Washington ? If you are one of those Americans who was counting down the hours until the campaign of 2002 would be over, one who felt that your patience had been taxed and your intelligence insulted by the barrage of TV spots, the experts have a message for you: Quit your bellyaching.

Curious about their reaction to the complaints about the tone of this year’s political commercials that I have heard in travels to more than a dozen states this fall, I phoned a prominent campaign consultant and a leading academic student of campaign advertising.

And I was told: It’s nothing to worry about. Donna Lucas, the president of the American Association of Political Consultants, said, “We have this debate every cycle. People say they hate negative ads, but they really want to compare the candidates. They want to know, not only the reason to vote for someone, but not to vote for the other one.” From her viewpoint, negative ads are a public service.

Ken Goldstein, the director of the advertising project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, went even further: “We should not necessarily see negative ads as a harmful part of our electoral system,” he said. “They are much more likely (than positive ads) to be about policy, to use supporting information and to be reliable. Few negative ads are on personal issues.”

Both Lucas and Goldstein are serious people, but their assessments shocked me as much as they may you. Over the years, I have learned to listen carefully to what voters say about their perceptions of politics and politicians, when talking with them in their homes or gathering places.

And what I have heard, this year in particular, has been a chorus of complaints about the trivialization and avoidance of serious issues and the proliferation of personal attacks.

At least some politicians feel the same way. Democratic Sen. John Breaux comes from Louisiana, where politics is a contact sport and where campaigns have always been lively affairs to put it mildly. Breaux remarked the other day that “because the parties are so closely divided, neither one is willing to step out and say something serious about the challenges ahead, for fear it might offend someone and cost them a seat in the House or Senate. That’s why the ads have been so negative and so personality-oriented.”

The Republicans, Breaux said with possibly a bit of exaggeration, “have spent a million dollars complaining about the house Mary (his Senate colleague, Mary Landrieu) has in Washington. They want to make people think she’s Hillary Clinton.”

In California, where Democratic Gov. Gray Davis killed off one prospective opponent, former Los Angeles Mayor Dick Riordan, with an advertising assault during the Republican primary, Davis and Republican nominee Bill Simon Jr. have brutalized each other so thoroughly that neither man has much of a reputation left.

But Donna Lucas said this is just what you should expect. “When the (polling) numbers get tight,” she said, “you go on the attack. I don’t think the rules have changed. This is what has worked. And I don’t know what campaign has ever been hurt by doing it.”

Goldstein, who monitors TV commercials around the country, has data showing that the rules have not changed. In the months after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the percentage of ads with positive messages jumped markedly from the pre-9-11 levels.

This year, as the anniversary of the Twin Towers and Pentagon assaults approached, the percentage of positive ads was notably higher than in pre-attack 2001. But since the anniversary ceremonies ended, the pattern has reverted to “normal,” with barely more than one-quarter of the party-sponsored ads containing a positive message.

Goldstein’s figures show a clear good cop/bad cop strategy. The ads sponsored by the candidates are mainly positive, while the party-financed ads tear down the opponent. A separate study by University of Missouri-Columbia professor William Benoit of ads in this year’s Missouri Senate race found exactly the same pattern.

Benoit said the likely explanation is that the candidates “know the public dislikes mudslinging” so they deflect the blame for negative ads onto their parties. Actually, he says, “the public doesn’t pay attention to who sponsors an ad the candidate or the party. The public will automatically assume the attack was made personally by the candidate.”

One more reason to think that the public is right in saying that these ads are killing our democracy.