Community Essay : Political ‘Attack Ads’ Linger In a Child’s Mind : The tone of ads for ‘family-values’ candidates undermines lessons taught at home--honesty and respect.

It was Veterans Day, three days after the election. We had spent the holiday at the Los Angeles Zoo and during a dinner-table discussion of what animals we had seen, my wife left the table to refill our 2-year-old daughter’s milk cup. Our son, 5, suddenly looked me right in the eye and asked with great concern, “Daddy, can I trust Congressman Huffington?”

The change in topics was swift and I was momentarily stunned. His heart-felt question, the one posed by Dianne Feinstein’s TV ads during the Senate campaign, showed that he’d been thinking about this for a long time. I tried to summon up a non-judgmental answer. “Well, he has said some things I don’t agree with.”

“But he hired illegal immigrants, Daddy.” His eyes said more than his words. Someone had been caught doing wrong.

“Yes, he did.”

With real concern in his voice, he asked. “Is he going to jail?”

My son’s growing up. He’s understanding that actions have consequences. Break the rules and you get put on restriction. Now my answer, in opposition to all he was learning: “No, I don’t think so.”

I could see his brain spinning. His voice trembled a bit and his expression was truly troubled as he asked plaintively, “But can I trust Dianne Feinstein?”

The charges and counter-charges, the words of the political ads I was so glad to no longer to be hearing, were still seeking closure in the mind of a dear little boy struggling to make sense of a world that, he is realizing, extends far beyond his home and the things he learns here.

In the ads, adult voice and images were telling him things in very certain, authoritative tones, although toward the end of the campaign the tones were actually closer to what he must experience in his kindergarten play yard: “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” Both sets of ads sounded so convincing to him. For a while, his 5-year-old attention span could believe each in turn. But when they came at him so often he could not longer ignore the contradictions.

Repetition gives a child comfort. It establishes a pattern. The ads had done that. But when the pattern was suddenly gone, he became anxious. In an attempt to maintain the pattern and the surety that the ads had created, my son internalized them. That’s normal. But when the internalized pattern is itself contradictory, it caused added anxiety.

But there is another, more painful, complication for my little boy. The pattern of the attack ads is in opposition to patterns we are attempting to teach him and his sister at home: honesty, respect, polite discourse with room for anger but not for nastiness.

We also try to teach him that very little of what he sees on television is real, with the exception of most of the news. Despite that, he still wants to be the blue Mighty Morphin Power Ranger when he grows up.

I know someday soon he will come to realize that the Power Rangers--which he is permitted to watch once each week--are pretend, although I want the time from now to then to pass slowly because I cherish his capacity to believe.

But I’m really worried about the long-term effects on him of our political campaigns.

The people running them, and running on them, have obviously given absolutely no thought to the effects their campaigns are having on children. How many “family-values” candidates think about the lessons children are learning from the tones of their campaigns--lessons these children’s families and schools are actually trying to unteach? How many “government-can-do-good” candidates have any idea how their campaigns are undermining the trust of children?

We bemoan a cynical, angry and anxious electorate. But is it any wonder?