Citizens need a good umbrella to protect themselves from all of the mudslinging.
Picking a candidate to endorse requires discipline and skill. Voters need to wade through the inaccuracies and find the truth, or at least the truth as it applies to them. They need a basic understanding of the human condition and how each candidate’s platform affects everyone.
Since the birth of American democracy, the negative campaign has played an important role in swinging public opinion for or against a given candidate. Instead of a contender explaining how his platform benefits people, it is far easier to smear an opponent’s record or personal life. Don’t like his economic policies? Just tell everyone he’s a drunk, true or not, and watch the ratings drop.
This year’s stumping is the latest in a series of campaigns that are getting dirtier by the year. Gone are the speeches proclaiming why any one nominee is the best for the job. Now, we’re treated to advertisements and proclamations deriding the opposition’s man as reckless and foolish, useless and dangerous. How could they reform the economy when they smoked pot in college 30 years ago?
Mudslinging is not a new phenomenon though. As far back as the 1800 presidential election, incumbent President Thomas Jefferson and his opponent John Adams took shots at each other in public. Jefferson said Adams had “a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” To which Adams retorted that Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
Pretty heavy words for 200 years ago, though none of them have anything to do with the issues facing a new democracy.
Democrats rebuked Reagan as a forgetful old fool with mounting health issues when they couldn’t sway the public against his economic policies. Republicans demonized Clinton for smoking pot when he proposed a tax increase on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans. Democrats hated Sarah Palin and the GOP hated Geraldine Ferraro, both took barbs in the press for being women, as if a woman could not have good ideas or ability.
The right to vote, though not explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, should be cherished as your chance to affect the future of our nation. You should hunker down and learn what each party proposes. Learn about the candidates’ records. It is a voter’s responsibility to know the consequences of electing the wrong person for the job and base that decision on facts, not mud pies.
There is a growing collection of people who want television networks to stop airing negative attack ads, citing the ads as being full of lies and little actual information about the candidates. But is censoring the way to go? The movement against negative ads, alone, should tell parties to clean up their act, because hatchet man tactics are losing votes more and more each election cycle.
In short, the smart vote is always on the best suited candidate. Not the mud they sling.