In the last two weeks, the McCain campaign has retreated from issues and turned overtly negative. They give lip service to issues but never follow up with details. They say Obama is wrong but never provide any evidence. Instead they turn to smears and lies. Since there is no requirement for a campaign to tell the truth there isn’t really anything to hold them back. Except for ethics and morality.
I’m not saying the Obama campaign hasn’t had their share of exaggerations and distortions. But, so far as I’ve been able to tell, they’ve stayed on the side of misrepresentation and haven’t been trying to foment fear.
That fear is the real danger of McCain’s tactics. Scared people don’t act rationally and that’s what they want. Scared people want to feel safe and though they turn to the person who instigated that fear, it isn’t in his interest to resolve it. It’s how he came to power and without fear, people will realize there is nothing behind the facade. This should sound familiar. It’s been the way the Bush administration has operated since 9/11.
To make it worse, that fear mongering creates an “us vs. them” attitude that promotes violence. Don’t take my word for it. Look at the statistics for attacks against groups singled out by a political leader.
We have enough problems to solve without adding irrational fear to the mix. If we can’t have a calm discussion then any hope of a solution is gone. That creates the kind of environment in which violent change starts to look like the only answer. If that happens, then our society will no longer resemble the America we want this country to be.
The moral of the story is: when a politician cares more about acquiring power than he does about the methods used to obtain it then that person is a danger. McCain and his campaign (and all politicians) need to hear that message loud and clear.
I just finished watching the debate between Biden and Palin and rather than the entertainment I had hoped for, it was so full of nonsense that I was disgusted. Pailin’s relentless repeating of lies was just painful. She’s no more a soccer mom than I am. Her failure to really answer many questions was typical political sidestepping and her blatant lies were irritating.
Not that Biden was immune to misinterpreting the facts to make his point. McCain’s flub on Spain was because he didn’t know who the prime minister of Spain was, not because he wouldn’t meet with the Spanish PM. That’s a bad enough mistake for a presidential candidate, but not the one that Biden implied. Still, his sins were of exaggeration rather than Palin’s outright lies.
If American politics has been reduced to simply yelling louder than the opponents then she did well, but if was about showing how your policies would actually help us recover from the disaster of the worst presidency in American history then she was abysmal.
I’d really like to see a debate that has more content than politicians saying, “did not,” “did so” back and forth at each other.
The first debate is now over. It was, as these things often are, light on real substance. Was there a blowout winner? Not in my assement. Senator Obama’s answers resonated with me more than Senator McCain’s. Given that they weren’t talking about social issues, ti was a little easier to be objective, but I felt myself agreeing with Obama much more often than McCain.
Though I went into the debate supporting Obama, I now think the argument that he won’t be good on foreign policy is going to be proven a non-issue. McCain seemed to be talking down to Obama and often appeared to deliberately misinterpret what was a rather clear statement from Obama. Personally, I’ve seen enough of that behavior to last a lifetime in the last eight years so it wasn’t welcome.
McCain seems unwilling to admit that going into Iraq was a mistake and wants only to focus on the future. However, those who are unwilling to admit past mistakes are also unwilling to take the personal responsibility that McCain says he is so in favor of. This strikes me as a problem.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next two months.
I find it interesting that the so-called “fiscal conservatives” in our government, who so regularly balk at programs to provide a social safety net for our citizens, are so ready to provide corporate welfare to badly run companies. If they are opposed to welfare and are such champions of the free market, then why not let the companies die out and let the market make it’s way?
The Fed is bailing out AIG and, in return, getting an 80% ownership stake. We have a word for a system where the government owns the companies: communism. Yet, our free market, fiscal conservative government says these companies are just too big to let fail. It seems to me that two possible responses come to mind. One is that if a company is too big to fail then we shouldn’t let a company get that big because then we can’t get rid of it. If we don’t think that restriction should apply then we need some regulation to ensure these same companies don’t do the things that will get them into such trouble.
Instead, we allow them to be stupid and then bail them out when they do. What incentive do they have to not be stupid? There is very little risk and a boat load of money to be made until the music stops. Enough with corporate handouts! True, that the handouts will preserve the jobs of many people who did nothing wrong, but a better solution would be to let the company fail and use a much smaller amount of money to help those people find new work. And enact laws to restrict unrestrained greed that motivates these companies to such insane action.
And stop calling yourself a fiscal conservative if you think that these types of actions are a good idea. If we must have welfare, then it should go to people and not companies.
