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Negative campaign ads are, as is all of politics, really, a reflection of us as a society. It's a sad thought, but true.
It's also an indication of the extent to which politics today is about "making" rather than "acting". The relationship between representative and constituency is one of subject and object rather than a dialogue between subjects, and the political decision is an exercise in the number crunching of social science rather than an act of genuine political will. They don't have to treat us as mature adults or as intellectual equals, and the quality of the discourse is completely irrelevant; what politicians do is simply what they find to work, i.e. the strategies that are statistically likely to tip the votes in their favor.
Quite apart from the difficulty in placing blame, I'm not sure really where one might begin to take practical steps in addressing the problem.
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