If you're a viewer of MSNBC's Morning Joe program, you can't go more than a day or two before co-host Joe Scarborough refers to Barack Obama running the most negative television ad campaign in history when he defeated John McCain in 2008.
Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio repeated the same mantra on the day of the Florida presidential primary election. Now the Tampa Bay Times' Pulitzer-winning PolitiFact has researched it, and they label the characterization "Mostly True."
Citing a study written by University of Missouri professor William Benoit, Politifact's Amy Sherman writes:
"It is true (Obama) ran more negative ads or ran them more often than McCain, but if you look at the content of the ads to see what they were saying, it was really about the same,’’ in terms of what percentage were negative, Benoit said.
Benoit said he examined specific negative and positive statements in TV ads by the campaigns. One ad could have both negative and positive statements.