In his most recent column, the New York Times' Ross Douthat repeated a common media charge about what a harsh campaign President Obama is running this year. Dubbing the president "Mr. Negative," Douthat bemoaned what he saw as Obama's nasty Nixonian streak and a campaign that Douthat claims "started out negative and has escalated to frank character assassination."

This kind of dire rhetoric has become quite common among Beltway pundits and reporters, along with right-wing commentators. Collectively, they have formed a tight-knit narrative about what an almost shockingly negative campaign Obama is running, and how the harsh tone represents the polar opposite of Obama's feel-good run in 2008.

The media chatter really has become deafening. A New York Times news report last month emphasized how both campaigns have gone "relentlessly negative," while a Miami Herald column trumpeted Obama's "seek and destroy" campaign style, built around a "negative onslaught" targeting Romney. (The Herald piece suggested Obama was "doing the same" thing to Romney that the Swift Boat Veterans had done to John Kerry in 2004.) Meanwhile, The Atlantic dubbed Obama's run a "nasty" and "bare knuckle" campaign fueled by "brutal" tactics.

In fact, when the Romney campaign made an ad complaining about how negative Obama's re-election run has been, it cobbled together on-air quotes from CBS's Bob Schieffer, Time's Mark Halperin and the New York Times' David Brooks, all of whom have gone on TV lamenting the tone of Obama's campaign.

But is the claim accurate? Is the Democrat really running some sort of guttural, ruthlessly negative campaign? Is it far and way more negative than his opponent's effort? And is the tone of Obama's 2012 campaign completely different from his 2008 run for election, as the press insists?

No, no, no, and no.

The topic of Obama's supposedly negative campaign has become something of a media obsession, while at the same time the press has shown very little interest in detailing how the Romney campaign is running almost an entirely anti-Obama sales pitch to American voters. Data regarding political ads indicate that Romney and his allies have spent roughly twice as much money this year airing negative ads than Obama and his supporters. And in terms of the ratio of negative-to-positive ads since April, it's been 2-to-1 for the Obama campaign and 5-to-1 for Romney.

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