So it has begun. We all know that American presidential campaigns always feature dirty trucks and misleading campaign ads. At least since the days of Richard Nixon that has been more true of Republican campaigns than of Democratic ones, but it goes on all the time in most presidential campaigns. Yet Republican candidate Mitt Romney has gotten his presidential campaign off to a start that crosses even the very broad and fuzzy lines of American presidential politics. His campaign has put out a television ad in New Hampshire that contains a flat out and very significant lie. There's no other word for it. It's a lie. The ad features Barack Obama in 2008, then a candidate for the presidency, saying "if we keep talking about the economy we're going to lose." The ad makes it appear that that is something Obama said about himself and his own presidential campaign. It isn't. Those lines were spoken by someone in the John McCain campaign. Obama is merely quoting them. When the full clip of what Obama said played it is clear that he was quoting a statement by the McCain campaign and hurling it back at them to show McCain's ineptitude on economic issues. Romney's campaign has deceptively edited Obama's statement to make it look like he was talking about himself. Romney's ad is a bald-faced, flat out lie. There is no other word for it.
Readers of this blog know that I am no fan of Barack Obama's. Elsewhere on this blog I have stated the reasons why I probably will not vote for him again. I gave him a little bit of money in 2008. I have no intention of doing so again. He is a massive disappointment at best, and his values, which are a version of the basic values of empire, are not my values. How one feels about Obama, however, should not affect one's reaction to this particular bit of deception and mendacity by the Romney campaign. Even Romney supporters, if they have integrity (although frankly it is hard for me to see how any Romney supporter can have integrity since Romney himself has none), will condemn this ad as transgressing even the nearly nonexistent boundaries of American political polemics.
I once sent an email to the congressional campaign of Republican John Koster here in Washington state after I received a push polling call from his campaign that contained a flat out lie about Obama's health care reform. I said that if you can't win by telling the truth, and I sincerely hope you can't, you don't deserve to win. I now say the same thing to Mr. Romney and to all American political candidates. Our politics are rotten to the core with the influence of money. That much is obvious; but our politics are also rotten to the core with lying, with deception, with spin that has no interest in truth but only in manipulating uninformed and gullible voters. Someone once said that the best thing you can say about democracy is that every other possible political system is worse. That may be true, but our supposedly democratic system has so decayed, is so rotten with money and unethical campaigning, that sometimes I wonder. It is becoming more and more a system in which I have no confidence. The presidential campaign that is now beginning gives no sign that things will get better. They seem only to be getting worse.
Readers of this blog know that I am no fan of Barack Obama's. Elsewhere on this blog I have stated the reasons why I probably will not vote for him again. I gave him a little bit of money in 2008. I have no intention of doing so again. He is a massive disappointment at best, and his values, which are a version of the basic values of empire, are not my values. How one feels about Obama, however, should not affect one's reaction to this particular bit of deception and mendacity by the Romney campaign. Even Romney supporters, if they have integrity (although frankly it is hard for me to see how any Romney supporter can have integrity since Romney himself has none), will condemn this ad as transgressing even the nearly nonexistent boundaries of American political polemics.
I once sent an email to the congressional campaign of Republican John Koster here in Washington state after I received a push polling call from his campaign that contained a flat out lie about Obama's health care reform. I said that if you can't win by telling the truth, and I sincerely hope you can't, you don't deserve to win. I now say the same thing to Mr. Romney and to all American political candidates. Our politics are rotten to the core with the influence of money. That much is obvious; but our politics are also rotten to the core with lying, with deception, with spin that has no interest in truth but only in manipulating uninformed and gullible voters. Someone once said that the best thing you can say about democracy is that every other possible political system is worse. That may be true, but our supposedly democratic system has so decayed, is so rotten with money and unethical campaigning, that sometimes I wonder. It is becoming more and more a system in which I have no confidence. The presidential campaign that is now beginning gives no sign that things will get better. They seem only to be getting worse.
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