Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
Since this is shaping up to be a very negative campaign, you might want to check out some of the very questionable facts in the political ads. Two of my favorites sites for this are Politifact and FactCheck.org.
I especially like Politifact’s “Pants-on-Fire” section which explores some of the biggest whoppers.
I’m not sure if it is the Philadelphia market or that I’ve just been lucky because I haven’t watched that much TV lately. I was watching more in the spring and I did see a large number of ads on TV and most were negative. During the Republican primary season, they seemed to be mostly negative ads either for against Mitt Romney. Ane then they were about the Presdential race but either Romney against Obama or Obama against Romney and largely negative.
But last night there was an Obama ad on while I was watching the Olympics and it seemed very positive as compared to what I had been seeing. The President seemed to be drawing a sharp contrast between Mitt Romney’s economic ideas and his, and telling the voters they had an important choice to make. Of course, in 1 minute (or maybe it was less), you cannot go into too much depth. And you can’t really expect either side to be very positive about the opposition ideas. But still, it may be the start of a reasonable discussion.
Can we look forward to a serious discussion of the issues ?
Much in this political season is being made of Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital and his role in job creation, job destruction or job outsourcing. The Obama campaign points to jobs lost. The Romnney campaign points to jobs gained. Both are true but not very relevant to who would be the better President.
Jobs are gained in some cases. Jobs are lost in others. Jobs are outsourced in other cases. But job creation was not Mr. Romney’s job. His job was to make money for the investors in Bain which he apparently did very well.
Neither campaign makes much of a case on how this experience relates to the President’s role in the US economy. Neither campaign has much to say about his time as a governor and how that relates to what he hopes to do as President or how his experience with Bain related to what he did as governor.
It would be better for the citizens if the campaigns tried to inform us on some relevant points.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been getting phone calls on behalf of almost everyone running for office. Now we usually check the CallerID and if we don’t recognize the number, the machine answers. Some one caught us half-asleep this morning and we answered. The call before 9 on a Sunday morning. Of course as soon as we heard the beginning of the “Hello Pennsylvania” call, we hung up. So we don’t know who did it. Could be candidate X or the opponent pretending to be candidate X to make us annoyed at candidate X. I guess we will never know. Anyway, I think a good number of folks are tired of the calls, the mail, and the negative ads and may end up not voting or voting for the least annoying candidate. Kind of a shame as there surely are real differences.
Why are most of the candidates afraid of being positive about their positions on the issues? It is not like there is nothing important happening. But most do not seem to take a strong position of the issues or if they do take a position it is so vague as to be meaningless. Yes, candidate X stands for lowering taxes and cutting all that unnecessary spending. Is there anyone who likes unnecessary spending? Be specific. Which programs would be cut and why. If we don’t dramatically cut spending, how will we pay for things and cut taxes at the same time. But rather than face real issues, everyone seems to be running negative ads against the opponent. I guess the reasoning is that if you make the other guy (or gal) look so bad, people will vote for you to keep that other person out of office. But because both sides do it (and there are usually 2 sides), the voters merely end up disgusted with both candidates.
I’d really like to see someone who says “I better than my opponent” and backs it up with some positive stands than might convince us to give our votes with pleasure rather than disgust. Lets see some positive ads for a change.
If it is too hard to get a convincing positive spin on your ideas in 30 or 60 seconds, refer to a position paper on your website to more full explain your position.