"Miss Manners would be proud.

If taking responsibility for your actions is a cardinal rule of acting like a lady or a gentleman, then a pioneering North Carolina law Will provide polilticians with a crash course in civility.

In a sharp break from recent campaign strategies, candidates here now have to show their mugs when they fling mud at opponents on TV. In contrast to federal law, where disiclamers take up the space of a postage stamp, the year-old North Carolina law demands a six-second face shot of the candidiate and a message, in the candidate's voice, claiming sponsorship.

The move comes at a time when only 4 percent of attack ads nationally are narrated by the attacker. And as states from Maine to Arizona push for greater ad accountability, it is the boldest attempt to rein in so-called 'issue ads,' which allow groups to anonymously attack opponents so long as they don't openly support the other candidate.

Already, the law is having an effect, as gubernatorial candidates this spring tested voters' tolerance for these new attack ads in the primaries. As the general election nears this fall, other states are watching to see what kind of effect it might have.

'There have been enough examples in national and local politics to create a sense that more disclosure is a prudent thing to do,' says Earl Black, a history professor at Rice University.

In North Carolina, observers say they saw no evidence that fewer negative ads ran this spring. But they did report that ads showed greater caution.

Candidates tended to compare each other's positions more - instead of going right in 'to cut the other guy's throat,' says Mac McCorkle, a Durham, N.C., political consultant who helped write the new North Carolina law.
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Interestingly, no interest group launched an attack ad this spring under the new law, which would require a representative of the group to make the six-second mug shot. But many experts expect some to come in November.
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Whether this civility will bring more people to the polls, thought, is a subject of great debate. Various polls have shown that that negative ads turn off voters. But history has shown that sometimes, the most heated races are most closely followed.

'In 1984, when we ran a very aggressive campaign for Jesse Helms, both camps ran a lot of negative ads and you had the biggest voter turnout in North Carolina history,' says Carter Wrenn, Senator Helms's consultant. 'Criticism...is a key part of the democratic process.'

Moreover, he adds, the new law is unfair because it 'heavily favors incumbents,' who are often most vulnerable to undercover critics. Indeed, the law will likely see its share of challenges, both political, and legal. A slew of reform initiatives in various states are now being perused by courts. Most recently, the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in June came down against a Vermont disclosure law.

Still, some experts say this law is a step in the right direction. Says Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution in Washington: 'There's something to be said for trying to get it going in the state, as a way to stimulate national debate'" (Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 2000).