Today's lead story in the Columbus Dispatch online has this headline: "Clinton faces new GOP attacks ahead of her speech." Hillary Clinton's campaign is over. The Republicans should be trying to persuade Americans to vote for John McCain, instead of beating a dead campaign. Of course, this cancerous negativity not only afflicts the Presidential campaign, it affects almost all campaigns that can afford mass media advertising.
This kind of recrimination alienates many Americans from voting at all. We have difficult issues, as I mentioned yesterday. We need solutions. Decentralism offers some clear alternatives, as do the minor parties.
But I suppose any hope of constructive campaigning will have to be deferred until after independence... (*sigh*).
4 comments:
Constructive campaigning will only happen with real campaign finance reform. This means some form public financing of campaigns. The state of Maine has an interesting system. They have a voluntary public financing option for state elections. You can either choose the public financing option or go with the traditional option.
I've read a few articles over the years about Maine's system. The politicians who participate in it like it because not only does it relieve pressure from lobbyists, it also relieves them from having to spend so much time fundraising.
Actually, I went off on a bit of a tangent with my post above, didn't I? Campaign finance is part of the problem, and more of the reason why Congress doesn't act on behalf of the people, but it's not as related to the lack of constructive campaigns as I said... Sorry...
Campaigning is not constructive most of the time because the focus of campaigns is how to manipulate people in order to win elections, not to properly educate people on the issues and where each candidate stands.
Politicians focus on wedge issues that get people riled up (i.e. gays, guns, and god, etc) or take minor gaffes and blow them up into something that doesn't exist.
It's just easier to do this than discuss where they stand on the issues. They distort and blow up what their opponents say and do in order to get to to "not like the other guy".
The media is of no help because they pursue "gotcha journalism" and find ways to tear down candidates, or are just to lazy to do anything but be an echo chamber for what the candidates are saying. What voters need are a fair and rational discussion of issues and where candidates stand.
Anyway, the unfortunate result of this is that by the time the election rolls around, you don't like anybody, people drop out and don't vote, and too many of the people who don't drop out fall for these ploys.
So do you really think that just because someone reforms finance that it will stop politicians from talking about what you called,
"Wedge issues"?
I don't think dictating to someone how or how much money to raise will do anything to change what someone talks about.
Frankly, I have a lot more confidence in the American people than to think they don't know and understand that a lot of what we hear in the mud slinging is typical political junk.
We can listen past all that and look for the issues.
sharon.... In the first paragraph of my second post I admitted to going off on an unrelated tangent with campaign finance, and I apologized for doing so. If I could have deleted the comment I would have.
Things like negative campaigning and wedge issues are employed because they work.
Example: I asked a friend of mine who was involved in GOP politics in Ohio about an abortion bill that was put forth by the GOP Congress in 2002. The bill would have banned all late-term abortions. The Dems proposed an amendment to the bill that would have made an exception for protecting the life or health of the mother.
If the bill had included the amendment, it would have passed with bi-partisan support. However, The GOP-controlled congress blocked the amendment, then proceeded to beat up the Dems in the fall election for voting against the bill.
I asked my friend why the GOP blocked the amendment, because it seemed to me to be a good compromise. He agreed it was a good compromise, but his response was: "because unfortunately, sometimes winning elections is more important than solving problems".
On another occasion, I asked him about negative campaigning and remarked how sick and tired of it I am (again, this was several years ago).
He said (with respect to the Ohio GOP) that although the increasing reliance on negative campaigning alarmed many people within the party, it's a tactic that works.
It seems pretty evident to me then, that enough people do fall for it.
Candidates use the campaign tactics that work. If negative campaigning and wedge issues didn't work you wouldn't see them being used.
In my opinion, the mainstream media does a lousy job of telling people what's really going on and giving people the information they really need to educate themselves on the issues. Real reporting, real journalism takes time and money.
Network and cable news are for-profit ventures. That leads to the desire to do things as cheaply as possible. The quality of news reporting has suffered greatly as a result, IMHO. It's cheaper to recycle and regurgitate what comes over the news wires and to provide partisan punditry than it is to do real reporting.
If you want to really understand what's going on, it requires a lot of effort and a lot of reading. And, you have to do you best to properly evaluate information that has someone with an agenda behind it. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.
Too many Americans are trying hard enough to just make ends meet to be able to invest the time it takes, so all they have to go on are TV News and campaing commercials.
Others simply fall for it. I know several educated people (one of whom has a PhD!)who fall for everything that Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing pundits say. Seriously. They never put forth any effort to check and verify. They just accept it and believe it.
I talked to a couple of pro-life people about that bill. They had absolutely no idea that the Dems proposed a compromise (which they thought was reasonable).
Long story short... I don't have the confidence that you do. We can agree to disagree. Disagreement is ok.
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