Thursday, September 11, 2008
CAMPAIGN ABOUT PERSONALITIES
While democrats keep trying to make the campaign and the election about issues, the republicans keep trying to make it about personalities. Republicans are now trying to cast themselves as change agents, ignoring the fact that they have already been in power.
They are trying to re-define the persons on their ticket with newly crowned maverick status, breaking the icons of politics, when they are still employing the trash tactics of their history. They want to re-define the persons on the democrat ticket as the old Washington of profligate spenders and tax hikers. Both McCain and Palin are covering up their own records with lies and misinformation.
Will Americans fall for this republican personality strategy, covering up their party’s shortcomings, mistakes, and responsibilities for the mess in government? Will republicans get away with shucking their party responsibility for the past eight years by campaigning as mavericks bent on changing Washington?
This “war hero” personality cult is considered by some as a diversion to turn the voter’s attention away from a party’s platform positions and its past record by magnifying the personal past of its candidate. John McCain has been granted lots of free rein by the American people because of sympathy for his five years of suffering in a prison camp.
However, sympathetic we may be, that experience does not excuse him for the positions he has taken as a republican senator. It does not excuse him for his lack of specific, useful programs for meeting the country’s needs. That POW card has been played too often. It should not distract from current shortcomings.
Voters should look at McCain’s meager offerings of ideas for the betterment of citizens and the nation. His energy policy is “drill here, drill now,” then to give lip service to new technologies that neither he nor his party have ever actually supported. His solution to the economic recession is to continue and expand tax breaks to the rich and to corporations – to create jobs, he says. His solution to the health insurance crisis is to make employees health insurance premiums taxable to the employer, cause their abandonment, and then give workers a tax break on insurance premiums if they can find it.
The most recent AARP Magazine offers a forum stating the organizations position on each one and giving McCain and Obama agree and/or state their own positions. One after another – the economy, Social Security, health insurance, etc. – McCain refused to agree or disagree with the organization’s position. He chose instead to write vacuous statements without commitment on any. In every case, Obama agreed with the position of AARP, and he added explanations of his own specific proposals in that area.
On the speaker’s platform, the “gray knight” McCain has taken to telling fibs, exaggerations, and distortions. An example: “I will cut your taxes. Obama will raise them.” Another: “He will take away your freedom of choice in health care and put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.” Then: “She sold the airplane on e-Bay and made a profit.” The man has trouble with the truth.
This campaign really needs to involve an honest presentation of positions, not distortions and accusations. News media should not let any candidate get away with lies, distortions, and misrepresentations – of one’s own or the other’s positions. They should not get away with lies and distortions of their own records or that of their opponents.
Voters should not let candidates from the party in power for the last eight years to get away with campaigning with promises to “shake up” and remedy the wrongs of Washington, as if their own candidates and party were innocent and disassociated with any of these ills. Guffaws and jeers would be more appropriate than applause and cheers.
It appears that the republican campaign machine considers the average American voter to be a “redneck,” which is the level they are casting their appeal. Or else they consider voters as too dumb or too ignorant to recognize the inconsistencies of their campaign rhetoric with reality.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
They are trying to re-define the persons on their ticket with newly crowned maverick status, breaking the icons of politics, when they are still employing the trash tactics of their history. They want to re-define the persons on the democrat ticket as the old Washington of profligate spenders and tax hikers. Both McCain and Palin are covering up their own records with lies and misinformation.
Will Americans fall for this republican personality strategy, covering up their party’s shortcomings, mistakes, and responsibilities for the mess in government? Will republicans get away with shucking their party responsibility for the past eight years by campaigning as mavericks bent on changing Washington?
This “war hero” personality cult is considered by some as a diversion to turn the voter’s attention away from a party’s platform positions and its past record by magnifying the personal past of its candidate. John McCain has been granted lots of free rein by the American people because of sympathy for his five years of suffering in a prison camp.
However, sympathetic we may be, that experience does not excuse him for the positions he has taken as a republican senator. It does not excuse him for his lack of specific, useful programs for meeting the country’s needs. That POW card has been played too often. It should not distract from current shortcomings.
Voters should look at McCain’s meager offerings of ideas for the betterment of citizens and the nation. His energy policy is “drill here, drill now,” then to give lip service to new technologies that neither he nor his party have ever actually supported. His solution to the economic recession is to continue and expand tax breaks to the rich and to corporations – to create jobs, he says. His solution to the health insurance crisis is to make employees health insurance premiums taxable to the employer, cause their abandonment, and then give workers a tax break on insurance premiums if they can find it.
The most recent AARP Magazine offers a forum stating the organizations position on each one and giving McCain and Obama agree and/or state their own positions. One after another – the economy, Social Security, health insurance, etc. – McCain refused to agree or disagree with the organization’s position. He chose instead to write vacuous statements without commitment on any. In every case, Obama agreed with the position of AARP, and he added explanations of his own specific proposals in that area.
On the speaker’s platform, the “gray knight” McCain has taken to telling fibs, exaggerations, and distortions. An example: “I will cut your taxes. Obama will raise them.” Another: “He will take away your freedom of choice in health care and put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.” Then: “She sold the airplane on e-Bay and made a profit.” The man has trouble with the truth.
This campaign really needs to involve an honest presentation of positions, not distortions and accusations. News media should not let any candidate get away with lies, distortions, and misrepresentations – of one’s own or the other’s positions. They should not get away with lies and distortions of their own records or that of their opponents.
Voters should not let candidates from the party in power for the last eight years to get away with campaigning with promises to “shake up” and remedy the wrongs of Washington, as if their own candidates and party were innocent and disassociated with any of these ills. Guffaws and jeers would be more appropriate than applause and cheers.
It appears that the republican campaign machine considers the average American voter to be a “redneck,” which is the level they are casting their appeal. Or else they consider voters as too dumb or too ignorant to recognize the inconsistencies of their campaign rhetoric with reality.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
