Or the one who writes steamy novels, designed to corrupt the young? What about the congresswoman who wants all American children to engage in homosexual and lesbian sex? Did somebody say sex? Listen, there's this congressman who pays for sex.

Then, there's the politician intent on distributing the abortion pill to schoolchildren. If you thought there was a puritanical streak running through American politics, think again. They've sex on the brain, and not just anything straightforward, but every which way imaginable, bar doing it with animals. If the coverage is to be believed, the US Senate makes the decadence of the Roman Empire look like tiddlywinks.

That's the only conclusion to be reached from the US mid-term elections, which end on polling day next Tuesday. Most of the campaign ads have an angle on sexual mores. It's all part of the biggest ever thrust of negative campaigning to hit a western democracy, and the fare has sunk to the depths of deception that individuals are being portrayed as deviants on the most tenuous basis.

Ron Kind is a Democrat fighting to hold his seat in Wisconsin. His opponent is running an ad "Ron Kind pays for Sex!" with XXX branded across a photo of Kind's face. The premise for the ad? Kind supported an innocuous motion in the House of Congress to fund a study into sexual habits, the kind of study that is required for health planning.

Then there's poor Harold Ford, who attended a party at the Superbowl, which happened to be sponsored by Playboy. His opponent is running an ad showing a scantily clad actress winking while recalling what a fine time she had at the party. It ends with a breathless invitation: "Call me, Harold".

Then there's Jim Webb, a Democrat in Virginia, who has penned a few novels. His rival, Senator George Allen, pulled a few steamy quotes and said they were very disturbing for somebody hoping to "represent families of Virginians". He also has accused Webb's war novels of being demeaning to women.

Webb has a fine retort for that one: "You should see what Allen's sister said about his attitude to women, " referring to a memoir published by the senator's sister in which she described him dangling her over the Niagara Falls and smashing a pool cue on her boyfriend's head.

In liberal New York, the farce has reached surreal levels. An ad sponsored by the Republican party accused House candidate Michael Arcuri of using taxpayers' money to dial a sex line. What actually happened was one of Arcuri's aides dialled a line by accident because it had all but one the same digits as a number for a housing department.

The cost of the call was $1.35.

Negative campaigning is nothing new in America, but this kind of stuff has plumbed new depths.

The reason, of course, is Iraq. With the war dominating the election, Republicans have to root around for something to deflect voters from their mounting concerns. The answer is negative campaigning of the most despicable and tenuous character. The desperation Republicans feel was best illustrated by a visit George Bush made to the small city of Billings, Montana. Ordinarily the visit of a president would dominate news coverage in such an outpost, but a bigger story on Thursday was the return to the city from Iraq of petty officer Chuck Komppa. Wherever he turns, Iraq is destined to haunt Bush until he leaves office.

Out of such incompetence has come negative campaigning on an unprecedented scale. This type of campaigning is nothing new in US politics.

Just as in US commercial life, the thrust of ads is not to get across how good your product is, but to thrash the one against which it is competing. The message taps directly into the American sentiment about winners taking all, and losers being nothing more than bums.

This time around though, the strategy could be high-risk. The US electorate may be gullible . . . as evidenced by the success of the portrayal of John Kerry as a dodgy soldier, by associates of Bush and Cheney who dodged being any kind of soldier . . . but the tenuous nature of the links could backfire.

Attacking an opponent's character on such a basis could be seen as the desperation it represents.

Themodus operandi of this stuff is even more worrying. Direct opponents can claim to have nothing to do with the negative campaigning because it is coming from the Republican National Committee, a party body that admits it is dedicating 90% of its budget to negative advertising campaigns.

In other western democracies, negative campaigning hasn't cottoned on to the same effect. Here, it's been used sporadically as a tool. In the decades after the foundation of the state, the sores from the Civil War were often opened in campaigning. As recently as 1968, in a Limerick by-election, there was reference to the "seventy-seven", the number of executions undertaken by the Free State forces during the Civil War. This may or may not have helped the cause of Fianna Fail's candidate at the election, Des O'Malley, who went on to greater things.

In more recent years, examples have been few and far between. Nearly always, the focus has been on policy rather than individuals, as attacks on an individual are nearly guaranteed to backfire in a small country. One example of negative campaigning by Fine Gael occurred in late 2000 with their "Celtic Snail" campaign, designed to show that the government was slow to deliver services to the electorate. As detailed in Shane Coleman's book on political gaffes, Foot In Mouth, it backfired badly.

"An advertising executive said the problem with using a negative image was 'you tend to get lumbered with it. The fact that snail rhymed with Fine Gael was unfortunate and should have been spotted', " Coleman writes.

At the last general election, the negative campaigning most remembered was Michael McDowell climbing his pole of rectitude with the poster "single party government, no thanks". The message was directed not at Fianna Fail voters, but Fine Gael people, implying that a vote for the PDs would keep Fianna Fail honest in government.

It appeared to work, but the emptiness of the message was exposed recently when McDowell declined to hold Bertie Ahern to account over the mysterious lodgements into the latter's bank account, particularly the £50,000 Ahern said he saved at home. McDowell's flip-flopping on the affair is seen as delivering a major blow to his credibility.

This time around, McDowell is on the negative trail again with his catchy "slump coalition" tag for the opposition. Whether it will work this time remains to be seen.

Strangely enough, McDowell is the target of a personalised, if somewhat wacky, negative campaign in the forthcoming election. Labour candidate in Dublin North Central Derek McDowell launched a campaign in May depicting himself and his namesake on a poster bearing the legend:

"Get him in (Derek) to get him out (Micko)".

Underneath the respective photos is the clincher: "Confused? Don't be."

Meanwhile, back in America, some entrepreneurial souls are making hay in the madness. In Alabama, a 32-year-old blonde woman, Loretta Nall, is the Libertarian party's candidate for governor and she has decided, in the spirit of the campaign, to use a poster of herself displaying her ample bosom. Beneath her overhanging message are photos of her Republican and Democratic opponents, along with the message. "More of these boobs" (hers) "And less of these boobs" (the two men).

Her campaign has taken off. "It started out as a joke, " she told Associated Press. "But it blew into something huge." God bless America. And protect the rest of us.