obama promised change. he promised no more old-style politics. while not direct, he promised a clean campaign.
well, i think we can all agree that times have changed, and those promises are gone like the wind. lets not even wonder about the context of the current negativity the obama campaign is employing against john mccain — which is to say if he’s gone negative only because mccain did — rather i want to focus solely on the purpose behind obama’s recent turn to negative attack ads.
in this day and age, where the television is generally the most trusted information-giver in any given household, is it even possible to win an election anymore without going negative? i try not to dwell on the fact that obama broke his “promise,” and instead i focus on the fact that he made the promise in the first place.
look, it’s no secret barack obama is young. some would say he’s inexperienced, some would say niave. i think he was indeed niave to believe that he would become the president of the united states of america without using negative attack ads. that pains me to say, because i desire so much more than that, i want better… but it’s the sad truth. part of what initially drew me to obama was his inexperience. the way i saw it, we’ve had the good ‘ole boys running washington for the last eight years, and i’m personally not happy with where we are so why not bring in some fresh blood? lately, i think that his inexperience has shown, but not in a policy sense or anything that pertains to running the whitehouse.
instead, we’re now focused on him no longer being the “agent of change” in all the ways that we were led to believe. there is this elephant in the room, that if he broke this one promise, how many more are just empty rhetoric?
i don’t have any quotes to put in this post. it’s hard to find a whole lot of articles discussing the recent turn towards negativity that obama has taken. i attribute it to a few things; the fact that i loathe fox news, ann coulter and drudge report, so i refuse to go there for quotes - the fact that it’s recent, and just hasn’t been reported much - and the fact that until the field is leveled a bit (mccain has been at this for a while now) i think the media will give obama a little grace.
i’m not an idiot, and i realize that the media has it’s biases… though i don’t think it’s as overblown as some people make it out to be. i truly believe that there will be a backlash against obama’s turn towards negative attack ads, soon.
could obama have won without going negative? i don’t think so. not in our current cultural climate where the television is king. will obama win by going negative? only time will tell.
as i said yesterday about mccain, the same applies to obama. to obama’s credit, i believe this is not what he wanted to do. i believe he too is repeating to himself “the end justifies the means” while he tries to get to sleep at night.
the end justify the means… or does it?
2 Comments
I agree that if one promise is broken, how many more will be…regardless of party.
I truly believe that “your actions speak so loudly, people cannot hear the words you say.”
I guess we’ll have to wait & see…
absolutely.
to which i counter, i thought mccain was a man of character and “straight-talk?” his recent turn to outright lies and character smears has to be disheartening to conservatives and mccain supporters everywhere who valued those characteristics.