campaigning everyone is disgusted by. Now he is running exactly the sort of campaign he once rejected. I don't see how going against your core identity can be a good thing. Gail: Well, he thought he could end pointless partisan bickering, too. David: The thing that actually surprises me most is a shift in morals. Of course politicians have always lied. But now dishonesty is seen as a sign you are playing the game the way it should be played. A few months ago Romney ran an ad that took some Obama comments about the economy completely out of context. It was blatantly dishonest, but it was meant to show the world how tough Romney was. Similarly, Obama's ad about Romney's Bain experience makes two claims. First, that the steel company GST was successful until Bain acquired it. That is blatantly false. Second, that Romney dumped people on the street and cut them off when the company shut down. That too is blatantly false. Romney had left Bain by that point. Blatant falsity is now seen as a sign that you are a true professional. Gail: Actually, I just brought up the subject in hopes that we could revert to one of our historical discussions, in which I could point out the terrible things the other side said about Grover Cleveland. But let me get current. David: Can I just say that there's been a historic decline in the quality of our Grovers. From Cleveland to Norquist. Pretty sad. Gail: As you know, Mayor Cory Booker of Newark made a big splash over the weekend when he went on Meet the Press and said all the negative campaigning was making him sick. Some Democrats felt he should have said that all the Republican negative campaigning made him sick. David: That's because some Democrats, like some Republicans, are partisan hacks. At some point it should be possible for politicians to have an honest opinion about their own party, and not just do the talking points. By the way I don't know if you saw the crawlback video Booker released later in the day, but that was painful to watch. So humiliating to see someone collapse under a bit of pressure. Gail: Let me ask you about the Republican side. As Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg reported in The Times, Republican strategists were trying to get the billionaire who owns the Chicago Cubs to consider an ad campaign resurrecting the Reverend Wright issue against President Obama. I didn't realize there are still Republicans who are sulking because "crusty old" John McCain wouldn't let them run Rev. Wright ads in 2008. That was pretty much the only shred of the old John McCain that was left in that campaign and I think they should leave it alone. David: I haven't written much about the Citizens United case, mostly because it is so well ventilated by others at our paper. But it's really awful. One of the truly terrible effects of the decision is that the most reckless and indecent consultants, who have always been floating around the fringes of politics, can now make a great living if they can persuade some billionaire to fund their whack-job ad campaigns. This Wright campaign never got off the drawing board, but a lot of bottom feeders are going to get very rich off Citizens United. Gail: I hated the Rev. Wright thing because it was nothing but a ploy to capitalize on some voters" uneasiness about Obama's race. And I'd be equally opposed to seeing the Democrats poke around at discomfort about Mitt Romney's Mormonism. You don't run on a guy's religion. I'm sure the Obama campaign won't, but you do have to watch out for those crazy billionaires. Although this year it does seem that the Republicans have pretty much of a crazy billionaire monopoly. David: That's an interesting point. Republican billionaires do seem crazier than Democratic billionaires. On the other hand, I think Democratic millionaires are more full of themselves than Republican millionaires - or at least that's my observation in Santa Monica, Palo Alto and Manhattan. I think it's because Republican millionaires are humbled by the fact that they are not billionaires. Gail: Let's go back to Cory Booker. He was upset about the Obama campaign's Bain Capital ads - an attempt, he seemed to suggest, to "indict private equity." That was, of course, before Mayor Booker felt compelled to revisit and re-explain and rephrase and re-imagine his remarks. But you pretty much agreed with his initial, pre-revision position, right? David: You betcha. I think there's an enormous body of research showing that private equity firms increase American productivity without having a dramatic effect on American job levels. Back in the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson waged war on capital markets, but Alexander Hamilton understood that only vibrant capital markets would create enough creative destruction to allow poor boys and girls like him to rise and succeed. Otherwise the same established families would dominate society, generation upon generation. Gail: Since Romney's running on his experience as a businessman, I think going after Bain is totally fair. The nation is going to need to have a conversation about whether Romney made his money by acquiring failing businesses, streamlining them and making them profitable - or whether he bought troubled companies, saddled them with debt, sold their most valuable assets, used the money to give a big payoff to the investors, and then let them sink. Or both of the above. And if it's both, that's very bad for the Romney camp. David: As I understand Bain's approach, they focused on the firms that were really in the doghouse. There is absolutely no money to be made in acquiring a firm that is already well run. They focused on the really poorly managed companies. As a result they had more failures than their rivals - because some of these companies were terminally ill - but when they succeeded they made a lot more money. Gail: This debate will have very long legs. But however it turns out, I'm still going to be saying that the government is not very much like a business at all, and that business experience isn't really all that useful in a president. Obama correctly points out that people want an economy that will run well, but they also want a strong safety net for the poor and weak. David: I agree with that. In private equity, you get to choose what problems you will tackle. In government you don't. Romney's experience matters only if he can convince us that he will reform government in ways that give people the tools to compete in the dynamic economy that firms like Bain help create. Gail: The talents that make for a good businessman aren't all that useful for a president, who needs above all to be able to hold the confidence and affection of the public, and persuade a raft of other egomaniacal politicians that they ought to go along with what he's trying to do. The five presidents whose prior experience came closest to the term "businessman" were Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and the two Bushes. You might want to argue whether any given one fit the title exactly, but I think it's fair to say that the group did not, in general, glitter in the Oval Office. David: George Washington was a decent businessman and Abraham Lincoln was a corporate lawyer. They weren't too bad. But I take your point. The data set is small, but I'd say being a governor is the best preparation for being president. And newspaper columnist. We don't have much management experience, but our omniscience helps counteract that.