As we enter the final stretch of the 2008 presidential election, it has become clear that the election will be decided by which candidate can successfully dictate the elements by which the American people consider and decide their votes. While the Democrats seek to keep the issues at the forefront of voters’ consciences, the Republicans are instead inclined to make the choice of president about image. John McCain’s chief campaign manager, Rick Davis, said as much when he told the Washington Post that “this election is not about issues,” but rather about “a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”
While it seems a cynical position on the part of the McCain campaign, it is an understandable one. On the issues, the Republicans are toast. The American people are unhappy after eight years of GOP rule. The economy is in deep decline. We are mired in an unpopular war. Senator McCain, despite his best efforts to convince voters of the contrary in the bizarro-world that was the Republican National Convention, is indeed a Republican, and has a well-established voting record as the senator of Arizona which clearly ties his policies to those of President Bush, and thus to the policies of the last eight years that the American people would seem to view as a failure.
Strange, then, that after the RNC Senator McCain received a major bump in both favorability ratings and polls of likely voters in the coming election. This can be attributed to the lack of substance and surplus of rhetoric that defined his speech. Since Senator McCain is hopeless on the actual issues, his strategy calls for almost wholesale avoidance of them, and it seems to be paying off.
As an undecided voter tuning into the RNC to get a closer look at the candidates, and especially Senator McCain’s newly crowned running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, I was more or less moved into a state of constant disgust as I watched both Governor Palin and Senator McCain deliver speeches that were devoid of issues, full of silly one-liners, and, most dismaying, downright nasty.
Governor Palin’s speech, the showpiece event of the Convention, was particularly nasty. Like many other prominent Republicans at the convention, she found it appropriate to lambaste Barack Obama for having served as a community organizer. Senator Obama’s charitable work for the good of his community would seem an unimpeachable endeavor, but for the issueless Republicans, I suppose anything is fair game. I am reminded of President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address in the aftermath of the events of September 11th, in which he issued a call for Americans to engage in just that type of volunteer service. How low his party has sunk.
To this end, the hallmark of the McCain campaign has become its baseless smears of Senator Obama’s record, as well as its own farcical inability to get Senator McCain and Governor Palin on the same page when it comes to their supposed reformist credentials. Senator McCain has put out an ad which details Senator Obama’s support of sexual education for kindergartners. Actually, Senator Obama supported making kindergartners aware of the danger of sexual predators. Senator McCain has said he picked Palin as his running mate due in large part to her past exploits as a champion of reform and enemy of earmarks and pork barrel projects. Actually, Alaska receives more earmark tax dollars per person than any other state in the Union, and Palin supported the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” an important symbol of government excess for Senator McCain.
Part of the McCain campaign’s savvy is that it has very cleverly set itself up to operate in an environment essentially devoid of any accountability. It is the duty of responsible media organizations in a free society to expose the lies or corruptions of its government and leaders. By continually bashing the “liberal media,” the McCain campaign undermines the credibility of news organizations in the minds of voters, and is thus free to state as fact things that are patently untrue. If a news organization questions their claims, or exposes their distortions, this is simply the poison of liberal media bias. In this way, the McCain campaign is utilizing a sort of fascism of thought to suppress the truth, and enable itself to continue to perpetuate falsehoods. It is a miserable state of affairs when the most salient and direct confrontation of Senator McCain and his campaign’s endless distortions comes from the hosts of The View.
Ultimately the responsibility falls to the American people to stay informed. To remain in pursuit of fact and truth amidst the McCain campaign’s unrelenting storm of lies and smear is a difficult task, but one to which the American people must rise if they are to have any hope of making the choice in this election that will most benefit them.
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