The Campaign
It appears that John McCain's new campaign strategy is getting offended.
I don't know what you think about the candidates or their positions, but I am sick to death of mudslinging and character assassination. A campaign is not a duel, it's a job interview. McCain and Obama are trying to get jobs working for us. So if they want my vote, they need to tell me what they're going to do for me and for the country. And on the issue of issues, McCain and Palin have been mighty vague.
John McCain keeps calling himself a maverick. So tell us, then: What issues are you going to fight with your own party about? How are you going to be different from Bush? Don't just call yourself a maverick, malign your opponent, and hope for the best. Tell us what you'll do, and then let us make up our own minds.
If they (The "maverics") focused on the actual issues, they would quickly fall behind. If they actually had something to say, they would not be wasting their time on the personality issues of how the media is picking on them because they pointed out the doublespeak.
Even more interesting is the fact that we seem to be running into the Bellman's rule-of-three: What I tell you three times is true.
For the most recent example, Palin will say something over and over again, no matter how many times it has shown to be true (her 'lack of support' for the bridge to nowhere for instance). They dont care if the actual facts disagree with their version of reality, they will tell you what they want you to hear and hopefully drown out the folks who are calling them liars.
So now the vote seems to be split 3 ways: those who are mostly listening to the Obama camp, those who are listening to the McCain camp and those who are actually paying attention. The sad part is that the 3rd group is by far the smallest of the 3.
Posted by John on September 10, 2008 at 12:30 PM PDT #
The assumption being made seems to be that the American people aren't really paying attention. Nevermind the fact that John McCain was against a recent bill to remove obstacles to gender discrimination lawsuits, or that when one of his supporters called Hillary Clinton a b***h earlier this year he laughed about it, or that he likes to tell horrible sexist jokes. He keeps calling Obama a sexist, anyway, and assumes that the American people won't actually take the time to figure out what's true. It's a cynical strategy, and it shows a lot of disrespect for the American people and for democracy, and the really sad thing is that it often seems to work.
Posted by Owen Allen on September 10, 2008 at 02:43 PM PDT #