The season of serial attack ads

The casette will arrive in a plain brown wrapper, no return address - the nerve gas of attack ads, a smash-mouth late hit that will make the worst of the AFL-CIO look like one-hand touch.

It will sound like this:

Uncertain female voice: ''I hear that Congressman Dave Dimbulb is running for re-election. He gives me the creeps.''

Authoritative male voice: ''Me too. Did you know that on Oct. 24, 1994, when he visited Cleveland, eight people died there the same day?''

Female: ''That's scary.''

Male: ''That's not all. During the two years he was in Washington, the murder rate increased 11 percent and 730 people were killed. He claims some were accidents, if you can believe it.''

Female: ''What about those missing children in our state when he was living here? Can it be just a coincidence?''

Male: ''I don't think so. I'm voting for Mike Smiley. He's not a child-snatching serial killer.''

Announcer: ''Paid for by the Committee to Elect Mike Smiley and Citizens Against Child-Snatching Serial Killers in Congress.''

It's just a matter of time before we hear something like that; maybe tomorrow, in the final hours before the election, when poor Dave Dimbulb has no time left to reply.

The technique has already been perfected. Find a tiny speck of dust on your opponent (or make one up), then magnify it under an electron microscope until it looks like one of those terrifying furnace mites that lurk in air ducts and carpets.

Example: Last week, an anonymous flier went out to ''Friends of Steve Chabot.'' It begins, ''As a Chabot supporter, we wanted to ask you what you know about the real Steve Chabot.'' As you can guess, with friends like this, Mr. Chabot doesn't need opponent Mark Longabaugh, union attack ads or even his own personal stalker. After indicting him as a lawyer who perpetrated divorces, the flier says, ''I'm Steve Chabot, and I'm working hard to break up working families.'' It closes by implying he's an alien pod-politician: ''Steve Chabot - Always pretending to be one of us.''

Mr. Chabot seems to attract attack ads like shark bait. In his race against Democratic incumbent David Mann two years ago, he used an obscure vote by Mr. Mann (college tuition for prison inmates) to ask: ''Who put a smile on the faces of 27,000 murderers, child molesters and other convicts?'' The Answer: ''David Mann and his close ally Bill Clinton.''

Mr. Mann replied with a War of the Worlds radio attack: ''In our congressional election there is a serious threat to the African-American community ... Steve Chabot has said he wants government to take away the children of welfare mothers. Steve Chabot wants to destroy families of the poor only because they ARE black and poor ... Chabot wants more African-Americans given the death penalty than white Americans.'' And so on.

Mr. Chabot won that chainsaw massacre. And look who's crying foul now:

Example: Mr. Mann's opponent in a race for the Appeals Court is Judge Lee Hildebrandt, whose radio ads are reusing undetonated land mines from the 1994 Chabot campaign, including accusations that Mr. Mann ''voted in Congress to end the death penalty.''

''It's not true,'' Mr. Mann protests. Objection sustained. What he voted for was a lunatic law demanding equal rights to the gas chamber. Executions by race quota. Prosecutors nationwide said it would unplug the electric chair permanently. But it was not a vote to end the death penalty. Not exactly.

The Hildebrandt hyperbole is especially alarming because you'd think an appeals judge would have more appealing judgment. His ads probably violate ethical conduct rules for judges. So if he can't find the truth in his own advertising, how can he find it in court?

Ironically, this year Mr. Mann and Mr. Chabot have both been victims of tacky unfair attacks. I guess it proves the First Law of Political Science: What goes around comes around.

I hope so. Because the guy who really has it coming is President Clinton.

Dust speck: Bob Dole voted against Mr. Clinton's idiotic government takeover of child vaccinations that crippled a system that was 95 percent effective.

Giant furnace mite: Clinton ads say Bob Dole is against vaccines for kids.

Dust speck: Republicans tried to reduce the rate of growth in Medicare, by increasing spending less than 1 percent slower than the Clinton plan.

Giant furnace mite: ''Bob Dole made deep cuts in Medicare.''

Dust speck: The American Hospital Association said both the Dole and Clinton Medicare plans could hurt 700 shaky hospitals and some might even close.

Giant furnace mite: In their second debate, President Clinton twice accused Mr. Dole of backing a Medicare plan that ''the American Hospital Association said would close 700 hospitals.''

A week earlier, the AHA had asked Mr. Clinton to stop saying that. ''We never said 700 hospitals would close,'' said an AHA officer.

A Clinton spokesman replied, ''We stand by what the president said.''

Which reminds me: Have you noticed how many times the truth has been kidnapped and murdered since President Clinton took office?

Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.

Published Nov. 3, 1996.