A letter to the editor in Thursday’s newspaper from reader Gwen Wiggins of Houlton concerned the sorry latter-day trend in politics for candidates to denigrate one’s opponent in lieu of speaking positively about their own attributes and what they might bring to the table.

Mrs. Wiggins wrote that some years ago, when her husband had wanted to purchase a new chain saw, he decided on a name brand and went to a local dealer to make the purchase. When hubby mentioned the brand of chain saw that he had been using, the dealer commenced to speak ill of the product, losing a sale and a customer in the process. “He never tried to convince my husband of the positive points of his own brand. My husband immediately left the business establishment, never to return again,” Mrs. Wiggins wrote. Apparently, many politicians went to the same school as the businessman in question, and were taught by the same teacher, she suggested.

The lady’s point seems well-taken, considering the political advertising bill of fare in advance of most any major election. Advertising today, unlike advertising in those halcyon days of yore, often takes an in-your-face approach toward the competition – whether the product being promoted is furniture, soap or human beings running for political office – and the result is not always pretty.

In more innocent times, a manufacturer, in advertising his product, would never think of mentioning a competitor’s product by name. First of all, it would have been considered dirty pool. Beyond that, it would have been seen as a violation of a primary rule of advertising, which, roughly stated, was: Only a dope acknowledges publicly that a competitor exists, thereby giving him free exposure at the expense of the dope.

Thus it was common for an automobile manufacturer, say, to advertise merely that his product consistently outperformed vehicles made by “the Big Three” companies in the industry, leaving the reader to speculate as to a) who the “Big Three” might be; and, b) why Brand X, in its quest to break into the elite club, just didn’t name names and be done with it. (If memory serves – and it very well may not – in the days before companies had merged into gigantic corporations, swallowing much of the competition, the common assumption was that the Big Three of autos included Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth.)

Alas, many of society’s previously unwritten rules have long since been thrown out with the bath water, those of the advertising business included. Now every competitor’s product seems fair game in media ad copy. The advertiser has discovered that as long as he doesn’t go to hell with the joke and invite a lawsuit, he can get away with making some fairly outlandish claims about the competition, by name. It was only a matter of time before politicians would adopt the tactic in their modern-day campaigns via television. And so here we are.

Which brings us back to Gwen Wiggins and her point that political candidates, with the high road wide open before them, often seem all too eager to opt for the more congested low road in leading voters to the polls.

They do so at their peril, of course. There is a fine line between fairly commenting on an opponent’s record, or lack thereof, and appearing to jump to half-baked conclusions about the opponent’s ability to simultaneously walk and chew gum in light of that record. The candidate who understands this is the candidate who is not likely to fall into the trap of which Gwen Wiggins wrote.

As well, the candidate who gives credit to the loyal opposition when credit is due – a unique concept in politics, to be sure – would seem far more likely to win the hearts and minds of uncommitted voters than the candidate who readily bad-mouths his competition. Gwen Wiggins’ long-ago chain saw dealer can attest to the wisdom of the hypothesis.

But enough, already. Let me play my way out of the heavy stuff with the latest lawyer joke from the Internet:

Lawyer parks his new Lexus automobile in front of his office to impress the staff. As he gets out, truck comes by, shears off driver’s side door. Cops come. Lawyer goes ballistic, screaming that car is ruined and can never be fixed. Cop calms him down, tells him he is materialistic beyond belief. “What do you mean?” asks lawyer. “You don’t even realize that your left arm is missing as a result of the accident,” replies disgusted cop. “My God!” shouts lawyer. “Where’s my Rolex?”

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.