Negative Campaigning . . . Against A Car

by Stuart Shapiro

We’ve all seen products that slam their competitors.  And we’ve all seen negative ads from politicians.  But a political campaign against a car?  That’s what has been happening over the past year with the Chevy Volt.  The Volt is the creation of Bob Lutz, whose political leanings are shall we say a bit conservative?  But Lutz’s pedigree hasn’t protected the Volt.

“It’s nuts,” said Lutz, when I spoke to him earlier in the week. “This is a significant achievement in the auto industry. There are so many legitimate things to criticize Obama about. It is inexplicable that the right would feel the need to tell lies about the Volt to attack the president.”

In his regular blog at Forbes, Lutz has tried to counter what he has called the “rabid, sadly misinformed right.” But he has largely given up. The last straw came when his conservative intellectual hero, Charles Krauthammer, described the Volt as “flammable.” Krauthammer, Lutz felt, had to know better. Although he remains deeply conservative, Lutz told me that he has become disenchanted with the right’s willingness to spread lies to aid the cause.

See. Mr. Lutz, the problem is twofold, President Obama likes the Volt and the oil companies do not.  And as those of us on the left have found out, facts don’t really matter when the stars line up like that.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.