Netwatch

JANUARY 29: The Al Gore-Bill Bradley negative debate threatens to go on. In commercials and debates, in grip-and-grin events and television interviews, the candidates and their surrogates are branding as negative comments by their foes that in other campaigns might have been dismissed with a yawn.

8220;It8217;s actually a pretty sophisticated strategy,8221; observed Darrell West, a professor at Brown University who studies political advertising. 8220;It used to be that candidates would go negative to pin negative information on their opponents. Now, what they are trying to do is play the blame game, blaming their opponent for the tenor of the campaign.8221;