By Kimberly Krautter
The only thing less attractive than a candidate running on the “It’s My Turn” platform (Dole, Kerry, Clinton), is one who runs on the “I Know You Are But What Am I?” platform.
As usual, with only three weeks to go before election day, and with early voting begun in many parts of the nation, the timbre of the rhetoric is heating up and the tactics are going down to the lowest levels.
Yup, things are getting nasty out there. It’s starting to look like schoolyard scrapping. One candidate goes negative and the other guy responds in turn, and when the teacher (read: pundits) call them both on it, the second guy says, “He started it!”
As a communications professional, I’m often asked to parse just what makes an ad “negative”. The term has become a bit nebulous. When the chips are down for a candidate, he often cries foul when his opponent airs an ad that challenges his record and turns the candidate’s words or votes against him. Frankly, in the world of advertising and marketing, that’s considered fair play. Think about the famous “Pepsi Taste Challenge” from the 1980s.
While the tone of such an ad might be “contrary”, it’s not truly “negative.” A negative ad/attack ad is one that gets nasty and personal and takes the discourse away from the issues and fails to promote the platform – the advertiser candidate’s vision for the future should he be elected.
Over the last three days, the McCain camp turned truly negative. Down in the polls and with his Veep choice exposed for the cynical political ploy that it is, the man who pledge to keep the focus on the issues launched an ad calling his opponent, “Dangerous.”
Let’s do some fact checking.
The McCain/Palin charge: Obama is dangerous because he “closely associates” with homegrown terrorists like Bill Ayers of the radical group the Weathermen.
The Truth: Fifteen years ago as a rookie candidate for the state house of representatives, a young Barak Obama attended a fundraiser held by a distinguished professor at the University of Illinois named Bill Ayers who worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley on issues of elementary school education reform to elevate the standards of teaching in the inner cities. Ayers also worked on anti-poverty issues via grants from the powerful and far-reaching Annenberg and Woods Foundations.
As a community organizer, Barak Obama served on a charity board of directors with Bill Ayers. As young candidate concerned with issues of public school education and poverty, Obama did attend a fundraiser and campaign event at the home of Ayers.
It is also true that when Obama was 8 years old, Bill Ayers was a member of the 60s radical group The Weathermen. These were nasty people. They did identify with Maoist Communists, and they believed in violent overthrow of government. They put their beliefs into practice committing a series of bombings, jailbreaks and street riots.
It’s worth noting that, Obama was 8 years old and living in Hawaii at that time. And 26 years later when he became loosely acquainted with Ayers, the radical had never been convicted or jailed for the activities of his associates with the exception of a sit-in.
Facts on the Flip-Side
In stark contrast, John McCain’s close associate Charles Keating was convicted and thrown in Federal prison for illegal banking activities with Junk Bonds that caused the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s which caused a market crash that required a government/taxpayer bailout.
You know what they say in the sandbox about pointing a finger…the rest of your fingers point back to you…
In fact, John McCain and four other seated U.S. Senators were so in bed with the felon Charles Keating that they were known as “The Keating Five”. John McCain was not only an adult of advanced age at the time of this association; he was a trustee of the people as a U.S. Senator. Furthermore, he was investigated for corruption for his part in getting regulators to back off and allow disastrous junk bond dealing.
The familiarity between the loosey-goosey deregulation that led to junk bond dealing that caused millions of elderly people to lose their nest eggs with the S&L crisis and today’s loosey-goosey deregulation that has caused millions of families to lose their homes with the mortgage meltdown cannot be overstated.
It is a far more legitimate question of McCain's character for him to use his chief surrogate Sarah Palin to challenge the character of Barak Obama based on a brief and fleeting association with a 60s radical in the face of his own complicity and corruption with a convicted felon as a means of simply scoring political points. Frankly, it is an indictment against McCain's character.
Once again, I am personally sickened by McCain’s naked cynicism and what is becoming an ever more desperate grab for the Oval Office simply because he stridently believes that it’s his turn.
America: Is this a man you want managing the most important issues of our time? McCain's increasingly reckless gambles (the “VP from Nowhere” and the nasty negative advertising in the face of his own past associations) portend that he will be likewise reckless and gamble with the future of our nation to appease his own ego and political legacy.
A man who chases the news cycle is not the man I trust to be President of the United States. We need someone with a sense of measured statesmanship and discernment to make the critical decisions that we need to secure our future.
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